Enchantment Lakes

Our group of four (3 Australian born Seattleites and 1 Australian born Londoner) had been looking forward to this trip since we were lucky enough to get passes in the lottery earlier this year (thank you Leavenworth Ranger for drawing out our application!). The best hiking in Washington state we’d be told. We weren’t disappointed!

We headed out from the Snow Lake trailhead (having earlier shuttled a second car to the Stuart/Colchuck Lake trailhead) at about 9:30am on day one. We were thinking of camping at Snow Lake on the first night, and heading to the core enchantment zone the next morning, and so we took things pretty easy – a few rest/snack breaks along the way and a leisurely lunch at Nada Lake. The Snow Lake trail gets immediately down to business, switchbacking up a steep (but not Aasgard Pass steep) slope which at times is exposed and, on the day we climbed it, HOT! (Not complaining, as HOT is brilliant compared to wet and cold! Thank you Leavenworth Ranger station, for choosing such great dates weatherwise!)

While “unremarkable” seems too harsh a word, the 6.5 mile trail to Snow Lakes is a formative affair – a means to approach something spectacular really! Highlights were the climb up after Nada Lake which is quite scenic and gives great views back down over the lake, and there is an interesting “waterfall” (more like a spout - see picture) that kept us entertained there for some time. The campsites at Upper Snow Lake are quite good, although by the time we arrived around 5:30 (told you we took our time!) most were taken. All of us went for a quick dip in a stream running into the lake, filtered some water, rigged up some ropes to hand food, cooked up some dinner and turned ourselves in for the night.

Day 2 dawned warm and sunny, with us once again thanking the Ranger for choosing such great weather dates for our trip. We ate, packed up our camp and hit the trail at 9:20am. The trail immediately begins climbing, alternating between tree cover and open boulder sections. The trail is marked by cairns – thank goodness as some of the exposed boulder sections would otherwise be very difficult to find! After an hour of solid upwards climbing, we reached the Enchantment Lakes sign, and a welcome party of goats. Lake Viviane looked great in the morning sun and we stopped for a bite to eat. Continuing on, there is a “toilet” to the left of the trail as you round Viviane’s side. It’s quite a walk from the trail, but the views back to Snow Lake are fantastic – a real “loo with a view”!

We had planned to camp that night somewhere in the vicinity of Perfection or Inspiration Lake. A group of hikers heading in the opposite direction recommended their previous night’s campsite to us – at the south end of Inspiration Lake just before the climb up to the upper Enchantments, and overlooking Perfection Lake. We decided we would try that out, and spent a few hours wandering along the trail taking pictures and remarking on the scenery before arriving there. The trail in the enchantments zone is easy to follow, again thanks to cairns on the boulders where required.

We set up our tents and had a late lunch before deciding to backtrack a little to head up Prusik Pass for the afternoon. Clouds began to appear on the horizon but didn’t look threatening so we headed out from our camp. Just as we were walking down to Perfection Lake’s edge, the rains started – we had been expecting afternoon rain or storms as seems to be the norm for these mountains, but the hail that rained on us was certainly not expected and kept us quite amused for the duration of the storm (only around 20 minutes). We had donned rain gear and taken shelter in a small clump of trees at the lake’s edge when the rain started, preferring the wisdom of staying put in a storm rather than climbing to higher grounds! Once we were sure the storm was over, we set out again up to the pass, and then turned right at the top to scramble up closer to Prusik Peak. A scramble route easily found, and we spent quite some time at a rocky plateau taking photos of Prusik and the lower enchantment lakes that could be seen from that vantage. Returning to camp, we had dinner and filtered water for the next day, and enjoyed a fantastic sunset and moon rise over Perfection Lake. What a place to camp!!

Day 3 we headed out right on 9:20 again, bound for the upper enchantments. The trail (marked by cairns) climbs up and through a pass at the south end of Inspiration Lake that would be slippery and require some careful footing when wet (particularly if headed in the opposite direction and therefore walking this section downwards). We wandered through the upper basin, following cairns, taking photos and commenting on how moon-like the scenery is. We had planned to scramble up Little Annapurna and a group of hikers we met that had camped in the upper zone the previous night indicated that there is a “trail” marked by cairns up to the top of Little Annapurna. We consulted our map and compared it against what we saw and, not having found the start of the trail, headed up what we thought was the safest option, avoiding the areas still snow covered and climbing in the least sloped sections. We had left two of the four backpacks and some of the heavier items from the remaining packs under a rock in what looked like a pretty good hiding spot. While I carried a pack up the scramble, I was grateful for the lighter load!! At one point on the scramble up we stumbled across some cairns and followed them for a time, but lost them perhaps a third of the way from the top. We continued upward choosing what looked like the safest option whenever there was a choice, and ended up approaching the north eastern side.

What a view! It was clear enough to see Glacier and Mt Baker to the north and Rainier to the south west. The view of the Enchantment Lakes basin was spectacular. We took some time at the top to take in the view and take some photos, then started heading back down. We picked up the trail marked by cairns from the top and followed this most of the way down – cairns are always much easier to see when descending aren’t they! We repacked our gear and headed on, planning to stop for lunch at one of the lakes we had seen from Little Annapurna.

As it turns out, our lunch spot was “the highest lake in Washington state”, according to a fellow (solo) hiker who leapfrogged us that day and whom we had seen at the top of Little Annapurna. I’d be interested to see if this was true? The lake is at 7,700 feet and isn’t named on the topo map we have – is it the highest in the state?

Armed with that alleged knowledge however, we determined that it was a must for a swim – how many people can say they’ve swum in the highest lake in Washington after all! I quickly volunteered to be the photographer of such an auspicious event while the other 3 took off some layers of clothes in preparation for the event. (It was a hot day, we were only in shorts and shirts!) Sufficiently chilled, we packed up again and set out to tackle the long walk down to Colchuck from Aasgard Pass. What a descent! It took us 2 plus hours (shudder to think how long it takes going up it, but I’m from the school that would prefer climbing up to heading down any day so the descent was particularly brutal in my opinion). We found a campsite quite late (6:30pm maybe) by the side of Colchuck, opposite the little lake to the west. All of us went for another swim (why not we say), set up tents and had a great last night out dinner. We were entertained during the night by a fascinating storm, with lightning and thunder rivaling anything any of us had seen before. (Keep in mind we grew up in a tropical climate where fierce storms are a daily occurrence in summer. While the rain at the Colchuck storm didn’t rival an Australian summer storm – not hard enough and the drops not fat enough – the brightness of the lightning and echoes of the thunder around the mountains were the best show of their kind we’d all ever seen and heard!)

We woke to a wet camp on day 4. We had planned to spend the morning sitting in the sun and swimming, but the weather was average (a fact we had no trouble accepting – with such great weather for the first three days we were more than grateful of the conditions we’d managed to do the bulk of the hike in. Instead, we ate breakfast and packed up in between rain showers and headed back out to the trailhead, finishing at around 2pm. What an amazing area to spend a few days in!