Snow Lakes, The Enchantments — Friday, May. 15, 2015

Central Cascades > Leavenworth Area

5 of us met up at my house in North Ballard on Friday the 15th at 3:30pm, we were on the road by 4. Hit traffic out of Seattle and into Monroe as we were headed toward Leavenworth and the Snow Lakes TH. If memory serves me right we set out from the TH at 7pm. The trail starts right off switch backs and elevation gain. The views were great looking up the icicle creek valley with the sun getting low to the west. Some of the group wanted to stop around sun down to make camp and some of the group wanted to push on to Nada lake, we ended up deciding to dawn head lamps and push on to nada lake with the overall strategy being that the farther we got Friday the night the farther we could Saturday and the more area we could explore. The day 1 stats turned out to be about 3700' gain, over 6.5 miles, it took us about 4 hrs so we stopped hiking at 11pm, set up camp in the dark and were asleep by midnight., we did take a lot of breaks, I think it could be done closer 3 hrs 15mins with less breaks. we all had about 40 lb packs give or take. Saturday morning we got up, filtered water from nada lake, made coffee, packed up camp and head onward and upward towards the enchantments core zone. we stopped on the far side of upper snow lake for a long break. It took us abuot 3 hrs to get up to lake Viviane not including our break. I would say the hike from the trail head to upper snow lakes was rigorous, steep at times, plenty of switch backs but it wasn't hands on the hill steep. After Snow lakes and before Lake Viviane the ascent angle increases and in a few place you do need to use your hands to get up a steep section of rock. Also from the TH to upper snow lakes your feet are usually on dirt or broken rock, after snow lakes you get onto solid rock that is pretty steep in places, and care needs to be taken while on the rock. We set up camp at the near shore of lake Viviane, at the time of our hike it turned to solid snow right after we set up camp at lake Viviane. Once at our camp location we set up tents and three of us continued with like packs up to perfection lake where we sat by the snowed over lake and hung out. The three of us then went back to our camp at lake Viviane, taking special care not cross paths with the goat that was very interested in our pee locations. Sunday our plan was to head straight out to the snow lakes TH and be there by 2pm, so I figured it would take us 5 hrs to get there, we left camp about 8:30am. By 9am we were at dead stop inbetween Lake Viviane and Upper Snow Lake because one person in our party had slipped on the wet granite rock and sprained his knee bad (later we found out he tore his patella and chipped his knee cap). We rested for awhile and assessed the situation. He figured out he could walk on his knee with the help of is trekking poles so we distributed the weight of his bag among the other 4 of us and he continued downward with the help of his poles, moving very slowly. Myself and one other hiker ended up going ahead, we reached the TH at about 4:30, one other hiker in our group came out 6:45pm, and the injured hiker and the 5th hiker in our group camp out 7:45pm (Nearly 12 hrs after we had left camp that morning). Stats for Sunday were about 10miles of hiking and 5400' loss. Forecast had called for Thunder showers during the weekend but we never saw them. Only had a little fog and drizzle on Sunday. I really want to go back once the snow is all melted to see everything the upper enchantments has to offer.