We had a fabulous, 4-day backpacking trip into Enchanted Valley with a day hike to the Anderson Glacier, totaling around 38-miles roundtrip.
Day 1: We started mid-day and camped at O'Neil campground the first night (6.7-miles). The trail was in great condition, and the wind kept most of the bugs away. We used Ben's 30% Deet bug spray which worked well. They didn't bother us while we were walking, only if we stopped for a while. The weather was very humid, partly sunny, and hot. The campground was great. We stayed in one of the more open sites near the end of the trail with slight tree cover in case of rain at night. We saw some cute ducks on the river (still not sure what type, black and white head) and small fish swimming upstream. We stayed up to see the stars, but there was too much cloud cover at that point.
Day 2: We left camp mid-morning and hiked into Enchanted Valley (6.5-miles). The trail was in great condition. After passing the second meadow, a group of guys going the opposite way told us to watch out for a bear they'd seen on the left side of the trail—we never saw it, though. The weather was mostly sunny, still humid but less than the day before. When we got to the valley, we set up camp right next to the river bed looking out at the first massive waterfall. It was a gorgeous place to stay. One thing that upset me was how many people had campfires, not just because of the smoke hanging about in the campground, but because of how much wood people were taking from the surrounding area. We only used our stove and didn't make a fire to preserve the habitat. There's also a lot of erosion along the riverbed, so when going to and from the river please avoid eroding it more by finding low points to descend. Bugs were not bad at all because it was pretty windy all night. We saw a massive herd of elk with calves on the opposite side of the river. We kept our distance, but there had to be at least 15-20 of them.
Day 3: We day hiked up to Anderson Glacier (11.6-miles roundtrip). The trail up to Anderson Pass was in decent condition, but there were two mildly sketchy river crossings (we took our shoes off for one of them), and a lot of the trail is overgrown. The difficult trail was well worth it, however. The weather was mostly sunny and hot. Once we got to the Anderson Peak sign to turn to hike up to the glacier, the mosquitos got really bad due to the small pond nearby. The trail up to the glacier is very overgrown, some parts are very eroded and only held up by roots of surrounding bushes. There are also two or three scrambles involved. At the top, the view of the lake and Anderson Glacier (now extinct due to global warming) was breathtaking. It's incredibly sad to see how much global warming has taken a toll on our environment, and here is very obvious evidence that it's real. We ate lunch at the top (really bad mosquitos). We pondered going down to the lake, but there is no trail and we wanted to preserve the delicate habitat. The hike back down to Enchanted Valley was quick and pleasant. We saw more elk that night while brushing our teeth!
Day 4: We hiked all the way out from Enchanted Valley to the trailhead (13.5-miles). We left around 7:30 and got to the trailhead at 13:10. There were a few new blowdowns since we'd gone through two days before, probably because of the windy night.
It was an incredible trip, and very telling of how humans have such a dramatic impact on the environment. Please be extra careful and respectful of the valley. We found trash in our fireplace from people burning their freeze-dried food bags. We packed it out for them, but we shouldn't have to!
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