AUTUMN LARCH IN THE ENCHANTMENTS

Here's a story I wrote a couple years ago for The Seattle Times that I thought might be timely. It's about Eastern Washington hiking trails where you can see the alpine larch turn to gold as they're wont to do this time of year.

Please enjoy!

Autumn Larch in the Cascades

By Mike McQuaide

In my lifetime, I’ve seen Bruce Springsteen in concert something like 17 times but never in his purest, most unadulterated form. That is, some crummy roadhouse down at the Jersey Shore where on a whim he jumps up on stage and belts out a few tunes with the house band. Similarly, I’d seen the great golden displays of alpine larch in autumn but most often through the windows of a car; I’d never experienced them where they’re at their finest: the Enchantments.

That changed last fall when fellow larch seeker Jim Robbins and I headed east toward Leavenworth for a hike up mega-steep Aasgard Pass. It’s the gateway to the Enchantments, that Alpine Lakes Wilderness wonderland of high-mountain lakes that shimmer jewel-like against jagged granite spires and stands of—for a few weeks each fall—blazing alpine larch. During our mid-October hike, we found what we were looking for: gold in them thar hills.

Larch are unusual in that though they are conifers, they have deciduous tendencies. That is, their needles act like leaves. In autumn, usually sometime in October, the needles change from green to yellow before falling to the ground, usually blown down by late October’s stormy gusts. It’s an autumn display that’s out of this world but one with a rapidly closing window of observation.

“The larch always change on October 10,” says Joyce Brown somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Brown works at the North Cascades National Park information desk in Sedro-Woolley. “We have a longtime hiker who comes in here who says he can set his calendar by it—without fail, the larch always turn yellow on October 10.”

In general, the larch seem to turn at about the same time the first significant snows begin to fall in the mountains. Which is right around October 10.

“Hiking during this time is more peaceful and introspective,” says Andrew Engelson, avid hiker and editor of Washington Trails magazine. “The weather is colder, there are fewer hikers, and the intense yellow glow of the larch is just so striking.”

But you need to head for the hills to see them, as well as put some time in behind the wheel. Almost all the color-changing larch live on the eastern slopes of the Cascades at 5,000 feet and above. That means places such as Highway 20 over Rainy and Washington Pass way near Liberty Bell, or Highway 97 near Blewett Pass.

But perhaps the best way to truly experience them is to hike among them. Certainly, there are easier larch hikes the one that Jim and I chose. The Blue Lake Trail for instance, about 30 miles west of Winthrop, is a little more than two miles (one-way) and climbs only a thousand feet and is a grand spot to capture the color of golden larch.

But to us the allure of the Enchantments was too much. So what if our 13-mile day hike from the Colchuck Lake side required 4,500 feet of climbing, about half that on the ascent of Aasgard Pass, which climbs 2,200 feet in about a mile; we had the fever. Enchantment larch fever, and nothing was going to stop us. Not even icy boulders, big slippery icy boulders, the size of Mini Coopers. (More on those in a moment.)

***

Because the mid-October sun has a 6:15 p.m. bedtime and Jim and I had a three-hour drive to get to the trailhead, we made an early start of it, leaving Bellingham at 5 a.m. By 8:30, we were hiking the Colchuck Lake-Lake Stuart Trail in the semi-darkness of mega shadows cast by the rocky walls of Mountaineer Creek canyon.

In our packs we carried ice axes and big heavy mountaineering boots because we knew that we weren’t hiking just to a place—the Enchantments—we were also hiking to a season: winter. Down in the valley, it was a crisp pleasant morning, but Aasgard Pass tops out at 7,800 feet. We were barely three weeks into autumn, but online trip reports I’d come across reported several feet of snow up on the pass.

At Colchuck Lake, mirror calm this windless morning, we found ourselves in larch land—wuhoo!—but most of the ones on this side of the lake hadn’t yet turned yellow. (Boo hoo.) No matter. The other side of the lake at the foot of Aasgard Pass had plenty of gold and that’s right where we were headed. The pass itself was tri-colored: gray rocks overlain with the white of new snow, all of it streaked with gold. Our larch fever at its peak, we rushed to get around the lake and up the pass.

We almost didn’t make it.

“It’s awfully icy up there,” we started hearing again and again from backpackers we came across who’d just made their way down Aasgard from the Enchantments.

“It took us two-and-a-half hours to get down,” one of them told us.

Two-and-a-half-hours to get down? How long would it take is to get up—four hours? It was already almost 11 a.m. This was not looking good.

