Sauer's Mountain — Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025

Did an afternoon hike with adults and teenagers, no one at the trailhead parking at 3:30pm. Trail is dry, dusty/silty in a lot of places, more near the bottom though. There are more forks than the WTA trail description has. We went left at the first, lower fork, left again at the next fork, and then right at the 3rd fork (the left path there was really just to a viewpoint overlooking Peshastin and the valley.) But the views along this route were great.' Then we proceeded on and came to the "1/2 Mile" post. We had walked much more than half a mile, but thought the grade was very manageable.  From there you proceed on to the summit, without any varying forks in the trail. The view from the top is excellent, if you go the extra 300 yards higher the view is more blocked by trees. Coming down when we hit the "1/2 Mile post" we veered left instead of right (the way we came) to go downhill. This path was much steeper, also more angled in places, and had more slippier areas due to the fine silt/sand, but was much faster. We were going about average pace I would say, stopped for quite a few views/water, and were about 2 hours up, about 50 minutes down the steeper, shorter route. But it was a fun, quick but still fairly challenging hike, right outside of Leavenworth.