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FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2016
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STAR
SPEED WINS Mount Si aims for faster, healthier athletes with Wildcat camps Page 10
Tunnel awakens with train of bicyclists BY STUART MILLER
smiller@snovalleystar.com
A train once again rolled through the 102-year-old Snoqualmie Tunnel on July 9. This train, however, was not composed of boxcars, but of bicyclists.
The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust hosted approximately 150 people on a 21-mile bike ride down the John Wayne Pioneer Trail as one of its “Explore the Greenway” trips. Bikers were shuttled from Rattlesnake Lake to the Hyak trailhead
at Snoqualmie Pass in buses. After finding their bicycles, the participants rode to the mouth of the tunnel and turned on their headlamps. If it weren’t for the dozens of people in front and behind these bikers at all times, the darkness would be stifling.
But on Saturday, the tunnel lit up as though the old Snow Train was returning to Seattle after dropping off a load of skiers. Construction of the tunnel was completed in 1914 and served The Milwaukee Road until the line was
decommissioned in 1980. The Milwaukee Road’s Snow Train brought skiers from Seattle and Tacoma to the Hyak Ski Bowl from 1937 through 1949, until the ski lodge there was destroyed by
SEE TUNNEL, PAGE 8
Judge lets cop keep his gun
STUART MILLER | smiller@snovalleystar.com
Participants begin a lap around the track during the Snoqualmie Valley Relay for Life on July 9 at Tolgate Farm Park in North Bend.
Valley rallies to Relay for Life BY STUART MILLER smiller@snovalleystar.com
The mood at the Snoqualmie Valley Relay for Life was, at the same time, both somber and joyful. People wearing “SURVIVOR” shirts walked past signs urging courage and strength in the face of cancer, while also stopping to throw pingpong balls into bra cups stapled to a wall.
The bra-pong setup came courtesy of the Mount Si High School Key Club’s Relay for Life team. They were one of 27 teams that participated in the event this year on July 9 to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Key Club member Sarah Green said her 22-person team set up the bra-pong stop to have a fun thing for people to do. The game faced the track that surrounded
the event — a track that at least one member of each team was always circling for the duration of the event, from 2 p.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Sunday. “It catches people’s eyes,” Green said. Her older sister Jenny, a graduate of Mount Si, also joined the Key Club team during the relay. The Green sisters had participated in the Relay for Life before, but when their
grandmother passed away from cancer, their passion for the event grew, Sarah Green said. That sentiment was shared by nearly everybody at Tollgate Farm Park for the relay. “I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t know someone or have a family member with cancer,” Relay for Life SEE RELAY, PAGE 2
U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Tsuchida will allow Snoqualmie officer Nick Hogan to keep his firearm as he awaits trial. The Associated Press reported Tsuchida reversed course July 8 after initially refusing Hogan’s request to carry a firearm. Indicted defendants are barred from possessing firearms, but the judge cited an exception in the law for law enforcement officers. A federal grand jury charged the former Tukwila police officer with excessive use of force for pepper-spraying a restrained prisoner in the Harborview Medical Center emergency room in 2011. Snoqualmie Police Chief James Schaffer recently removed Hogan from paid administrative leave and ordered him to report for a duty — a job he cannot fulfill without possessing a firearm.
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