Dry Gulch Preserve Trails, Wenatchee, Washington
I have said it before – give me all the sunshine. And of course, adventure. Wenatchee, Washington provides that for me. It is a few hours from Coeur d’Alene. An easy drive. Clear roads and loud music are the perfect setup for a solo weekend getaway to spend a couple days on exposed trails. The town itself is really cute – it is closer to Seattle than to Spokane, and is the largest town near Leavenworth, Washington, which I will write about soon. It is growing quickly, like everything in the PNW, but its nature areas are being managed well.
Dry Gulch Preserve is in that shrub steppe area of Washington that I love. I have mentioned in previous posts how special the state of Washington is because it has such a wide variety of environments – prairies, wetlands, estuaries, grasslands, marine waters, and of course, shrub steppe. Sun exposure, sand, snakes, spiders, and sage brush are a few of my favorite things. Not many people are running around the country and saying how much they thrive in extreme heat and sun exposure and are not afraid of intersecting with snakes and spiders, which means when I am prancing around the trails in this region I am not running into many other people.
While I walk the sandy trails surrounded by the spikey grass, cacti, and sage brush, looking at the horizon gives incredible views of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains. You may remember my adventures there during my trips to Stehekin, in the North Cascades National Park.
Dry Gulch Preserve Trails are on over 600 acres of land managed by the Chelan-Douglas Land Trust, in Wenatchee. Large portions of the land are reclaimed mining lands (gold and silver) and retired cattle pastures.
I have no idea how many miles of trails there are on this property. The trailhead begins at a large and well-established trailhead that has bathrooms and maps. There are a few ways to hop on the trail system. My favorite way is to take the old service road path that winds through a canyon and begins a slow grind uphill. You can see in this photo that when you are on this side of the preserve, instead of views of the Cascades, you have views of…Wenatchee.
Blue silhouettes of the Cascade Mountains on the horizon and miles of trails ahead of me. The best view.
The trails are sandy and rocky, but packed down well and mostly marked really well. It is really important to stay on the trails in this kind of environment because, other than being less able to see snakes, trampling any of the plant life can permanently alter the environment. It takes years and years for plants to grow back in this climate. The sage brush is sturdy, though, and one of my favorite things to do is grab some sage leaves off a branch, rub them in my hands and hold my hands to my face. You must try it!
Saddle Rock is the landmark that you will find in photos of this area. Saddle Rock is visible from the trailhead, and if that is the only thing you want to see, you can hike straight up the hill to it. It is quite a bit of elevation gain, but why would you go all that way to only do that? Maybe there is a really good reason. I would hear it. But I would also try to convince you to wander around for all the miles and let yourself feel the freedom that comes with this wide open space.
I would like to wrap this up with some sage (ha ha ha punny) words about the mentioned freedom, but I think I am tired. To the core. I feel so much pain, from the bottom of my feet to the inside of the bone basket holding my gray matter. My sleep has been awful and I just feel like everywhere I turn I have set standards that I am too tired to achieve. But I will achieve them because… I do not know why. Maybe that is the freedom – the privilege to continually shake goals out of every shaky stage of this life and choose to chase those down instead of succumbing to this nasty illness. I don’t know.
