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If you’re stupid like I am, then you only go backpacking about once a year. Not only
that, but you choose a fairly strenuous route as your one and only annual killer hike.
Don’t ask me why I do this, because I still haven’t figured it out. Every year I
tell myself that I won’t do it again. Next year, REI
will start sending me the mid-summer sale catalogs and I’ll be salivating at the
mouth again, looking for another opportunity to wipe myself out.
Situated in Washington State’s cascade range is an area known as The Enchantments. As you will soon see, The Enchantments are one of the most beautiful areas in the world. We actually went up there in 1996 also, but we were limited to only two days and 15 frames worth of film. We had no idea how incredible the area was going to be. Consequently, last year we didn’t get to sleep up in the actual Enchantment area. What is the "actual Enchantment area" you say......? ...Read on!
Leavenworth, WA is located about 2 hours east of Seattle. It’s a quaint little Bavarian tourist trap that is set against a wonderful mountain backdrop. Here are a couple web sites I found about the place:
Just outside of Leavenworth is the snow creek trail head that leads up into some spectacular backcountry known as The Enchantments. .....But I’m getting way ahead of myself. First I need to go way way back. About six months back in fact........
We literally had to get our back country permits about 6 months in advance. Why? Because they are usually snagged up for the entire season within a day or two after they become available. They really try to limit the number of people that go up there and it’s a very popular place. Lucky for me, I have family in Redmond and they got us some permits.
I flew into Seattle from San Jose, CA and immediately headed for REI since I thought of a dozen things I needed while I was in flight. The thing that was really funny was that I waited until about 9:10pm to figure out that I had left my hiking socks at home in California. But all the outdoorsy stores usually close at 9:00. Lucky for me, REI has a new mall thingee they are trying to do in Bellvue.......that just HAPPENS to stay open until 9:30. .We had to race down there. I ran through the mall and up the escalator just in time to squeeze in there. I shoulda' known right then and there that I was soon to be doomed. One little jaunt up the escalator and my thighs were pumpin' beyond believe! I couldn't believe it! I got the socks.
Me and my brother-in-law Mike ran down to the supermarket to get our grub. Mistake number two, never go shopping for backpacking food on an empty stomach. It totaled $85 for the two of us and amounted to way way way too much trail mix, dried fruit and a whole bunch of other overly-dry foods. We were too lazy to plan a menu and hungry enough to get too much. Ah, but its good to me a man.
We stuffed the packs and weighed in. I was over 40 pounds. That’s way too heavy for 3 lousy days! But what could I get rid of? The Tivas maybe? I think I eventually ditched enough to get down to maybe 35 pounds. I gotta look into getting a new pack man.
We got up at the crack of dawn and drove up to Leavenworth from Redmond. Not a bad drive at that hour of the day. I poured some caffeine down the trap at an AM/PM mini mart that is on the main corner of town and we were ready to rock and roll. Oh yeah, special note goes to the strange lady that walked up to us in the parking lot and said "what day is it?" I’m not kidding. "Friday I think, do you know what planet this is?" I guess you run into all sorts out thar' in those parts.
This year, we were going to do the entire loop. I’m not too sure how many miles it amounted to. I’m guessing around 20. Last year we did almost as many miles, but not the full loop. We had started at one end, gone up to the midpoint and had to turn around. We couldn’t sleep up in the Enchantments last year because there wasn’t time. If we had known how incredible the place was though, we might have done things a little differently, and that is precisely what we attempted for this year. This year, we planned for it. We had 3 days and we were gonna do the entire loop. With one night sleeping in the heart of the Enchantments. Still wondering what The Enchantments are? I’m getting to that........
For now, check out this cool map that shows the trail we went on. We drove up the highway to Mountaineer Creek (I think that's where the trailhead was, mighta been before that). We hiked up through Colchuck Lake, through the enchantments and down the other side, ending up at the snow creek trail head.
Day 1 - The Easy PartWe hit the trail head at about 10:30. The first day
wasn’t actually all that bad. It was hotter than hell though. There were also about 5
guzzillion flies per square inch. As long as we kept moving they weren’t too bad. But
stop for a second and yucko! It was pretty much all up hill for sure. Last year’s
hike was so much harder though, I think this one didn’t feel all that bad. Last year
we went the opposite direction, and the opposite direction is a brutally long set of
switchbacks right out of snowcreek. This year's first day was actually pretty tame in
comparison. I coulda kept going. I was glad we stopped though. 
We were still pretty bushed
when we finally reached Colchuck Lake.
I guess we got there around 4:00. Mike was always way ahead of everyone and we found him sitting on a rock with his feet in the lake. He and I jumped into the lake to cool off........er should I say..... FREEZE OUR BALLS OFF!? Everyone else chickened out. It was definitely pretty cold. Absolutely child’s play compared to the painfully freezing water we would find up in the Enchantments. We wandered around and eventually found a nice little camp site and settled in.
