One Long and Enchanting Day
Photos by Peter Gaylord and David Gedye

The Enchantments are a chain of high mountain lakes in the Washington Cascades that are as inaccessible as they are renowned. None of the guide books consider them a day hike, but when my friend David saw the Seattle Times article describing the splendor and ordeal of doing them in a day, he knew it was for him. Problem was, no one he knew was foolish enough to go with him. That's where Peter and I came in.

We drove to Leavenworth the night before, set our alarms for 5:00am, and tried to get some sleep.

After dropping David's car at the Snow Lakes trailhead, we drove to the Stuart Lake trailhead, donned headlamps, and started up  a bit after 6:00am. We followed the creek through vine maple and deciduous forest for about 90 minutes before we were rewarded with our first view of a real mountain.

8:00am and we were at beautiful milky-blue Colchuck Lake. The way forward was Aasgard Pass, which can be seen as the low point on the horizon in the first picture. It was going to be a long way up.

 
2,200 feet in 3/4 of a mile of boulders and scree to be precise. The day was glorious though, especially since we were out of the sun as we toiled our way from cairn to cairn up the pass. The last two photos were taken looking back down towards the lake.

We hit the sun and the top of the pass at 10:15 and immediately were in the upper Enchantments. The vegetation was minimal as the glaciers from the last ice-age only retreated from this basin 50 years ago! We were seeing the world coming back to life.

 
Within a mile of the pass we saw Little Annapurna to our right. It was the 900', 2-mile roundtrip extension that we'd read about in the newspaper. David and Peter decided to go for it. I rested by the lake in the second photo figuring that the 18 miles we had to go that day was quite enough for me. The views were spectacular from the top as Peter's photos show. Adams, Rainier, Baker, Glacier Peak, and Mt. Stuart were all visible. That figure in red in the third photo is David overlooking a 5,000' escarpment down to the Ingalls Creek Valley below.
 

Meanwhile down by the lake I was photographing the groundcover, and stupidly forgetting that my camera was set to ISO 400, meaning that almost every photo was overexposing. Being more ingenious than intelligent I got around the problem by shooting through my sunglasses.

The lads returned from their little extra climb by 12:15. We ate a quick lunch of David's excellent olive bread and cheese, then continued on. Each lake was more beautiful than the last.

 At Inspiration Lake David jokingly suggests a swim. He was somewhat alarmed when Peter quickly agreed, but macho carried us through and we all went in VERY briefly. The trees in these shots are Golden Larches. They look like conifers, but turn from green to gold in the Fall.

The aptly named Perfection Lake. Beautiful panorama by Peter.

More shots of Perfection Lake, Prusik Peak that looms over it, and a Seussian forest of  dwarf Golden Larches that surrounds it. The Enchantments were well named!

At the far end of the lake the larches got taller and shed a golden light on us as we walked through.

Fifteen minutes later we came upon a family of mountain goats. The were not afraid of us, and we approached to within 30 feet. Their coats were so white and shiny it looked like they had been shampooed and blow-dried for our benefit.

 
By 2:30pm we were at Lake Viviane -- the last of the high lakes. Peter is looking over a small cliff down to Snow Lakes 1,700 ft below us. Unfortunately the car is a further 3,700 feet below Snow Lakes! The reality of the remaining 12 miles starts to sink in as we scramble down the steep track towards upper Snow Lake.

 
Down and down we slogged, stopping only to stare vacantly at the beauty of the lower lakes as the afternoon's shadows crept across the valley.   

By 6:10pm, after exactly 12 hours on the trail, we were down to the Snow Lake trailhead. This photo makes us look much better than we felt.

It was an amazing day.
Same time next year?