Four of the Usual Suspects -- Neil, Frank, Don and Satchi -- up Swakane Peak, near Wenatchee. 10 miles RT, 2700’ gain. An excellent early-season hike when most Cascades hikes are snowbound. 

The WTA guide has the hike at 7.4 miles round trip with 1787 feet of gain to the summit at 4297 feet. We made it 10 miles by doing much of the hike on the abandoned road that starts the hike. And something’s fishy about the 1787 feet gain -- both of our altimeters showed a gain of 2700: someone’s off by 900 feet, and I don’t think it’s us. The Green Trails map shows a gain of about 2500.

We hiked about 3 miles on the road before scrambling up a steep grass-and-scree-covered hillside to go cross-country. In half a mile or so we topped a rounded hill and saw Swakane a short distance away. You’ll know it when you see it -- it’s the only summit in miles that actually looks like a peak, with steep sides and a rocky top.

You have your choice of a scrambly ascent from the south or a simpler route from the west, where the road reaches a gate. We took the west route to the comfortable rocky summit with a panoramic view of the Columbia River, surrounding steep ridges and deep canyons and a bit of the distant Stuart Range.     

On the way up we missed what I think would be the shortest and happiest route to the top. Simply hike up the road to the fourth switchback (the traverses are very long between switchbacks), where you can easily head up cross-country. Shortly before the fourth switchback is a brief view of the peak (see photo), very helpful in finding your way after you leave the road.

We saw a herd of 24 deer climbing a steep slope. Magnificent sight.

Après-hike dinner at Ay Caramba Tres Amigos eatery in Wenatchee.

 

 

 

 

The road to the TH parking area is a bit bumpy but not too long. The "old road"/trail to the peak and beyond is at times rocky, sandy, steep and wide. You will be rewarded with building views of the Entiat region, rock hounding galore, wildflowers, hoodoos, birdsong and herds of deer. Eventually you will lose sight of the river and valley and enter the ponderosa pines and rocky northern side leading to the peak that is now in view! At an obvious boot trail at the base of the peak, begin climbing up the talus to summit the rocky top and enjoy the 360 views! Break out your map to name the myriad of distant mountains you will see! 5.6 miles from TH to peak. Be mindful that this is the wilds of Washington- after some off trail exploring on the descent we came upon 3 different deer-kills in various parts of the hike. The grisly dismemberment and surrounding scat pointed to wolves as a predator that must frequent this area. A sunny Saturday in this vast beautiful region was only occupied by a dozen or so other hikers.

Weather looked to be about the same as our first visit three years ago except it was warmer and canyon was more vibrant covered in fall colors! From Highway 97 Alternate turnoff to pullout parking on Swakane Road was about three miles. Parking area was straight across from Swakane Road and Road 5215 junction, which was gated at the time. Just like the time before, from the car pup and I aimed for the northeast trending ridge and scrambled the ridge to 4,000'. We followed an old road not on the maps northeastward and connected with the aforementioned Road 5215 to saddle west of Swakane Peak. Left the road just past the saddle and scrambled up west ridge to summit. On the way back we followed Swakane Peak's south ridge to south saddle, then continued to follow south ridge to 3,600'. We made a quick stop there for photos of Wenatchee, then followed southwest rib straight down to the bottom and came out before the gate at Road 5215.

If you have a low clearance vehicle you should be OK if you approach this hike from the alt 97 side of the road and use a very judicious amount of care to get through the chuckholes and ruts- we decided to test out the new Crosstrek by driving out the other side directly to Cashmere (6 miles on the dirt vs 3 from the 97 side) - the road gets a lot rougher, including one puddle big enough that we felt the need to see how deep it really was before driving across it! The hike was nice enough. 6 miles would have been way too short, so we kept going all of the way to the summit, including scrambling up to the rocky outcrop at the very top, where we stopped and ate lunch - about 13 miles round trip. It snowed! while we were up at the summit. It was kind of weird, it wasn't really very cold and the snow didn't stick, but it snowed big wet flakes for about 10 min. We could hear thunder a few ridges over, which was a bit disturbing, but it was far off and never got any closer, thankfully. The only other time I've experienced thunder/lightening and snow together was in a complete white-out. There were lots of wildflowers out - white forget-me-not, bluebells, blue-eyed mary, prairie star, buttercups, spring beauty - with the promise of plenty more soon. We also saw plenty of white-tailed deer and not many other people. On the way out and at the top we had the whole place to ourselves. A couple of horse riders went just ahead of us, but they disappeared rather quickly and must have taken a different route back, as we never saw them again. We saw a few other parties as we headed back, but it certainly wasn't crowded. I think it was still too cold for snakes and ticks - which is not a bad thing at all.