Mike and I had packed fishing gear all the way up that hill. I hadn’t been fishing in at least ten years and was actually kind of excited about the prospect. As soon as we got our tents and everything all set up, we hurried down to the lake and started casting away. Nothing. I hate fishing. That’s all the more I have to say about it.
At least Mike got lucky and
caught an 8 inch rainbow. Big enough to eat maybe, but definitely small enough to throw
back. He tore the poor thing apart trying to pull out the hook though. So he pounded it on
top of the head to put it out of its misery. Somehow, that little fishy managed to let out
a teeny weeny little sound when it was hit on the head. I didn’t know fish had vocal
chords. I guess they don’t. It definitely made some kind of sad little sound though.
Poor Annica was traumatized by the whole incident since she just happened to be sitting
about 2 feet away with Mike holding the fish at eye level as all of this was going down. I
think she even screamed.
Then the fun really began....... Neither Mike nor myself had taken the time to test drive our backpacking stoves before the trip. My stove always works fine. Well, this year it didn’t work for anything other than to weigh down my pack just a little more.
We had already waited until way too late to start cooking dinner (because
we were wasting our time fishing). We were hungry and impatient. My stove
wouldn’t work. Mike got tired of waiting and started up his stove. I was cussing
right and left trying to get mine to work. Then Mike moved to come help me 
with mine and accidentally
kicked his pot full of Top Ramen all over the campsite. I won’t go into too many
details about what happened next, but let’s just say it involved two
impatient/frustrated backpackers, a "conniption fit" and one dead fish.
Later, Annica brought peace offerings in the form of bagels and cream cheese. Don’t ask me what the hell she was doing packing bagels and cream cheese up that hill. Her pack weighed less than any of ours though. Matter of fact, she brought all kinds of fun stuff to eat. Me and Mike were eating nothing but trail mix, dried fruit, jerky and granola bars. Meanwhile, Annica had packed up stuff like canned meat, pringles, more canned meat, etc..... And somehow her pack still weighed less. Did I mention that Annica had canned meat? I need a new pack man.
Anyway, we eventually settled down. Me and Mike just resigned ourselves
to our trail mix and jerkey. We all sat out on this rock by the lake and watched the
daylight fade away. The Lake is set against some killer peaks and most notably, Asgard
Pass which we climbed the next day. It was very peaceful. Mike told us some of his
hilarious stories from his past. It was nice.
Wow! 2200 vertical feet of rock scrambling. I’m not kidding! There wasn’t much of a trail to speak of. I remember the park ranger just explaining....."stay to the left". I said "isn’t there a trail?". There wasn’t much of one. Asgard Pass was to be our hike for Saturday. Nothing else.
In the morning, Mitchel was supposed to be catching up with us. He had
to work on Friday. Apparently he drove up Friday night, slept in his car and hit the trail
really early. He was able to get to our campsite by around 9:30am or so. An hour or two to
rest and he was ready to hit Asgard Pass. I don’t know where he gets the energy. We
all took off about 11:00 or so and headed around the lake. Right from square one we got a
little lost. Well, how lost can you get? It was pretty simple really, "head
up the rock slide". But finding the right path at first was a little
interesting. We had to commando through some vegetation for a bit. 
Shoulda brought the
machete’s I guess.
Eventually we got out on the open rocks and started scrambling our way up. At first it was kinda fun. It was hard, but the technical challenge and adventure of rock scrambling up the slide with full packs was taking the pain away. We stopped a lot. I was always last. I gotta get a new pack man.
There wasn’t much in the way of shade up there either. You could find a large rock to hide behind occasionally. Mike got sick of waiting for us and charged up the mountain when we stopped for the 3rd lunch break. We didn’t see him again until we reached the top finally. I’d like to say that the view from the top was spectacular, but it wasn’t really all that. The top of the pass is nestled in between peaks on either side that kind of obscure you’re view.
I didn’t much care though. I was just glad to be done climbing. All in all, it was 2200 vertical feet that day. I’d say maybe about a mile or less of actual walking distance(including our own made up switchbacks when necessary). It took us 4.5 hours. I wouldn't wanna go down that thing either. But awaiting us just beyond the top was The Enchantments, at last.
Here's some Asgard Assault pictures, from various points up the face, mostly looking down upon Colchuck lake where we camped the night before
(By the way, this first first roll of film came out all screwy. If you want to see some good quality photos, skip ahead to The Enchantments):
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 Finally, we
made it to the top and headed on down over the other side into The Enchantments. The
Enchantments are basically a group of high mountain lakes. I’m not sure how many
there are up there. But within maybe 2 miles of semi-level trail, there are probably
around a dozen or so of these little lakes, all interconnected by a web of streams.
