The trail through the Enchantments is colloquially known as “The Death March,” which I found to be a reasonably accurate description. The Enchantments refers to a 17.9 mile point-to-point trail through a picturesque pocket of alpine wilderness near Leavenworth, WA. The trail starts at the Stuart/Colchuck Lake trailhead and ends at the Snow Lakes trailhead (or the other way around, depending on your choice of direction). It helps if you have two cars so you can leave one car at both trailheads. It’s practically impossible to get an overnight permit for this hike since it is one of the most popular backpacking trips in Washington. Luckily, my brother-in-law A somehow won the permit lottery.
This was my very first backpacking trip, and I was so excited! Little did I know what was to come. Unfortunately I was feeling very under the weather when I started the hike. I had just flown into Seattle on Friday from Scotland, where I had participated in a week-long conference and developed a bad cold. We attended J’s wedding (one of Tim’s brothers) on Saturday. I was severely jetlagged and almost missed the start of the ceremony. On Sunday night we drove to Leavenworth and camped at the trailhead at midnight before starting our hike in the early morning on Monday. So you can imagine that I was not in the best shape to start.
Our group included A (Tim’s brother), I (A’s girlfriend at the time, now wife!), P (yet another brother of Tim’s), and Tim’s mom. I think we got about 3 hours of sleep on Sunday night, but we were in good spirits. The air was fresh and the mountains were beautiful. We hit the trail at 5:45am to get an early start. Up until we hit Colchuck Lake, the going was easy. We were walking uphill the whole way, but the footing was good and it was pretty similar to other hikes that I’ve been on. Everything was breathtakingly gorgeous, and there was a good amount of shade.
We had a relaxed lunch at the lake and enjoyed the sun. I think we reached the lake around 11am. We then realized that we had to go up Aasgard Pass on the other side of the lake, which looked quite daunting. Just a few weeks prior, someone had died glissading down Aasgard Pass. We were warned not to try this at the trail head. It sure gave me a lot of confidence starting out.
It took us a while to reach the other side of the lake, which was mosquito infested. I think we started the climb up Aasgard around 1:30pm. We figured we would finish it in two hours and then go on our merry way. We were quite wrong.
The entire trail was sandy, rocky, slippery, and seemed to go straight up. The definition of trail seemed to be pretty liberal, so we had to spend a non-trivial amount of time making sure we knew where we were going. About every hour I thought we were halfway up the mountain. Not true!
Finally, at 8:30pm we reached the summit, as the light was starting to fade. We knew there was a campsite a couple of miles ahead, but we didn’t think we would make it before the sun went down. All that we could see was endless snow and frozen lakes.
There didn’t seem to be anywhere to camp and the light was fading fast. It was windy and freezing and my teeth were chattering. I thought we might die. It was exceedingly melodramatic of me, but I had never camped in snow before and the long climb up Aasgard pass had really worn down my spirits. Plus, I was constantly worrying that we were going to fall into a creek hole like the guy who died glissading, or tumble down a hill and fall into a lake. Luckily, Tim scouted out further ahead. After several false alarms for places we could camp, Tim found a patch of land in the sea of snow. Everyone was in a terrible mood, angry, and frustrated. We set up camp, dispiritedly ate dinner, and fell asleep.
When I woke up in the morning, everything seemed better. My REI gear had held up very well, and I wasn’t cold when sleeping at night. We had hope again! But now my main goal had changed to getting out of the Enchantments ASAP. We were pretty slow breaking up camp and managed to set off around 8:30am. We noticed that we had some unexpected wildlife visitors – a mountain goat mama and her baby!
Now, what was funny is that we thought that since the hike was only 18 miles, that we would already be 13 miles or so in on the first day. We had originally planned to check out some side trails on top of the mountain and then head out the next day. But we had only done about 8 miles in our first day. So now our plan was just to get out of there!
