Enchantment Lakes

We made it! This was the longest and steepest hike we've done together as friends. We also had the pleasure of staying three nights, which is an improvement over our usual one-nighters.

The trail description of this 6.5-8 mile 'slog' says that it is for average backpackers. I'd say we are average backpackers because this hike wasn't easy, but it was totally within our ability. It took us about 8 hours to make it the almost 8 miles to a campsite at Upper Snow Lake. We gained roughly 4100 ft in elevation in the first 6.5 miles.

It was hard, it was long, and it was worth it. I wondered how gorgeous it could really be, everyone that's been up there says that it's the most beautiful place in Washington's forests... but I've seen some pretty beautiful lakes and mountains before. Those people might be right. It was undeniably breathtaking. I'm confident that my pictures don't do it justice. My wide angle lens wasn't even wide enough and I found myself wishing we'd gotten up earlier so that the light was better. I guess we'll have to go back someday!

I just have too many pictures and cannot narrow it down to a reasonable blog post amount of shots, so I decided to incorporate a slide show with captions. I will share a couple of my favorites, for those that don't have the time or patience for the slideshow ;). You can also open the slide show in a new window by clicking HERE..

At the trailhead.

Upper Snow Lake

Lower Snow Lake

Mountain Goats along our way

At Lake Viviane

Lake Viviane

Perfection Lake

At Perfection Lake

The slide show more or less tells the story, if you have the captions on (click the speech bubble so that it is green). For the die hards, and for my memory down the road, I'll give the full report after the jump below.







Enchantment Lakes via Snow Lakes Trail.

This trail is HOT, and the first 1.2 miles provide a nice view of the parking lot and cell service. A strange way to begin a hike. As we trekked up, and up, and up we ran into people coming out that seemed a little dazed. They call the hike out 'the Snow Lakes hot slow slog' and I guess it gets to people's heads. As they passed us we heard two girls discussing their rap lyrics,
"What rhymes with Enchantments?"
"Male Enhancements!"
We made a pact right then and there that no matter how tired we were: no rapping.

Like I said at the beginning, we're just average backpackers. To many people this trail is no big deal, they'd eat it for breakfast. It took us about seven hours with more breaks than I can count to make it...

about seven miles. The first four miles were good, tolerable even, thanks to some training before hand. After about 4.25 miles, the weight of my pack took over and I slowed down. My hips hurt, my feet hurt and my shoulders hurt. We made it to Nada Lake and were so thankful that Whitney needed to use the restroom. While she was off hunting for the toilet we all got to take our packs off and rest for a bit. That little break gave us the energy to keep going.

Nada Lake.

Nada Lake from the other end.

Onward up the trail we trudged. Our feet were killing us and at every switchback we hoped it would be our last. Once we crested a hill and started to drop down toward a lake, we knew we were there. We were on the home stretch as soon as we saw the dam.

There's something about this picture that I just love, maybe it's the light.

Then it took just under an hour to find an open campsite another three quarters of a mile around the lake. In the end it was perfect, off the trail a little way which gave us some privacy, and it was right on the lake. We set up camp, got some dinner and went to bed, we were SO beat.

Saturday we allowed ourselves a lazy morning. Unfortunately, our tent was right in the morning sun and it got way too warm to sleep by seven AM. Ginger Peach tea and a peaceful, quiet lake was worth the early morning. 

We started for the high hills at around noon and made our way up the granite slabs that they called a trail.. actually part of it was great and really it was pretty easy to traverse. But there were definitely parts that were a scramble.

Blake really blends in ;)

After the 1.5 miles of walking, scrambling and climbing (not really), we made it to the first of the Lower Enchantment Lakes, Lake Viviane.  It was incredible! We stopped here and had lunch, which was a popular idea. There were several groups there eating and even swimming! The higher up we went the colder the water was (obviously) and the water at our camp was barely comfortable for swimming, so I can only imagine how cold this was.

Lake Viviane from above, on our way to Leprechaun Lake

Leprechaun Lake

We continued up through more little streams and meadows, meandering our way over creeks, some mud and some snow. The crest of every hill brought another beautiful sight. We could have kept walking on forever, but we had to set a time to turn around in order to make it back to camp in time for dinner before it got dark. We sadly turned around at Perfection Lake and trudged our way down the 1.5 miles, which took us 2 hours! It is so steep, you have to watch your footing and it was so hard on our knees, we were all pooped when we made it down.

We had originally planned to go back up the next day and get a little further, but after seeing how sore we were after going up and down on Saturday, we decided that we should take Sunday off and rest up for our hike out on Monday. We were a little sad that we didn't get to see every lake, and we also wanted to make it to Asgard Pass, but everyone agreed that a lazy Sunday around camp would be the best thing.

We had a great relaxing Sunday with swimming/bathing/laundry, snacking and a day hike. We decided to walk back to the Snow Lakes Dam and see what little side trails we could find. In the end, there weren't many side trails, but we still enjoyed the walk and views of Lower Snow Lake.

Lower Snow Lake.
Several mosquito bites were obtained in getting this shot ;)

Speaking of mosquito bites... the bugs (mosquitoes, biting flies, ants etc)  were typical. Pretty present but not usually swarming (except around Whitney - who came away with easily over 50 bites! Poor thing, she was such a trooper!).

We had a nice dinner and cleaned up the leftover food so we didn't have to pack it out. There was a fantastic sunset as we cleaned up camp and got ready to head out in the morning.

This was my first attempt at making our own backpacking food. I got the ideas and proportions from this website and spiced it up to make it a little more like our usual food. It was so fun to experiment with different recipes and it was totally rewarding to know exactly what was in our food. We've never minded freeze-dried food before, but I have to say that the dehydrated meals had so much more flavor. I think that I'll do this again in the future and expand my repertoire. It is a little time consuming, but not difficult, since it's mostly passive time with food in the dehydrator. For this trip I just made one breakfast (rice with ham and vegetables-totally delicious and hearty, and I dehydrated apples for apple-cinnamon oatmeal) and two lunches (clam chowder - amazing - and tuna casserole with leeks and dill). I was hoping that tuna casserole would be better if it we were desperate, but it was kind of still just tuna casserole. It wasn't as bad as the cream of mushroom kind, but I think I still like my tuna on the side of my pasta and not mixed in. We have a bunch of home canned tuna from Blake's dad and were hoping to find new ways to use it besides tuna sandwiches (any ideas?).

That's tuna, ham x2 and crab, ready to dehydrate - outside - it was a little stinky!

They were definitely an improvement over the premade backpacking food.

Monday morning we woke up to cloudy, dark skies and just as we were setting up for our last picture, the raindrops began to fall. We hiked out in a little pouring rain that only lasted about 45 mins. It stayed cloudy for several hours though, which made the hike out very pleasant. We made the trip out in just under four hours! The last mile and a half we were practically running because the faster you go the harder it is to feel your foot pain. That, and we were hungry from hiking through lunch and looking forward to our deep fried goodness at Triple XXX Root Beer!

Last group shot before we hit the trail home.

We made it!! We are dirty, stinky and hungry and have no guild about what we're about to eat!

Another fantastic trip with fantastic friends :)