A looong day's hike to the lovely, lusted-after Enchantment Lakes
Lucky for me, my next-door neighbor, Sterling Chick, is the same way. So when I was looking for someone to join me in hiking through the Enchantment Lakes in one day (usually, it's a three- to five-day backpacking trek) all I had to do was give a holler across the fence to see if he was interested. He was. Located in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness about 10 miles southwest of Leavenworth, the aptly named Enchantments area takes in a magical 7,000-plus-foot plateau of crystal-clear lakes, gurgling and gushing waterfalls, rocky spires that pierce the clouds, and mountain goats that scurry across broad granite slabs. In fall, the area's larch trees turn gold, as seen in probably just as many photo calendars and coffee-table books as are images of Mount Rainier.
"It's the kind of place where you expect fairies to pop out from behind the rocks," said my friend and Enchantments backpacking veteran Elizabeth Hampton. "It's got this totally different feel from anywhere else."
Furthering that detachment: There's no easy way to get there. You can hike 10 miles, gaining 5,400 feet from the east. Or there's a 6-mile jaunt from the west that includes the near vertical climb to Aasgard Pass, a rough climber's route that ascends 2,000 feet in about a mile. Sterling and I opted for the latter.
There's another reason to tackle this as a day hike: The Enchantments are perhaps the most lusted-after backpacking destination in the Northwest. So lusted after that, to limit damage from too many campers in this fragile high-country, overnight wilderness permits are required June 15-Oct. 15.
Day hikers to the Enchantments need no permits. Wait for a good weekend, and go.
After sleeping in beds at Leavenworth's Obertal Inn (my Yankees beat the Mariners; Sterling's Red Sox lost to the White Sox), Sterling and I left for Icicle Road at 5:30 a.m. To make this a point-to-point hike, we parked my truck at the Snow Lakes Trailhead, where we'd finish, and his car at the Stuart Lake Trail, where we'd begin.
Sterling, who's 50 and a Bellingham family therapist, has hiked all over — Grand Canyon, Utah, Maine, Colorado, etc. — and has both backpacked and day-hiked the Enchantments. But because he began and finished his day hikes at the Snow Lakes Trailhead, they were especially burly affairs — like 28 miles! Ours should be about 20.
After about an hour and 45 minutes of dark forest hiking, we reached Colchuck Lake, a spectacular rock wall- and forest-rimmed lake about four miles in. It was a perfectly still morning and the water was glass — a mirror, reflecting the jagged spires of 8,800-foot Dragontail Peak rising almost 3,200 feet straight up out of the water. Just to the left and nearly as high (7,800 feet) was Aasgard Pass, the only notch on this side of the Enchantment Peaks.
"Wow, that's big," said Sterling, echoing my thoughts.
In Norse mythology, Aasgard corresponds roughly to Greek mythology's Mount Olympus. Here, Aasgard is the doorway to the Enchantments. There's no foyer. Once we reached the pass, the lakes would be ours. But first we had to get there.
Chipmunks skittered this way and that as we followed the trail to the right around the lake. We passed campsites with food hung from trees, and at the head of Colchuck Lake crossed the first of what was, by conservative estimates, the 87 bezillion boulder fields that we'd negotiate that day.
The way up to Aasgard Pass is a wide gully choked with granite boulders that make no bones about crunching a person's ankles or knees. Caution is key. There's some boot trail, but mostly it's a matter of following those who've gone before and thankfully left strategically placed cairns for others to follow. It's extremely steep, but since we were day hiking, our packs were small, our balance wasn't compromised and we made good progress.
Part way up, we passed a young woman who told us her backpack weighed 50 pounds; we didn't envy her for a second.
"It's giving me impetus to stop and eat a lot, though," she said. "It makes my pack lighter."
Tenacious blooms of Indian paintbrush poked through the cracks, and to our right a creek bounced down the mountainside and provided a soothing soundtrack.
