Hiking/Geocaching around Leavenworth, WA?

[+nedyken]

My girlfriend and I found out last second that we both were able to take this week off (Mon-Fri). We live in Bellevue. Airfare everywhere was too expensive last-minute so we decided to rent a condo in Leavenworth, WA. We'll be there all week and plan to do some hiking/geocaching. Anyone have any recommended trails we should check out while we are in the area?

[+lamoracke]

This is the perfect time of year for Round Mountain. 9 months of the year there is too much snow. Not right now. It has a great old cache called "She'll Be Coming" which is the 4th oldest in our state, from January 2001. Other caches too of course. You could keep going to the Alpine Lookout if you had more time or endurance than we did. Its NW of Leavenworth and a great place for views. Have some bug spray if you are at the cache location. Northwest Forest Pass would be needed to park there, but only costs $5 for a single day.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC1D8

 

trailhead is the following cache

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC1692W

 

Its one idea.

Edited August 21, 2012 by lamoracke

[+B+L]

My girlfriend and I found out last second that we both were able to take this week off (Mon-Fri). We live in Bellevue. Airfare everywhere was too expensive last-minute so we decided to rent a condo in Leavenworth, WA. We'll be there all week and plan to do some hiking/geocaching. Anyone have any recommended trails we should check out while we are in the area?

 

Colchuck Lake or Eightmile Lakes, and Wedge Mountain are all excellent hikes (the upper road to Wedge is pretty much high-clearance vehicle only). Big Beaver Hill and Sugarloaf are shorter hikes, but have a good payoffs. Alpine Lookout on Nason Ridge is almost guaranteed to have goats, but also plenty of bugs. Rock mountain via Snowy Creek is also a good one.

 

[+Ambrosia]

Hi!

 

If you're wanting to do hikes with caches up in the Leavenworth area, here are about 5 trail choices. I'm including the caches that you can find on the trail, but not the caches that you can find while driving to the trailheads.

 

Wedge Mountain: 3 miles, fairly easy trail. Road up to hike might need a higher clearance vehicle. Trail info. Cache: Wedge Mountain.

 

Icicle Ridge: 9 miles, pretty hard trail. Trail info (says 4 miles, but from what I can see from the caches, it's 9 miles to do all the caches). Caches: After a Hundred Miles, Tramping Up The Icicle Ridge, Below the Osprey (at least I'm pretty sure this one is on the Icicle Ridge trail?).

 

Colchuck Lake: 9 miles, pretty hard trail. Trail info. Cache: Colchuck Lake.

 

Eight Mile Lake: About 6.5 miles round trip, fairly easy trail. Trail info. Caches: Bridge of Courage, 2.16 to go, Walking to Paradise #1: Eight-mile Lake.

 

Icicle River Loop: 4 or 5 miles pretty even/flat loop trail around the Icicle River, with two caches. Trail info (says 4 miles, but we just took the hike and our gps said a little over 5). Caches: Icebox, Chatter Box.

 

You can tell where I've been wanting to hike this year! But I've only managed to hike on the Icicle Loop Trail so far, to do a maintenance visit on my Icebox multi. We love the Icicle valley, and want to spend more time up there again.

[+The Jester]

A beautiful drive is up Mountain Home Road - there are some great views. There are a few caches up there to enjoy, make sure you do Boundry Butte (GC6BAB) and Boundry Butte The Top (GCKQNV). I made it up in a mini-van, so just about any vehicle should make it - but you can always walk up what you don't feel like driving...

 

ETA: Don't skip the trails along the river in town - Der Cache III (GC8585) is one along them.

 

If you don't have NW Trails/NW Topos, check it out.

Edited August 21, 2012 by The Jester

[+nedyken]

Thanks for all the awesome suggestions. We will definitely try to hike a couple of them. So far, we have just done some of the caches along us2 leading into town. We did manage to rescue an archived/lost geocache that was placed in 2002 and hasn't been found for nearly 3 years... so that was pretty cool. There was a trackable in there listed as "missing" as well... Im sure the owner will be glad we found it

[+Ambrosia]

A beautiful drive is up Mountain Home Road - there are some great views. There are a few caches up there to enjoy, make sure you do Boundry Butte (GC6BAB) and Boundry Butte The Top (GCKQNV). I made it up in a mini-van, so just about any vehicle should make it - but you can always walk up what you don't feel like driving...

 

ETA: Don't skip the trails along the river in town - Der Cache III (GC8585) is one along them.

 

If you don't have NW Trails/NW Topos, check it out.

Lol, didn't think about the trails around town. Silly, as I've been semi involved with Der Cache in it's different forms (I, II, III).