Are those always there?

Alright, so my third character through I've gotten a little lazy, and I've been running past pretty much everthing that's not a skill quest (which is foolish, since I'm missing a lot of skill quests that way).

But anyway, I got to Beacon's Perch, and got the Deserters quest. I went up there, killed the deserters, and remember that, oh yeah, there're 5 chests out here.

I guess I never thought about them before. Prior to now I didn't run characters into the middle of nowhere without fighting forever. So now that I'm thinking about it, are those 5 chests always there, or is it just part of the quest?

Always there.

Ummm, I spent allot of time with my initial character mapping out allot of the shiverpeaks and the only time I've seen those chests were when I had that quest. After completing it I went thru the zone that's near by and found the Ice Cave mappoint, skill trainer there, then zoned back in the same way and the chests weren't there any longer.
But then I found the mountain village of the centaurs, there's a merchant, collector and materials guy out there. Nothing special but really cool scenery.

I ran though the village on my way to Beacon's Perch. It is pretty cool looking, although I wonder why those friendly human NPCs are there. Guess the infiltrated enemy territory give me stuff in my time of need.

Those chests are always there as long as you havent completed the deserters mission, as soon as mission is done chests dissapear. So as you probably guessed, what people did was run through chests and zone out without completing the mission over and over and over again.

But don't worry this has been nerfed so bad that it really isn't worth doing anymore.
Just move along