Around the south end of the lake, the trail enters a boulder field which further added to our discouragement. And not just because clambering up and over mini-car sized rocks is always slow going either. These, this chilly morning—chillier the higher we climbed—were covered by an oh-so-thin, invisible-to-eye sheen of ice. It might as well have been Vaseline for how slippery it was. Six hours on the pass might be making good time.

At least we were smack dab in larchville. Golden splendor was all around us. Some appeared to glow fluorescent neon. Others looked aflame when the autumn-angled sun hit them.

“Awesome,” said Jim, speaking for both of us.

Turns out, our slow-going worked in our favor.  As the sun rose higher, the icy sheen melted and climbing rock- and boulder-choked Aasgard Pass went much faster than we could’ve hoped. The only thing slowing us down were the 360-degree pirouettes we’d do from time to time to take in our surroundings. We were now in snow and as we passed through stand upon stand of larch, we couldn’t help but be dazzled. Far below, the massive shadow of the Enchantment Peaks receded across the surface of Colchuck Lake like an eclipse.

Two hours after heading up, we reached the top of Aasgard Pass and, for all intents and purposes, mid-winter. Two feet of snow covered the ground and before Jim and I downed a quick lunch, we hunted down a sizable boulder to block the biting wind.

All around us was that classic Enchantments landscape that adorns dozens of coffee table books.  A wind-swept, rocky moonscape—today clad in snow—and dotted with dozens of tarns, lakes and ponds. Many of them frozen over and almost all of them fringed with gold. The larch.

Thing is, we had to get down. And quick.

It was almost 2 p.m. We figured a couple hours to descend Aasgard, an hour around the lake, then two more back to the car. That’s 7 p.m. The sun will have gone night-night by then.

Lucky for us, our Aasgard descent took only 90 minutes. And with all the boulder field ice melted we made good time, even getting back to the car before the sun turned out its light at 6:15.

Finally, I could cross Autumn Larch in the Enchantments off my ticklist.

Now, I just have to head to the Jersey Shore and hang around until the Boss shows up.

Mike McQuaide is a Bellingham freelance writer and author of "Day Hike! Central Cascades" and "Day Hike! North Cascades" (Sasquatch Books).

***

The following are trails that lead to autumn larch wonderlands. (All distances are roundtrip.):

·         Lake Ann-Maple Pass—Trailhead is off Highway 20 just past milepost 157, about 5 miles west of Washington Pass.  Distance: 3.6 to the lake; 7.2 for both. Elevation gain: 675 feet; 2,150 feet.

·         Blue Lake—Just off Highway 20 at milepost 161, less than a mile west of Washington Pass. (About 30 miles west of Winthrop.) Distance: 4.4 miles. Elevation gain: 1,000 feet.

·         Cutthroat Pass—Off Highway 20 at milepost 167, about 5 miles past Washington Pass. Distance: 11 miles. Elevation gain: 2,500 feet.

·         Colchuck Lake-Lake Stuart-The Enchantments—Just before entering Leavenworth from Highway 2, turn right on Icicle Road. Follow for 8.5 miles to Forest Road 7601. Turn left and follow for 3.7 miles to the road-end parking lot. Distance: 8.2 miles for Colchuck Lake; 9 for Lake Stuart; 13 for the Enchantments (top of Aasgard Pass). Elevation gain: 2,500 feet; 1,800; 4,500 feet.   

·         Carne mountain—Follow Highway 2 east to Coles Corner, about 20 miles east of Stevens Pass. Turn left on Lake Wenatchee Road 207 and follow for 4 miles to Chiwawa River Loop (Road 22) for 1.5 miles. Turn left onto Chiwawa River Road (Road 62) and follow for 22 miles. Turn right on Phelps Creek Road (6211) and follow 2 miles to the road-end parking area. Distance: 7 miles. Elevation gain 3,000 feet.

·         Ingalls Lake—Follow I-90 to Exit 85, about 33 miles east of Snoqualmie Pass. Head east on Highway 970 and follow for 6.6 miles to Teanaway Road. Turn left and follow for 23 miles to the road-end trailhead following signs for Esmeralda Basin. Distance: 11 miles. Elevation gain: 2,600 feet.

If you’d rather not hike, here are some scenic roads that offer up-close views of larch in their autumn finery:

·         Highway 20 near Rainy Pass east to Washington Pass and Liberty Bell, starting at about milepost 160. (This is 40 miles east of Newhalem; about 30 miles west of Winthrop.) The larch-fringed view of the Liberty Bell massif is a Northwest classic.

·         Blewett Pass on Highway 97. Follow I-90 east to exit 85. Follow Highway 970, which merges into 97 for about 25 miles to Blewett Pass.

·         In addition, Icicle Road, the approach road to the above-mention Colchuck-Stuart-Enchantment hike, offers larch-viewing at its higher reaches to the west.