Pacific Northwest Week #5

We’ve spent the past week camping in the Central Cascades doing day hikes and trail runs to get out in the great outdoors. We were planning to do another backpacking trip but the weather has been really hot so we decided to just stick to day hikes so that we don’t have to lug around a heavy backpack all day. Last weekend I was doing my long run and saw two fairly large rattlesnakes on the forest service road that I was running along. It definitely put me on high alert! When you’re on the lookout for snakes, why is it that every single stick looks like a snake? Below are shots from Blue Lake and Lake Valhalla which were two of our hikes.

In our research for places to hike, we kept reading about the Enchantments Traverse which is a very popular hike outside of Leavenworth described by some as one of the most beautiful hikes in the country. It’s next to impossible to get a permit to go backpacking there so we decided to just do the whole hike in one day. It’s a 19 mile hike with over 5,000 feet in elevation gain and is a point to point route so requires a shuttle ride to get to the trailhead. We booked the shuttle for 5:15am as we wanted to get an early start before it got too hot. We started the hike at 5:40am just as it was getting light out and surprisingly there were tons of other people starting at the same time! Ginny set the pace from the get-go and I kid you not when I describe it as blistering. She had read many accounts of the hike and was motivated to finish it before the sun set on us at the end of the day (we did pack headlamps just to be safe though!). In our first few miles (all uphill), we passed no fewer than 100 other hikers and therefore we got ahead of the masses which turned out to be really nice later in the day. The toughest part of the hike is up Aasgard Pass which included 2,000 feet of climbing from Colchuck Lake up to the Enchantment Lakes Basin. It was a slog to get up the pass which largely consists of climbing a massive boulder field which seems to go forever.  

Once we got up into the Enchantment Lakes Basin, the magic began and it continued for the next few miles with a series of high alpine lakes beneath towering granite peaks and ridges. It was pure alpine nirvana and reminded me of my beloved high Sierras. We saw a number of mountain goats through this section of the trail including a gangly baby mountain goat who was still getting his bearings. Thanks to Ginny’s breakneck pace to start the hike, we saw very few people through the Enchantment Lakes Basin portion of the hike which was awesome. The hike finishes with a long, grueling descent past Snow Lake, Nada Lake and a million switchbacks down to Icicle Creek where we had our van waiting. We spent one section of this trail segment leap-frogging with a bridal party of women out trail running the Enchantments which was fun. We finished the hike in 11 hours which got us back to the van with plenty of daylight to spare.  

We were planning to spend the weekend further exploring the Central Washington Cascades but poor air quality from nearby wildfires has chased us out of the area. So now we’re heading towards Walla Walla where we’ll be meeting up with friends next week and hoping that the wildfires are contained and that the air quality improves!