The Enchantments — Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025

Thru-hiked on Wednesday, 8/20. Parked at Snow Lakes and took a 5am shuttle to Stuart Lake where we started our hike at 5:30am with headlamps.

It took 2 hr 15 min to get to Colchuck, by far the easiest part of the day.

I am not necessarily afraid of heights but I am afraid of falling. I had such a hard time on this hike, pretty much from Colchuck all the way to Snow Lakes. Aasgard pass took about 2.5 hours in total to ascend. Much of it was just trudging up by following the cairns, but there were many parts of it that I felt like I was well outside my comfort zone, especially toward the top when I needed to pull myself up boulders. I wore garden gloves up the pass and I think this saved my hands because I was using them constantly.

Things leveled out a bit through the core but it never really became a tradition dirt path trail again - just cairns along the granite. Pretty much from Leprechaun Lake down to Snow Lakes was descending down large walls of boulder. I ended up scooting on my bottom a lot to feel more comfortable navigating down. My poles were put away for this part because I was constantly needing both hands to feel secure.

By the time we were saying goodbye to Snow Lakes, we were at about hour 10 for the day. As others have mentioned, the last section of the trail feels never-ending. We followed the elevation on our GPS to help give perspective to how much further we had because we knew the parking lot was at 1500 ft. The last few miles took 3 hours, but the trail was much more comfortable being in the forest or following talus slopes.

We got to the parking lot around 7:45pm, clocking in at 20.5 miles, 5400 ft up, 7400 ft down. It took 14 hours 15 min from start to finish. We rested for maybe an hour total for food, bathroom, and filtering our water.

We saw 10 goats (including 4 babies), 3 pikas, 1 river otter, 1 mouse, plus several ground squirrels and chipmunks. We also possibly saw a wolverine but they are so rare it seems unlikely- we submitted a picture to WDFW so tbd!

Before completing the trail I read about how it was under poor conditions due to hikers trashing it and leaving behind garbage. I was pleasantly surprised to not encounter any of that. Granted we started this on a Wednesday morning, everyone we encountered was respectful to the land and each other. Both trailheads were nearly full in the morning but we did not experience crowded trails or bottlenecking.