Thru-hiking the Enchantments

Of the 394,000 acres in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in Washington state, the Enchantments are the crown jewel. Throughout the area, you’ll find jagged mountains, crystal clear lakes, and granite that has been worn smooth by glaciers. It’s common to spot fish jumping, goats climbing, and eagles soaring no matter where you go in the five zones.

It’s such a beautiful and coveted area to visit that backpacking permits are now subject to a lottery every year. The odds of winning permits to backpack in the Core zone were less than 2% in 2021, and the area is only increasing in popularity. I can attest to this as I’ve applied for permit to the Core Zone four times without success (we did get permits to backpack the Snow and Stuart zones, though).

However, day hiking doesn’t require a permit. That means if you have the mad desire to hike through all 20 miles of the Colchuck, Core, and Snow zone in one day, you can! If you want to hike it yourself, check out this blog on The Grah Life.

Please note: we chose not to lug around 15 extra pounds of camera gear with us, so all photos shown are taken with our iPhones.

THE STATISTICS

• 18 - 20 miles

• Elevation gain: 5,500 feet

• Elevation loss: 7,000 feet

• Highest point: 7,841 feet

• Hike duration: 8-17 hours on average

OUR PLAN

My husband, Zach, and I were very strategic about when to thru-hike the Enchantments. We planned to hike over Labor Day weekend, opting for nice weather, knowing that July through September is the new wildfire season here in the Pacific Northwest. We’d rather risk canceling the hike over poor air quality than deal with potential snow. That meant avoiding both spring (May to June) and fall (late September to October).

Snow stays on the trails at high elevations until July in Washington, and as it melts throughout spring, boulders on Aasgard pass shift and cause dangerous rockfalls on the climbing path. Fall brings its own challenges — unpredictable weather and mass amounts of people that hike in the area to see the larch trees turn orange (AKA the larch march).

Of course, a wildfire did start in mid-August just north of the Enchantments at Lake Chelan. The week before our hike, we carefully watched reports and monitored the wind patterns of the smoke. We knew that it was only a matter of luck if the wind would push the smoke away from the Enchantments or right to it. 

When we made it into Leavenworth the night before the hike, our hearts sank. The air quality was unhealthy and gave everything a gray, brown cast. We set our alarms for 2:00 am knowing that if we woke up to the same conditions, we wouldn’t be hiking at all. Incredibly, when we left our hotel, we could see the stars sparkling in the night sky. We had clear skies and not a whiff of smoke in the air!

THE HIKE

Since I’m not the fastest hiker, my husband, Zach, and I set out from the Colchuck Lake trailhead at 3:00 am. We knew this would allow us to climb Aasgard Pass (a one-mile class 3 scramble with 2,2300 feet of elevation gain) before the sun hit it and give us as much time as possible to explore the Core zone.

Hiking in the dark would have been uneventful if we hadn’t spooked a cougar in its den right off the trail. It growled at us but never came out of hiding. Afterward, I was extremely jumpy until we reached Colchuck Lake and saw the first signs of daylight! 

Above: Our view of Lake Colchuck the morning of our through hike.
Below: A view of Lake Colchuck from the opposite side of the lake on a prior hike.

AASGARD PASS

We were thrilled to reach the lake around sunrise as we had planned. We stopped for a big snack, and the more we looked at Aasgard Pass, the more the adrenaline built.

Going up it took us more than two hours, but we wasted time when we chose a poor route and had to backtrack. My favorite part of the climb was walking on stacks of boulders directly over the river running down the pass, gazing down at Colchuck Lake to see how far we’d gone, and getting close-up views of Dragontail Peak. We also saw our first two mountain goats of the day!

The Core

We reached the Core zone around 9:30 am. There we saw many incredible campsites for those lucky permit winners, and the water in some lakes was low enough that they had small beaches. As we made our way across the Core, we saw two more goats, two ptarmigans (alpine chickens, as we call them), and pikas.

Out of all the lakes, Inspiration Lake was my favorite, and the traverse around Perfection Lake was Zach’s. We wished we’d had the whole day to swim and explore, but there was a lot more route finding here than we expected and this section of the hike took us longer than anticipated.

The descent

While Zach was most anxious about climbing Aasgard, I was most anxious about the 11-mile descent, which is very hard on your knees. We’ve been able to day hike to Lake Vivian (the last lake in the Core zone) from the Snow zone before and remembered the trail down to be treacherous.

We’d hiked it in spring when everything was wet, and we had two members in our group slip and fall. We were so relieved to see that summer had dried the trail out and it felt so much safer. This part of the hike went faster than we had predicted!

We loved checking out Snow Lake again, where we had permits to backpack before. Thanks to the heat dome earlier in the summer, the lake was extremely low and had created many new campsites.

The man-made dam crossing was dry (it had snow on it during our last visit here) and we expected the waterfall that goes from Lake Vivian to Nada Lake to be dry as well. Wow, were we wrong! Even with the low amounts of water, it was shooting down to the lake below.

Nada Lake

We made Nada Lake our last snack stop. The rest of the descent was painful. All summer it had felt like my boots had been wearing down, and I’d been wondering if it was time for me to get a new pair. As it turns out, it was. I’d never gotten blisters from these boots before, but now my feet were covered. Each step was painful, and we still had 7,000 feet of elevation to descend over the final six miles.

Since this is a thru-hike (leaving from one trailhead and ending at another), we’d reserved a cab to pick us up and take us back to our car. That meant we had to be down from the hike no later than 6:00 pm.

We were crunched for time and started jogging the flats and counting the 26 switchbacks down to the trailhead. I whooped when I saw the last bridge to the trailhead! We got to the trailhead at 5:30 pm, making our hike a total of 15 hours.

We were immediately offered a ride to our car and turned it down since the taxi was coming. After waiting nearly an hour for the taxi, we were offered another ride by a fellow hiker and took them up on it. Lesson learned — hikers are friendly and happy to help others!

Hindsight

If we hadn’t had a time limit on our hike, we both agreed that we would have gone swimming in at least one of the lakes, spent more time wandering through the Core, wouldn’t have run, and probably gotten done with our hike after dark.

Zach also jokingly said it would have been easier to climb Mount Saint Helens two times in a row. I of course said I didn’t ever need to do the thru-hike again; however, just a couple of weeks later I was already admitting it would be fun to try again.

All in all, I’m so glad we did this hike. It was as much a mental challenge as it was physical and it’s an honor to have hiked in such a beautiful place.

Resources

If you’re wanting to do this hike yourself, check out the Washington Trails Association trail description as well as mine and Zach’s guide on The Grah Life.

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