Hikes near Lake Chelan

Nava, Havazelet, and I took several nice hikes in the Lake Chelan area.  The first and major one was at Echo Ridge, above the NNE side of the town of Chelan in the Central Cascades.  It was an extremely dry area with lots of dust but also with lovely views of the lake and the Western Cascades.
The road up curved among the area, which included cabins for hunters and bikers.  The last several miles before our stop at the Upper Trailhead was on a rather bumpy dirt road, which I drove slowly in my 13-year-old Toyota Prius.

Havazelet and Nava at the start of the trail.

There are a lot of short trails in this area.

Well marked signs

I was most impressed by the views, the dryness of the area and the signs of small fires.  The dryness was in stark contrast to the west side of the state.  Last year, there were huge fires in the Chelan area, closing down highways for days on end.  Sparks from those fires torched trees on Echo Ridge.

A First view of the area

Starting the Walk

Life and Death.  Smaller trees did not survive the drought or small sparks from fires

Neither did some larger ones

Majestic in Death

View of a bit of the lake below us

And then a bigger view of narrow Lake Chelan

We started hiking on the Upsy Daily Trail to the Grand Junction and then moved on to the Lower Ridge View and the Upper Ridge View

We saw very few flowers along the way.  Here were a few.

 The "more difficult" paths were actually quite easy.

Havazelet and I

Havazelet found a nice seat to meditate and enjoy the view at the top of our hike--that is until she found out she was sitting on an ant hill in a dead tree stump!!!  She had ants on her for at least the next 30 minutes!!

Fire weed in bloom

Fire weed up close

You can see part of the road we drove up and the lake in the far distance

Fire damaged trees and dry foothills in the background

Leaves changing colors on hill on the side of the path

A directional marker left by someone recently, made up of pine cones

On the way back we stopped along side an apple orchard.

 We picked up a few of the apples that had recently fallen on the ground and ate them on the way home.

On Thursday, we went for a walk near a river.  First we tried to go on a short hike high above the river but passed it twice before finally finding the poorly marked turnoff.  The path was narrow and close to drop offs so we only went on part of it but the views were spectacular and we did see a number of flowers of plants that can survive with little water.

easier part of walk

First nice view

View from hilltop

Sitting behind drop off of cliff--no ants on this rock!

 Below you can see some of the pretty early fall colors.

 Many of the plants have thorns for protection from animals that roam here.

Then we finally found the entrance to the Beebe Springs trail by the river and walked around the area, on flat surfaces.  It required a Discovery state pass to park there.  We were the only ones on the trails.

 Much of the area is being rehabilitated and animals and plants are returning.

 This is an amazing sculpture when seen up close!  So glad we were able to.

Rose Hips