Swakane Peak, Swakane Canyon — Sunday, Mar. 22, 2015

Central Washington > Wenatchee

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.