Incredible terrain! Its all along this ridge line up there. There was glacier ice
everywhere. We had to walk across a lot of snow where the trail was buried. In some cases
we had to go down snow covered slopes that were semi-dangerous. Slippery corn snow that
ran down a steep face and usually emptied directly into a butt-freezing-cold mountain
lake. Woulda been bad to slide down. |
 The upper Enchantments were
still kinda frozen over. Mind you, this was August. But apparently this particular area
isn’t even open for backpacking until late July because of all the snow up there. The
amount of snow that must be up there in the winter is mind boggling. We never did figure
out exactly what all that red stuff is in the snow. We theorized that it must be some kind
of mineral. It was wierd. It looked like someone had spilled a whole lotta watered down
Hawaiin Punch all over the place. Little tiny streams and waterfalls are running
every where in between all the lakes. |
 The backside of Asgard Pass
isn’t strictly level. It actually descends very gradually for a couple miles. As we
descended down through the upper enchantments we began to encounter lakes that were more
thawed out. It just kept getting prettier and prettier. We saw a few Marmot’s running
around. Eventually we reached the Upper Enchantment camping area. There were only a couple
camp sites and they were taken. As tired as we were, we had to keep moving. We ended up
descending down another couple hundred vertical feet to the upper end of the Lower
Enchantments. That’s where it really started to become gorgeous. Enough snow had
melted down there and there was enough vegetation and general greenery around. |
 We found a nice place to camp
right in between Inspiration Lake and Sprite Lake (see the map below) and setup
our tents. At first Mike and I thought that this was about where we had hiked to from the
other direction the year before. We later realized that we were still about a mile further
up the trail than we had ever made it previously. It was a beautiful site that overlooked
one of the larger lakes. A stream ran right next to it. Nobody else was around anywhere.
We could see Mountain goats crossing glaciers way up above us on the surrounding peaks.
Cool Site. |
 The Top Ramen that night was extraordinary.
Meanwhile, Mitchel and Annica were eating pasta with Clam Sauce. I can’t even
imagine. She sure brought some good food up there.Greg decided to jump in the river. It was colder than words can describe. I tried to put my aching feet into it for less than 10 seconds and they ached for 2 minutes from the frigid temperature. I can’t even imagine throwing my entire body in. But Greg did it. Just before it got dark, we were visited by a family of mountain goats. |
 At first it was kind of scary. This big huge papa goat appeared out of nowhere up on a rock overlooking our site. Coincidentally, Mitchel was right below that rock taking a dump at the time. ( By the way, we never could get Annica to say the words "Take a Dump". Apparently she doesn’t take dumps. She "goes number 2").
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 We were kinda scared for
Mitchel. This papa goat was huge. The size of a horse. I swear. But Mitchel managed to
escape the scene unharmed. Meanwhile we were all standing down in our campsite armed with
sticks and stones. What a bunch of scared little dummies we were! The papa goat was only
watching over the other little goats. They eventually cruised around our campsite
and on up another side. I couldn’t believe how fast they could cruise up the rocks.
Pretty amazing. |
 I wish I had a picture of the
big goat. These photos from the next morning were of much smaller goats. The big papa goat
was REALLY BIG. I didn't even know they got that big.It turns out that the goats pretty much cruised around our campsite all night long. I could hear them all night clopping around outside my tent. I must admit that they were pretty darn quiet. I don’t know about you though......but when I go camping, for some reason at night in my tent I hear every little sound and wonder if it isn’t ol' Mister Bear getting to my food. (Don’t worry the food was pretty safe). |
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 Mike tried his hand at fishing again that morning. Didn’t catch anything. What a waste of time. I can't believe people like to do that. I can't believe I wasted money on a fishing license, bait, tackle, etc...and above all else, I can't believe I actually carried the fishing gear up the blasted hill. Oh well. I guess I had to try it again to remember why I haven't been fishing in 10 years. Its boring if you don't catch anything, and then if you do, you gotta deal with the fish. The goats never did leave our camp site. They just kept wandering around looking at us. Occasionally one of the male protector papa goats would stare you down and check you out. I think one of them was intrigued by my black fleece jacket somehow. Interesting. It always sorta seemed like the family would be scrounging around eating plants while the papa goat would always be on the opposite hill looking down over them. But that’s just a guess. Apparently the goats love Human urine. The park rangers said that they like the salt in the urine. We guessed that they were hanging around waiting for us to "take a leak" (I’m not sure if Annica does that either by the way). |
 Eventually, we got everything
all packed up and headed down the trail. I woulda really liked to have sat on my butt all
day in the Enchantments and read a book or simply stared at the mountains. But this was
our third day and after all, Heidel Burger was calling my name in Leavenworth. Did I
mention that earlier? Oh I guess not. Mitchel and Annica had a line on some place called
Heidel Burger that was down in Leavenworth. The big question was whether or not we were
gonna make it down in time to actually get to Heidel Burger. I can't believe that this was
even an issue. Come hell or high water.......I WAS GETTING TO HEIDEL
BURGER!!!!!!. |
 We began the descent around
10:30 or 11:00 I guess. We walked through the lovely lower Enchantments. I took a
guzzillion photos. I brought plenty of film this time. Its so incredible up there. I would
say more about it, but there's nothing I can say that would do it justice. I'm not a poet.
