When it’s still April/May, it isn’t easy to find a good hike in the Seattle area. Most of the ‘good’ hikes are still snowed in and the hikes that are open get extremely crowded on the weekends. So we decided to head out east.

Just east of the mountains is a little town by the name of Peshastin, about 4 miles down the road from Leavenworth. And in that town there is a farm (find Anderson Canyon Rd and follow it for about .7 miles from the start at North Road) and it belongs to a man named Sauer.

Mr. Sauer grows grapes, makes wine and allows hikers to trespass on his land who want to get to the top of the mountain that’s named after him. He also directs traffic when you’re trying to find parking.

The drive to Leavenworth, with no traffic (we took I-5 to 97 North), took us a little over 2 hrs. We arrived to find a very Eastern Washingtonian dry heat and blue skies. Nice!

The trail begins on private land of Mr. Sauer.

There is some great garden art, including totem poles, to admire at the beginning of the hike.

The trail is steep right from the beginning. It then levels out some, but there are quite a few spots where the trail is very steep. It’s also very narrow and parts of it run alongside a pretty abrupt drop. Passing other hikers isn’t easy.

This time of the year the area is abundant in wildflowers. We saw an incredible amount of balsamroots, lupines and desert parsleys.

The trail is listed as being 6 miles long, but we got a little bit lost (from the viewpoint we found an old logging road and decided to follow it for a while, but then realized it wasn’t leading us to the summit, so we turned around) and ended up walking 7.7 miles.

The highlight for me was a deer encounter! I felt like I made a real connection with the wildlife when I noticed a herd of deer and walked up to photograph them. They stopped and stared at me while I stopped and stared at them. Janice pointed out that these deer can be real sons-of-bitches and I shouldn’t try to get any closer, but I think that the female on the right was my spirit animal. We telepathically exchanged a greeting.

Towards the end the kids (Nani and Darien) gave up and stayed seated on a log, while Janice and I continued towards the top of the mountain with Zika. Until we ran out of water. Then we turned around (right after we had this picture taken).

7.7 miles. 2165 ft of elevation gain.

YTD Hiking Miles: 30.6