Mar 28, 2015
Knowing I'd be in Wenatchee for an event my son was involved in, I took the opportunity to get a quick hike in while I was in the area. There is a great website called Wenatchee Outdoors that has an online hiking guidebook that has info on all the trails local to the Wenatchee, Leavenworth, Central Washington areas. Armed with this tool, I did some research for a mild hike that wouldn't take all day to do since I still had to go to my son's event that afternoon. Once I found the info on Castle Peak, I sent a message to my friend Teresa that lives in the area to see if she would like to join me on the hike. She said yes, so the plans were all set.
I met Teresa through my hiking club, the Peninsula Wilderness Club a few years ago. She was a guest speaker for us a couple times. As the guest coordinator for the club, I have the opportunity to meet several of what I refer to as local hiking celebrities (I know, I'm weird). Teresa "Dicentra" Black is the author of One Pan Wonders, a great book that is full of easy to make recipes for backcountry meals, all of which can be made in a single pan. I still eat the freeze dried stuff on occasion but more often than not, I am making my own creations and bringing them along as they are cheaper and usually taste better than the freeze dried stuff. If you are new to backpacking and want to try something different than the usual stuff you find at REI, I highly suggest picking up Teresa's book and giving it a try. Clicking on the picture will take you to the Amazon page for the book.
Since I'm writing this about 8 months after the fact, I'm a little fuzzy on all the specifics, but according to my GPS track, we started hiking at 9:50 in the morning. I remember the trail being very well taken care of and there had been some recent work done to it. There were also some sections that looked like they were parts of the old trail that were closed off and being rehabilitated back to the natural landscape. I believe I read somewhere that there were some erosion issues requiring parts to be repaired and returned to the wild. Hopefully the work done on the newer tread would last longer. Being early spring, the flowers were just getting started. We made our way up the trail and around the north side (seemed like the back way) of Castle Rock. Soon we were on top of Castle and overlooking Wenatchee. Great View.
The next goal was the trek up to Chopper Peak, which lies another 600-700 feet up a steep ridge to the SW. As soon as you leave Castle Rock to head up to Chopper, you'll come to a sign that says something about being on privately held land and to stay on the trail - day hiking only. At the time, I couldn't imagine anyone going up there to camp, however the top of Chopper was pretty flat. I guess it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities.
The views from the top were pretty great. Being early in the season, it stoked my desire to get higher up into the mountains, but for being a short day hike and only March, it was pretty nice. After spending about 45 minutes at the summit and a quick lunch, we headed back down. Along the way, we took a slightly different route around Castle Peak that went around the south side. There is also a variation to the lower part of the trail that you can take for a little variety. All in all it was a nice little trip for the short amount of time we had. According to my track, we spent about 3 hours hiking Castle and Chopper.
As always. click on the images for a larger view.
