Well, I went to my brother's (and sis-in-law's) place in Wenatchee for Thanksgiving. We got up at 5:30 Friday morning to head out to the Swakane GMU. I had to wait for Nick to get out of the shower because there were no towels to be found in the house... dude took twenty minutes! Then I took a quick shower and changed into several layers, anticipating some chilly eastern WA weather. I wasn't disappointed as we stepped into sub 30 degrees with a wind out of the north.
The night before, we printed some maps so that we wouldn't get lost and Nick assured me that he knew right where we were going. Long story short, Magellan got us on the wrong side of the river and about 20 miles out of our way. Neither of us were at all familiar with the area and I drove about 5 MPH until a guy in a minivan tried to drive up my bumper. When we found the official trailhead we got out because we weren't sure if we could drive in any farther. Well, a couple of trucks driving past bolstered our courage and I made sure I had my use permit in the glove box before we started down the road.
The area wasn't quite as busy as it was made out to be by a few folks online. There were several people there before we arrived but it wasn't exactly shoulder to shoulder. What no one bothered to say was that the entire unit is practically vertical. There are a few areas that are low but for the most part it was the kind of "rolling hills" that you see dirtbikes and 4x4's climbing. We got out in one spot that looked promising but were stymied by elevation and altitude- I'm not used to climbing, and I'm even less used to climbing at any sort of altitude. I was completely winded withing 100 yards of the vehicle. We went about 50 yards at a time and got to a point where it looked impassable.
On the way back to the car we took a little detour looking for sign. I don't know if a deer skeleton officially qualifies as "sign" but at least we know deer are in the area. We didn't hang out too long looking at it because it was underneath a rocky overhang and I didn't want to be cat chow.
We drove the same direction out as we did coming in. It's a one lane road with infrequent turnouts and most of the traffic was going the same direction we were. Along the way we saw the "sweet spots" that had been spoken for by the RV campers and the guys with the large canvas tents and their woodburning stoves. I can't say for sure that they were successful, but the areas the campers were in looked a lot better for hiking around than the places we'd found to pull over and spot-n-stalk.
I was (am) disappointed, not gonna lie. It's discouraging to get out of a warm bed, to leave the wife that early in the morning, to step into uncomfortable nature, to do all that driving to not even SEE a live deer- again. I don't plan to get back out this year, which is again disappointing but there's next year and plenty of folks don't get anything or even see anything each year. I may get out one more time but I don't know when that might be.
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