RIVER OF THE MONTH
Icicle Creek
A wild treasure deep in the North Cascades, Icicle Creek pours cold and clear from Josephine Lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Flowing east, it carves a deep granite gorge that broadens into a glacier-carved, Ushaped valley and eventually joins the Wenatchee River near Leavenworth. The rugged basin drains more than 200 square miles, most of it within the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and wilderness.
Why It Matters
USFWS
TOM AND PAT LEESON DIANE HIGDEM
With ice-cold water that flows out of a series of pristine lakes in Washington’s Enchantments, Icicle Creek is critical for fish and wildlife. The historic town of Leavenworth, as well as orchards in the Wenatchee Valley, also depend on water from the creek. Icicle Canyon is the eastern gateway to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and delights visitors with some of the finest trails and most spectacular scenery in Washington state.
Fish
Icicle Creek is a stronghold for federally listed bull trout (above), and its cold water is crucial for Columbia Basin steelhead and Chinook. It’s also home to native fish like Westslope cutthroat trout, mountain whitefish, Pacific lamprey and sucker. Its cold water provides refuge for these fish when rivers lower in the basin warm up.
Wildlife
With extensive wilderness and mature forests, the Icicle basin is home to large mammals like black bear, elk, deer and cougar, and smaller ones like beaver, river otter (above), mink, bats and badgers. Species of concern include northern spotted owl, Townsend’s big-eared bat and pileated woodpecker.