Horse Lake Reserve — Saturday, Apr. 2, 2016

Central Washington > Wenatchee

While it was sunny and warm over in Seattle, we went east of the pass to where it was sunnier and warmer to do some exploring in Wenatchee. The Horse Lake Reserve had just opened for the season, and we decided on a whim to run a half-marathon course we had found on a random google search. The dirt road you need to drive for the final three miles to get to the trailhead was in great shape. We saw several sedans and lower clearance vehicles at the top. There is a pit toilet available, as well as a few picnic tables. The balsalmroot was just starting to bloom, it will likely be in full glory in a few weeks. There were some other smaller flowering plants that I didn't know, I recognized the very beginnings of lupine and chocolate lily just showing their leaves. We started on the Homestead Trail, which climbs gradually for about 3 miles. The climb likely wouldn't be too bad as a hike, but running it became pretty tough as it is a constant uphill over long switchbacks. When we got to the junction with the Old Wagon road we continued to head up on the Apricot Crisp Trail. From here, we ended up getting off track a few times and just enjoying flat and downhill sections of trail before realizing we would eventually need to run back up them. At around 8 miles, once getting to an old ranch road at the top of Apricot Crisp, we turned around, made it back to the Old Wagon Road and followed that down to the trailhead. This cut our mileage short (we had goals!), and wasn't a super fun section to run - in retrospect, I wish we had gone down the way we'd come up on the Homestead Trail, which was more scenic and likely easier on our knees. The trail was in great condition, minus some rutting throughout from mountain bikes which made for a few ankle rolls. We encountered some patches of snow along the Apricot Crisp trail, but only in areas that had tree cover. Everything in the sun had long melted and dried out. Overall, this was a really fun adventure in a spot we hadn't known existed. The mountain views were spectacular from the trailhead and just got better the higher we climbed. We saw a lot of other trail users on this sunny opening day, including a lot of bikers, which was occasionally challenging on skinny trail. I would definitely return just to see all the flowers in bloom.