Icicle Creek area offers dazzling high-country hikes near Leavenworth

LEAVENWORTH — I admit it. I'm the kind of hiker who wants one thing: the mountain vistas. I like the high country. The peaks, the crags, the wildflower meadows, the looking-down-on-the-valleys-and-lakes-and-rivers views below. The high-above-the-trees, eye-level-with-glacier country. And most of the time, I don't care how steep or how long the trail is to get those views. In fact, I'm kind of the bring-it-on type.

Thus my intent to hike the Fourth of July Creek Trail in the Icicle Creek Canyon area just outside Leavenworth. The trail climbs 4,500 feet in 5.3 miles (mere child's play) and leads to nearly 7,000-foot Icicle Ridge, where the views of the Stuart Range and the Chiwaukums run the gamut from sublime to stupendous.

But about a half-mile up the trail, the words of the trailhead's posted rattlesnake warning fresh in my mind, I heard what sounded suspiciously like the rattle of a rattlesnake. I'm just jumpy, I thought; rattled, as it were. (Ha, ha, a pun). But not without reason. For there on the trail about 10 feet ahead of me was a greenish-brownish Western rattlesnake coiling and uncoiling itself.

Perhaps it just wanted to say hi. Perhaps it was just wishing me safe passage. Perhaps I should've turned in to the Snow Lakes Trailhead, which I drove by on the way here and which, it just now occurred to me, had my name on it.

And so that's how I came to find myself on the shores of Snow Lakes, eyeing a breathtaking panorama of sky-kissing craggy peaks, icy glaciers, hanging valleys and tumbling waterfalls, all while dipping my toes in a couple of crystal-clear alpine lakes.

Behind me, Mark Aspnes of Kenmore leans into his trekking poles, eyeing glacier-mantled McClellan Peak to the south and a rocky spire called The Temple that seems to rise straight up almost directly over our heads to the west.

"This is truly awesome," he says. "I can see why they call this area the Enchantments."

"No doubt," agrees Aspnes' friend, Wade Railey of Seattle.

Ah, such are the trails in the Icicle Creek Canyon that Plan B can be just as spectacular — maybe even more so — than plan A.

I meet Aspnes and Railey at the top-of-dam stretch of trail that separates the two Snow Lakes. The dam was built in the 1930s and diverts water from upper Snow Lake — upper, as in maybe five feet higher than lower Snow Lake — to the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery.

Aspnes and Railey are on a three-day backpacking trip to the Enchantments, the seemingly magical high alpine-lakes basin that's one of Washington's most lusted-after backpacking destinations, and most difficult to get to. Depending on your access trail — of which the Snow Lakes Trail is one — getting to the Enchantments requires at least 20 miles round-trip with about 6,000 feet of elevation gain.

(NOTE: Because of bridge repairs scheduled to begin tomorrow on the road to Colchuck Lake/Aasgard Pass, Snow Lakes will offer the only access to the Enchantments for the rest of the season.)

The day-hike-length trail to Snow Lakes, however, is shorter — about 13 miles round-trip — and as Aspnes and Railey attest, no slouch itself. It boasts mountain vistas to please the most ardent view-addict and is strenuous enough — 4,300 feet elevation gain — for sweat addicts like me.

Starting line: Leavenworth

If you've never hiked the Icicle Creek Canyon before, one of the most amazing — and welcome — things about the trails here is how easy they are to get to. They start right at the edge of Leavenworth, the Bavarian-themed tourist town that's flirting with a growing outdoor ethic, perhaps exemplified by Harriet Bullitt's Sleeping Lady Mountain Retreat and pro-environment Icicle Fund. Too, there was this year's new Leavenworth Spring Bird Fest that teamed conservationists and federal agencies in a highly regarded step toward broadening the town's focus beyond bratwurst. It's a good base for a long weekend of day hikes.

