Trips
Luke McRedmond Landing is located near the South end of the Sammamish River (or Sammamish Slough as I always remember it being called). The park is tucked behind a hotel (or maybe it's a condo) and can be a little tricky to find your first time since you have to drive through the hotel's driveway to get there. It's a relatively tiny park bisected by the Lake Sammamish Bike Trail. The river itself is pleasant enough with a slow current that is relatively trivial to paddle against. As a matter of fact, it doesn't take much wind to blow you back up stream.
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Pros: It has a nice launch and the river's current is slow enough that it won't immediately sweep you away. Likewise, you can paddle up the river almost all the way to Lake Sammamish before the current starts getting too strong. It's also conveniently located in downtown Redmond
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Cons: While there isn't much of a current, there is one, and it's slightly stronger at this end of the river. Several parking spots, but they can get filled up on weekends and I have no idea where the backup parking would be. The river also has steep banks, so there isn't a ton to see.
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Overall: Close to downtown Redmond, it's a fun place to paddle around for a bit, but not terribly exciting.
7/12/16
Went for a paddle this morning. As you may recall, I did the lower section of the Sammamish River a couple weeks back (and lost track of time and sunburned my arms). This time I did an upper section, starting from Luke McRedmond Landing and paddling up river as far as I could go. (And yes, Luke McRedmond is the old West gunslinger you have to defeat in order to defeat to get a coding job at Microsoft.)
Apparently, you can put in at the dog park in Marymoor Park, but it looked a little questionable on the maps and websites so I decided to go a bit further north. (Also, we all know that the dog park is forbidden.) I also figured this would give me a bit longer of a paddle today and let me scout out a good launching point for a potential Redmond to Woodinville float.
The park itself is perfectly serviceable. It's right in the middle of downtown Redmond and the parking lot is part of a hotel's parking lot, so it's nice and big. The parking lot was empty when I got there just before 11, but when I got back at 1 it had filled up a bit. Anyway, there was a good place to set up right next to where I parked and only a moderate schlep over level terrain to get to the water (all on nice concrete pathways to boot). The launch was a series of cement steps, which was nice, even if they had some goose crap on them. The path to the launch is slightly narrow, but I didn't have any problems navigating my kayak down it.
As for the paddle itself, it was very pleasant. The river was slow moving enough most of the way that it wasn't a hassle to paddle up it. The scenery wasn't bad and there were plenty of birds and turtles to watch. Since it hasn't really rained in a while, the water was nice and clear and I was even able to see a fair number of fish. Closer to Lake Sammamish it was mostly these small black fish the size of a small woman's hand. Closer to the landing there were these gray/brown fish that I think were trout, including one that was about a foot long. The water was so clear I even saw a turtle swimming around under water at one point.
The river itself was pleasant and trivial to navigate right now, but I could tell that in a drier year some of the shallow spots would be sand bars and you'd have to do some work to find the channels. There was also a ton of river grass and other plant life in the water, which made it difficult to tell how deep it actually was. One thing I did notice is that the bottom of the river had a ton of these tiny clam shells, the biggest about the size of my thumb nail. From the sheer number of them I'm guessing there's a strain of freshwater clam that lives in the water there and the local wildlife feeds on them. Either that or they were part of some sort of restoration project.
Like I said, the river was fairly slow moving most of the way. At least until you got past the entrance to Marymoor Park. About half way through where I figured the dog park would be, the current seriously picked up. To the point where I could probably paddle up it if I absolutely had to, but it would have been serious work. So, instead I turned around and headed back. The current did most of the work there, but got seriously slow and lazy at a few points.I thought about heading up Bear Creek, but I got about one kayak length's up it before realizing that it was way too shallow and swift to try. As it was I scraped my fin a bit in the attempt. (That is not a euphemism.)
All in all a fun, short little paddle with some good information gained.