Snoqualmie Valley land faces auction, endangering popular WA trail network

A big chunk of prime Snoqualmie Valley land is going on the auction block.

Campbell Global, a Portland-based subsidiary of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, is unloading 4,833 acres of timberland spread across four parcels collectively known as the Twin Peaks Forest Portfolio. Located on the outskirts of Fall City and bordered by the Snoqualmie Valley Trail, a buyer could build up to 30 houses and harvest upward of 26 million board feet of timber. Much of the land is restricted by existing conservation easements.

Realty Marketing/Northwest listed the portfolio for sale on Monday with a published reserve price of $42.8 million, meaning bids for all four parcels must total at least that amount for the sale to proceed. Bids are due Aug. 5.

The announcement has set off alarms in the mountain biking community and a scramble in King County government in a rushed effort to buy the land for conservation. The portfolio hosts 43 miles of multiuse trails known as Tokul, which is prized as one of the best year-round riding destinations in King County because its south-facing slopes drain quickly during winter rains. Local riders developed the first trails informally in the 1990s when Weyerhaeuser owned the land. The next owner, Hancock Global, formalized access in 2012 with a recreation permit. Campbell Global currently charges $15 per day or $82 per year. The trails are also popular with hikers, equestrians, gravel cyclists and trail runners.

While public access on this private land has hit stumbling blocks before - current owner Campbell Global closed the trails for nine months in 2024-25 due to a code compliance issue - there are fears that this latest change of hands could axe mountain biking entirely depending on the whims of the new owner.

There's an understanding when you put a bunch of trails on private land that there's always the chance they will be sold or harvested for timber and you lose those trails," said Eddie Espinosa, executive director of Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance. "But with a private sale, you hope there's a solution that provides for guaranteed access."

That solution could be King County, which levies a property tax of roughly $50 per household annually to buy land for conservation.

"We are very interested in preserving this land for future generations," Sarah Perry, chair of the Metropolitan King County Council, whose district covers the Snoqualmie Valley, said via phone.

Known as Conservation Futures, a committee overseeing the fund allocated $90.4 million this year across the county to dozens of conservation efforts. None of the awards came close to the hefty $33.7 million price tag for the largestTwin Peaksparcel - which at 3,795 acres makes up the lion's share of the portfolio - but the committee has funded awards as high as the price for the three smaller parcels, which range from $1.75 million to $5.75 million.

The problem is the compressed schedule. According to Mo McBroom, interim director at the Department of Natural Resources and Parks, a normal acquisition of this size would take at least a year, maybe two, to wind its way through the committee, county executive and County Council.

Instead, the department has a little over three months. The sale became public in late April when Realty Marketing/Northwest published its spring catalog, but the published reserve price was not released until June 1.

"It's a brutal timeline," Perry said.

The county has already begun an appraisal, a key step to ensure that the posted price squares with the land's actual value to the public. While the county is not legally prohibited from paying more than the assessed value, McBroom said, such decisions are heavily scrutinized as a matter of fiscal prudence.

"It's a huge price tag and a lot of pieces have to come together quickly in order to land a successful acquisition," McBroom said via phone. "We have a number of different tools at our disposal for unanticipated land sales like this one where we think it's in the public interest."

While McBroom did not delve into specifics at this early juncture, she indicated that partnering with an outside entity could be one option. Possible partners include nonprofit land trust Forterra, which has a track record of conserving more than 275,000 acres in Washington, and the Snoqualmie Tribe, which purchased 12,000 acres of ancestral forest from Campbell Global in 2022. (Forterra and the tribe had a falling-out later that year over a $20 million timber and housing project.)

McBroom said her office speaks to both entities regularly and would not confirm if they are in specific discussions around this land sale. Kristi England, Forterra's chief governance, policy and innovations officer, said the land trust is "not involved in acquisition discussions related to the Twin Peaks Forest Portfolio."

"We don't have anything pertinent to say about this sale," wrote Snoqualmie Tribe Deputy Executive Director of External Affairs Michael Ross via email.

Despite the opacity of how King County will come up with the money and how much of the land it will bid for, McBroom said her office has a bull's-eye circled on its calendar.

"We are geared up to be ready when that auction comes in August, she said.

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This story was originally published June 5, 2026 at 6:36 AM.