For example, the Icicle Ridge Trailhead is 1.4 miles down Icicle Road. The Snow Lakes Trail — gateway to the Enchantments and other places magical — is literally 10 minutes from a Starbucks. Try finding a Starbucks within 10 minutes of Artist Point or Paradise or Cascade Pass. (Not that I'm advocating putting a Starbucks 10 minutes from those places, I'm merely using my caffeine addiction to illustrate a point.) There aren't many places in Washington — perhaps Winthrop comes the closest — where so many spectacular hiking trails are so close to civilization.

The Snow Lakes trail begins by dropping down and crossing cool, clear Icicle Creek, the sight of which will remind you to run back to the truck if you've forgotten your water. This is eastside hiking, folks, where in summers you'll swear the sun is twice as strong, and twice as close to Earth as it is on the west side.

Then climbing commences, in switchback form, first through rock garden, then in and out of dry pine forest, then scorched forest. In 1994, more than 3,000 acres here burned in the Rat Creek and Hatchery Creek fires, which closed the trail for a couple seasons. Today, the trail passes through stands of charred, lifeless tree trunks, which look like giant black toothpicks standing at attention.

A rock-climbing Mecca

About two miles up, a side trail to the right leads to a cool, shady spot where Snow Creek pools and gurgles. Watch for dippers, those nervous sparrow-sized birds that can't keep still and that dive into the creek for bugs and other grub. A plunging waterfall provides a wonderful backcountry soundtrack. Step back from the trees, crane your neck and check out 700-foot Snow Creek Wall directly above. For a moment you'll swear that the mountain goats in this canyon are blue, yellow, red and green. And that they wear jewelry. That is, until you realize that tiny, multicolored forms moving above are rock climbers, and the shiny glints are the sun catching their carabiners. The Icicle Creek Canyon is rock-climbing Mecca and this wall one of its most sacred spots.

This shady spot is a great place for a picnic and, with its cool pools of water, invites reflection. Which I do, on the snake I saw earlier on the Fourth of July Creek Trail four miles west on the other side of the canyon. By an irrigation ditch that the trail crosses earlier on this hike, I discussed rattlesnakes with a motorcyclist who was taking a cigarette break.

"If you come across one, take one of your sticks there (my trekking poles) and fling it away," he advised me should I come across another rattlesnake. That seemed to me to be a colossally bad idea.

"That is a colossally bad idea," Don Youkey, a wildlife biologist at the Leavenworth Ranger Station, told me later. "That's how most people get bit."

In most cases when you come across a snake, it'll slither away, but if not, give it plenty of room — about 10 feet — and walk around it, Youkey said. (Or turn around and find another trail, thought I.)

"They can strike maybe four feet at the outside," he said. "Some are dry bites with little or no venom, but it's not the kind of thing you want to take a chance with." (Exactly.)

Still going up

After a forested level stretch, the trail resumes climbing through both thick forest and open, rocky stretches surrounded on three sides by awesome craggy canyon walls more than 6,000 feet high. About 5.25 miles from the trailhead, the sparkling waters of Nada Lake present themselves, inviting you to take a load off, swat some flies and bask in the mountain air. It's another great picnic spot and/or legitimate turnaround point.

If you're itchin' for more, follow the trail along the right side of the lake and head up. Snow Lakes is another 1.2 miles and 600 feet of elevation gain, much of it up a semi-tricky boulder field. For stability, trekking poles, or the ability to grow a second pair of legs in a hurry, are a good idea.

At 6.5 miles, reach the lakes and the isthmus dam that separates the two. Here's where I say goodbye to Aspnes and Railey who, with house-sized packs strapped to their backs, are heading higher and farther and won't be back for days.

On the way back to my truck, I come upon a couple groups of backpackers (big packs) heading up. Several rock climbers (medium-size packs), day hikers (small packs), and two trail runners (no packs), too.

And thankfully, not a single rattlesnake.

Mike McQuaide is a Bellingham free-lance writer and author of "Day Hikes! North Cascades" (Sasquatch Books).