Nature's Playgrounds: White River Camping and Mt Sauer

Derrick and I ended up with an unplanned 3-day weekend and decided to head out for some car camping. Although things are starting to melt out it was a little challenging to find too many longer hikes that were snow free. The weather was also a little bit rainy so we decided to head east of the mountains.

Our original thought was to camp at Fish Lake right near Lake Wenatchee. However, we were unable to find any camp sites near the water that weren't already taken. Our next thought was along Lake Wenatchee, but a big storm in December has left many roads closed due to blow downs. We perused a few other forest service roads that pushed the off-road limits of the civic. Then we checked out our map and decided to head up the road along the White River.

I'd never been back in this area before and it was much more scenic than I had imagined. We drove for a ways and decided to see how far back we could get on some of the forest service roads. We almost made it to the very end of the road before hitting a patch of snow that blocked access. We then headed back to the turn out for Auto Tour Stop #4 and found a nice campsite along the roaring river. We thought we were going to have it all to ourselves until a family with a camper pulled in. Luckily they were pretty far away and the river drowned out any noise. It looked like we might have been the first people to camp there for the season as the site was littered with fire wood.

Our campsite by the river

We had a relaxing evening, grilled some burgers, and sat by the fire til turning in for the night. The next morning we debated for a while on our plan of action. We decided to check out the other three auto tour stops along the drive. One led us up a long winding road to what we assumed would have been a look out, but we were stopped after several miles by a large blow down. Then we considered the grooling hike up to dirty face lookout, but weren't sure about the snow. We settled on Sauer Mountain in Peshastin, not too far from Leavenworth.

Flowers along Sauer trail

Sauer was a nice hike and actually a bit steeper than I imagined. It was a nice climb through lots of meadows of flowers. Arrow leaf balsam root, indian paint brush, and lupine were all putting on a nice show. At the top we had good view of the Enchantments and the south end of the Glacier Peak wilderness. After the hike we made a quick stop in Leavenworth then headed back to Seattle.