Hiking Icicle Ridge Trail - both miles of it!

We decided since this was likely our last “Wenatchee River Weekend” this spring we would take an extra day off and go for a hike on Friday. We left Thursday afternoon and headed over to Leavenworth. The plan was to beat the weekend crowd and find a nice campsite at Eightmile Campground where we would meet up with our friend Bucky. Last weekend a similar plan was foiled and we we're forced to “camp” on the side of the road next to Icicle Creek. Well our plan worked better this time. We had no issues finding a nice spot that would fit our truck & the Blastshelter along with Bucky’s truck and tent. I called Bucky to let him know we had arrived and he said he was just making a quick stop at Starbucks, I assumed the Starbucks in Leavenworth, but apparently he meant the Starbucks in Bellevue! He was still in town! I guess Bucky just had a little too much retirement to take care before he could hit the road! After a couple hours hanging around camp Bucky pulled in around 10pm. The next morning we started the day off by breaking camp and promptly heading directly to Starbucks in Leavenworth. Once we were properly caffeinated we drove to our private campsite we use for or rafting trips to drop off the trailer and get situated for our hike.

Since I’d be taking Lily on my back a relatively short hike would be best (she gets a little antsy after too many hours riding in the backpack) so we decided on the Icicle Ridge Trail. Our plan was to climb the 2 miles to the top of the ridge – I figure a 2 mile hike with a 1600’ elevation gain and a rating of "Difficult" was more than enough with a small child strapped to my back. We found the trail head and started up to the ridge about 1:00-ish. Just as it started to get hot out - figures! The trail was a bit over grown at the beginning but overall it was in good condition. It starts out heading uphill then continues uphill until you run out of hill to go up. It’s not the steepest trail I’ve been on but you are cut no slack as nearly every step you take for the 2 miles up is…..up! I don’t think the trail had more than 100’ of flat land on it the entire length. The climb was completely worth the effort though. The view from the top was spectacular. It was such a steep ridge line we were able to look down at Tumwater Canyon on one side, Icicle Valley on the other side and the town of Leavenworth right in front of you (well 1600 feet below right in front of you). The ridge here is pretty steep so it made for some good pictures of the valleys below. We took a few minutes to have some lunch and enjoy the cool breeze blowing through Tumwater canyon and up over the ridge. We made the two mile trek back down the mountain and back to camp with Lily holding onto a pine cone the entire way (I think that thing's still around here somewhere in the house). At camp we took a few minutes to allow our legs to stop shaking from the climb then grabbed a couple friends and jumped in the truck and headed into Leavenworth to Gustav's http://www.gustavsleavenworth.com/ where we sat out on the patio and enjoyed some beers and burgers. We spent just enough time on the patio that we were able to relax, recharge and recover a bit before our rafting/kayaking trip the next morning.