Backpacking the Enchantments
Last week I was super fortunate to join five other awesome women in backpacking the Enchantments for four days. The Enchantments are a beautiful paradise located in the Central Cascades near Leavenworth, WA. We were lucky enough to score overnight Core Enchantment permits which allowed us to camp at any campsite in the area.
Day 1: On Tuesday, we headed out from Leavenworth later in the afternoon and headed up to the Stuart Lake trailhead to begin our hike. We hiked to Stuart Lake and set up camp for the evening. The hike up was a moderate hike with our packs on. We spent a good chunk of time in the evening catching the gorgeous sunset and reflections on the lake as well as finding a suitable place to set up our bear hangs.
Day 2: We decided to head to Colchuck Lake to camp on Wednesday so we could assess whether or not to tackle Aasgard Pass to get to the Core on Thursday morning. The hike required us to backtrack a couple of miles back to the split then go from the split off to Colchuck. Seeing Colchuck Lake and being able to have a view of Colchuck Glacier, Dragontail Peak, and Aasgard Pass from our campsite was breathtakingly beautiful. We made plans to tentatively not attempt Aasgard Pass at all – which was reaffirmed the next day as we heard a giant rockfall in the early morning.
Day 3: We woke up on this morning to the decision to not risk attempting Aasgard Pass since a few of us were jarred awake by the loud sound of a rockfall earlier that morning. Instead we packed up camp and set out for a very long day hiking back to the trailhead to drive over to a different trailhead to camp out at Eight Mile Lake for our last evening. It was about an 8 mile hike for the day. The first mile or so to Eight Mile Lake that late in the day was an absolutely exhausting uphill battle, but we made it there more or less still smiling. We set up our tents, made dinner, batted away the bugs, and sipped on wine until the sun slipped away.
Day 4: We packed up, on Friday, hiked back to the trailhead and met back up in Leavenworth for a celebratory end-of-trip meal before heading back to our respective cities.