We hiked through the snow. The trail was at times difficult to find, and we spent some time wandering looking for it. Of course, while we were surveying the land from on top of a small hill to try to get our bearings, some trail runner in shorts with a tiny backpack comes running up from the other side of the trail. Since we were off the trail, we didn’t get a chance to talk to him, just gape in wonder.
Once we found the trail again and the landscape flattened out, things were great. There was a well defined trail, and though my feet were soaked and cold I felt happy that we were moving. I was nervous when we had to walk sideways along steep hills, because if you fell you could just keep sliding into one of the many lakes that dotted the landscape. We finally reached a large lake (I think it was Inspiration Lake) where there was a backcountry toilet and a few other campers. I felt like we had reached civilization again!
At this point the path branched out into two sections. We didn’t know which way the official trail went since it was buried under the snow, so we asked some of the other backpackers. They told us that there was a fast way and a slow way, and the fast way was only slightly more dangerous. The path along the fast way was a little steeper, and if you fell you could fall into a lake. We thought this sounded like an acceptable risk, so we took the fast way.
The fast way was just fine, until we got to the 10 foot cliff with matching ice crevasse that these lovely folks had neglected to mention. I’m exaggerating a little bit, and I didn’t take any photos of this because I was focusing on not dying, but I think this was truly the most dangerous part of the hike. The footpath ended just before the base of this cliff. There was no way to go around it – you had to climb up, with minimal hand and footholds. And if you fell, there was a crevasse at the bottom of the cliff. And we somehow had to get our heavy packs up there. A stayed at the bottom and provided foot support while Tim and P hoisted people up from above. I thanked God profusely for not letting me die many times during this trip!
Thankfully, soon after this ordeal we crossed the snow line and things were looking awesome. I was so happy to be out of the snow. We ate a very delayed lunch at 4pm at the first lake we encountered, which I believe was Snow Lake. We decided that we would push on to Nada Lake and camp there, since we were making good time. All was well until we realized that the trail suddenly stopped at a river. We were puzzled about where to go, until we looked across the river and realized we had to cross. There had been a lot of small creek crossings, but we had been able to use semi-stable logs or rocks to get across.
I was just beyond belief at this point. We all crossed safely, and in hindsight it probably wasn’t that dangerous, but I was just so done by this point. We set off again towards Nada Lake. Some of the people who had hiked up told us there was some bouldering ahead, but we weren’t sure if they knew what that meant. Turns out they did.
I failed to take a picture, but apparently there had been a rockslide earlier in the season that wiped out a section of the trail. The face was quite steep, and we were constantly sliding. At one point we accidentally went down a goat trail and had to hike back up. We finally made it to Nada Lake, and it felt like the promised land. There were lots of goats who stared at us creepily as we made camp, but I didn’t care. I fell asleep.
We woke up on Wednesday full of promise. Today was the day we were finally going to leave! I spent a good part of the morning dreaming about exactly what meal I would have when we reached civilization (Leavenworth). Luckily, the rest of the trail was completely normal. No crazy river crossings, no rock climbing, no bouldering. There was a tense moment when we came to a large river that we had to cross, but luckily there was a real bridge there! We went quite fast, only hampered by the fact that some of our knees were hurting from the relentless downhill.
Finally, we reached the trailhead at noon. It was a great moment. Our post-hike selfie was a lot more exhausted than our pre-hike selfie, but we had done it! We hiked the Enchantments!
We waited while Tim retrieved our car from the other trailhead. We drove into Leavenworth and had the most delicious bratwurst at Muenchen Haus. I was overjoyed at the sight of running water and toilets. We ended our journey with some well-deserved coffee and headed home.
Three days later, I turned to Tim and said, “Want to do the Enchantments next year?”
Note: The trail is only somewhat dangerous. I exaggerate in this blog post to express how I felt when I was hiking it.
Also, 2017 was a heavy snow year. If we had gone later in the season or during a lighter snow year, we could have gone much faster. A lot of what hampered us was trudging through the snow and trying to find the trail.
WanderLiz 