Near the top, we looked back down on Colchuck Lake and saw the shadow of Enchantment Peaks receding across the water. As the sun hit the lake, it glowed a brilliant turquoise.
Seeing is believing
Moments later, at 9:50, about an hour and 10 minutes after we began climbing, we reached the pass and its immediate rewards. Across a vast, rocky plateau, lakes and puddles and tarns and ponds of every shape and size spread out before us. Granite stacks and spires rose high above us on all sides, containing the lakes, along with great rocky slabs that keep the lakes from running into one another.
"It's like a Disneyland of lakes and plateaus up here," Sterling said, and he was right.
We could have spent days exploring up there and still we wouldn't have seen everything. As it was, we had just hours and had to keep moving. We zigged and zagged past ponds and waterfalls so numerous we could hear many at once. They all had different tones — gentle gurgle-gurgles and high-pitched swishhhhhes and baritone swooooshes. I raised one of my trekking poles and for a moment pretended to conduct a waterfall orchestra.
We veered south toward Little Annapurna, so named because of its resemblance to Annapurna, an 8,000-meter peak in the Himalayas. A half-hour later, after climbing another 800 feet worth of scratchy granite blocks, we were at the top looking down over the edge. Straight down, almost 5,000 feet, was the Ingalls Creek Valley.
"Holy moly!" said Allan Maas of Puyallup, who was already at Little Annapurna's summit when we arrived. "That's a long way down!"
I felt like I was looking off the edge of the Earth and reflexively stepped back. Instead I focused on the distant views, which included Mount Rainier and Glacier Peak. Were it not for the haze from various forest fires, we'd have seen Baker and Adams, too.
We lunched atop Little Annapurna, and 20 minutes later were again down in the basin and following the trail of tarns. That's when we heard the barking.
I was stunned. The Enchantments' ecosystem is so fragile that dogs aren't allowed anywhere near here. I couldn't believe that even the most avid, canine-insane dog lover would consider letting Fido run loose up here in such a wilderness paradise.
"Look over there," said Sterling.
About 10 feet away, from behind a boulder stepped a fluffy-footed white-tailed ptarmigan. It's three-tone, gray-brown-white feathers made it almost indistinguishable from the surrounding rocks. What sounded to me like far-off barking was its little cooing call.
Winding down
We descended toward Inspiration Lake, Prusik Peak's needle-like spires seeming to pull us along. There was more vegetation the lower we went, and the landscape became less stark. Asters, paintbrush and other wildflowers added color to heather meadows and we passed stand upon stand of the area's famous larch trees, still green in mid-August.
We dropped farther down the basin, past Perfection Lake, which spills into tiny Sprite Lake, where we saw a lone mountain goat picking its way along a rock slab. It eyed us, but quickly found us unworthy of its attention. We crossed a log bridge at the foot of Leprechaun Lake, and shortly thereafter reached Lake Viviane, at the easternmost edge of the Enchantment Lakes basin.
Sterling and I filtered water and headed down. It was about 10 more miles, past the Snow Lakes, Nada Lake and a forest of blackened tree trunks that were burned 10 years ago in a massive fire.
Closer to the trailhead, we saw the huge billowing smoke plumes rising from the Fischer fire in Dryden, about four miles southeast of Leavenworth.
Back at my truck we shook hands, tired and giddy from a great hike.
From the Stuart Lake Trailhead to the Snow Lakes Trailhead, it took us just about 11 hours. We estimated it to be 20 miles, and my altimeter told me that we climbed 5,740 feet.
Driving back to Sterling's car, we recounted all we'd seen. We luxuriated in the knowledge that back at the Obertal, we could shower, eat like lumberjacks (guilt-free) and last but not least, find out how our Yanks and Red Sox fared.
Mike McQuaide is a Bellingham-based freelance writer (who grew up in New Jersey, thus the Yankees) and author of "Day Hikes! North Cascades" (Sasquatch Books). He can be reached at mikemcquaide@comcast.net.
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