You should take some time to peruse my complete photo collection when you're done reading
this. There's about a 100 JPEGS. Sorry, I don't have time to make a nice slide show. If
someone else wants to put it together for me, be my guest. But you can at least look at
them one at at time right Here |
 Eventually we got to the far
edge of the actual Enchantments area and looked down upon Snow Lake. We were expecting the
next couple of miles to be the most difficult part of the day.....all steep downhill, but
it wasn’t really all that bad. Its basically a rapid vertical descent for a thousand
vertical feet or so. There’s a few places where you have to scramble down some rock.
It pales in comparison to Asgard Pass, but going "down" Asgard Pass would be ten
times harder. I wouldn’t ever want to attempt it. So going down this side wasn’t
all that bad. |
 Actually, I like steep
technical downhills. I like the technical challenge of thinking quick and putting my feet
on just the right rock with each step downwards…….moving fast. Needless to say,
most hard core hiking boots have next to nothing in terms of padding. Downhill sections
like that absolutely destroy the balls of my feet. By the way, in case anyone is wondering, the "Super Feet" boot insoles do*NOT* (I repeat….do NOT), work for making your boots more cushiony by "using the natural cushioning properties of your feet". What a crock! Next time I will bring some gel inserts for the downhill blast for abslutely sure. |
 Me and Mike reached Snow Lake and shoved our feet into the river. We fought off flies for about 30 minutes until the rest of the group caught up. Then we blasted on down to Nada Lake. Everyone wanted to stop at Snow Lake, but we convinced them to go on to Nada Lake. It has a really great beach beach rock and the water is no where near as cold as above. So we pushed on down to Nada Lake and had some lunch. Mike and I arrived first and I headed straight for the water. When the others arrived ten minutes later, I was still standing out in the lake up to my neck with my toes squishing in the mossy lake bottom. There’s very few things in life that feel that good. I think I kinda fooled everyone because since they saw me kicking it in the water, they thought maybe it wasn’t all that cold. It was definitely still pretty damn cold. Not as cold as any of the other lakes we had encountered, but still nonetheless cold. Everyone got in. It was good. |
 Boy was I ready for a Heidel
Burger. You have no idea. I was so entirely sick and tired of trail mix, jerky and dried
fruit. Mike and I agreed that we were sufferin’ without Tammy there. Tam is
Mike’s wife and my sister. She was pregnant and couldn’t join us. She woulda
made sure we planned a better menu. Mike and I are a couple of buffoons when it comes to
stuff like that. We just threw a bunch of trail mix into zip lock bags and said we’d
be fine. When Annica gave me the last 5 pringles she had brought up, I thought I died and
went to heaven. |
 Yes sir, Heidel
Burger was gonna be good. It was on all of our minds. We knew we had to get trackin’
down the trail too so that we would get in to Leavenworth before Heidel Burger closed. So
we started cruisin’. It took me about 2 hours to get to the bottom. That was
truckin’ pretty good. It was about 5 miles of non-stop downhill switchbacks. I
thought my feet would be better off this year than last. Nope. The balls of my feet felt
like the bones were pushing down through the soles of my boots. But I just wanted to get
down to Heidel Burger. |
 I didn’t stop for
anything. Towards the bottom it was totally bakin' hot. I read later that it was in the
90’s down there. I wouldn’t be surprised. It was damn hot. And the last
mile or two is through a section that was burned out in a forest fire a few years back. So
no shade or greenery or nothin'. Just sunny, hot dry-ness. When I finally reached the parking lot, I threw my pack down in the shade behind a mini van and then I threw my body down on the gravel and rested. That bed of gravel felt like a water bed. I’m not kidding, I'm not sure how long I lay there before the others came along. Its all kind of fuzzy now.
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 We finally made it to Heidel
Burger in Leavenworth at about 8:00pm. The place was packed. The burgers were incredible.
That is another one of those things that are hard to beat in life. Having a killer
hamburger after 3 days of hiking and eating nothing but trail mix and water. That first
bite is like heaven. I couldn’t talk. Just chew. Heaven. |
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For some reason the only picture of me is this one that Mitchel shot in wide angle mode. It captures the the scenery really nicely though. Please check out the compete photo collection. There are actually some really cool photos in there. Go Here.
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Day 3 - The Long Trek Down