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.

ENCHANTMENTS IN A DAY

It’s nothing that I’m proud of, but when it gets right down to it, I’m probably not the backpacking type. I’ll run-hike the Loowit Trail around Mount St. Helens, climb Mount Baker or Adams or Shuksan, but when it’s time to lay me down to rest, I want a bed. And maybe a TV with a clicker so I can watch the day’s highlights on “Baseball Tonight”.

Lucky for me, my next-door neighbor, Sterling Chick, is the same way. So when I was looking for someone to join me in hiking through the Enchantment Lakes in one day (usually, it’s a three-to five-day backpacking trek) all I had to do was give a holler across the fence to see if he was interested. He was.

Located about 10 miles southwest of Leavenworth, the aptly named Enchantments is a magical 7,000-plus-foot plateau of crystal-clear lakes, gurgling and gushing waterfalls, rocky spires that pierce the clouds, and mountain goats that scurry across broad granite slabs. In fall, the area’s larch trees turn gold, photos of which are featured on probably just as many photo calendars and coffee table books as are images of Mount Rainier.

“It’s the kind of place where you expect fairies to pop out from behind the rocks,” my friend and Enchantment backpacking veteran Elizabeth Hampton, told me. “It’s got this totally different feel from anywhere else.”

There’s no easy way to get to the Enchantments. Just getting there requires either a 10-mile hike that gains 5,400 feet from the east, or six-mile jaunt from the west that includes the near vertical climb to Aasgard Pass, a rough climbers route that ascends 2,000 feet in about a mile. Sterling and I opted for the later.

***
After sleeping in beds at Leavenworth’s Obertal Inn, Sterling and I left for Icicle Road at 5:30 a.m. To make this a point-to-point hike, we parked my truck at the Snow Lakes Trailhead, where we’ll finish, and his car at the Stuart Lake Trail, where we begin.

Sterling, a Bellingham family therapist, has hiked all over—Grand Canyon, Utah, Maine, Colorado etc.—and has both backpacked and day-hiked the Enchantments. But because he began and finished his day-hikes at the Snow Lakes Trailhead, they were especially burly affairs—like 28 miles! Ours should be about 20.

After about an hour and 45 minutes of dark forest hiking, we reach Colchuck Lake, a spectacular rock wall- and forest-rimmed lake about four miles in. It’s a perfectly still morning and the water is glass—a mirror, reflecting the jagged spires of 8,800-foot Dragontail Peak rising almost 3,200 straight up out of the water. Just to the left and nearly as high (7,800 feet), is Aasgard Pass, the only notch on this side of the Enchantment Peaks.

“Wow, that’s big,” says Sterling, echoing my thoughts.

In Norse mythology, Aasgard corresponds roughly to Greek mythology’s Mount Olympus. Here, Aasgard is the doorway to the Enchantments. There’s no foyer. Once we reach the pass, the lakes are ours. But first we have to get there.

Chipmunks skitter this way and that as we follow the trail to the right around the lake. We pass campsites and food hung from trees, and at the head of Colchuck Lake, we cross the first of what is, by conservative estimates, the 87 bezillion boulder fields that we’ll negotiate this day.

The way up to Aasgard Pass is a wide gully choked with granite boulders that make no bones about crunching a person’s ankles or knees. Caution is key. There’s some boot trail, but mostly it’s a matter of following those who’ve gone before and thankfully left strategically placed cairns for others to follow. It’s extremely steep, but since we’re day hiking, our packs are small, our balance isn’t compromised and we make good progress.

Part way up, we pass a young woman who tells us her backpack weighs 50 pounds; we don’t envy her for a second.

“It’s giving me impetus to stop and eat a lot though,” she says. “It makes my pack lighter.”

Tenacious blooms of Indian Paintbrush poke their way through the cracks and to our right, a rushing creek bounces down the mountainside providing a soothing soundtrack.

Near the top, we look back down on Colchuck Lake and see the shadow of the Enchantment Peaks receding across the water. As the sun hits it, the lake glows a brilliant turquoise.

Moments later, at 9:50, about an hour and 10 minutes after we began climbing, we reach the pass and its immediate rewards. Across a vast, rocky plateau, lakes and puddles and tarns and ponds of every shape and size spread are spread out before us. They’re contained by granite stacks and spires that rise high above us on all sides, and great rocky slabs that keep the lakes from running in to one another.

“It’s like a Disneyland of lakes and plateaus up here,” Sterling says, and he’s right.

We could spend days exploring up here and still we wouldn’t see everything. As it is, we have just hours and must keep moving. We zig and zag past ponds and waterfalls so numerous we can hear many at once. They all have different tones—gentle gurgle-gurgles and high-pitched swishhhhhes and baritone swooooshes. I raise one of my trekking poles and for a moment pretend that I’m conducting a waterfall orchestra.

We veer south toward Little Annapurna, so named because of its resemblance to Annapurna, an 8,000-meter peak in the Himalayas. A half-hour later, after climbing another 800 feet worth of scratchy granite blocks, we’re at the top looking down over the edge. Straight down, almost 5,000 feet, is the Ingalls Creek Valley.

“Holy-moly!” says Allan Maas of Puyallup, who’s already at Little Annapurna’s summit when we arrive. “That’s a long way down!”

I feel like I’m looking off the edge of the earth and reflexively step back. Instead I focus on the distant views, which include Mount Rainier and Glacier Peak. Were it not for the haze from various forest fires, we’d see Baker and Adams too.

We lunch atop Little Annapurna and 20 minutes later are again down in the basin following the trail of tarns. That’s when we hear the barking.

I’m stunned. The Enchantments’ ecosystem is so fragile that dogs aren’t allowed anywhere near here. I can’t believe that even the most avid, canine-insane, dog lover would consider letting Fido run loose up here in such a wilderness paradise.

“Look over there,” says Sterling.

About 10 feet away, from behind a boulder steps a fluffy footed white-tailed ptarmigan. It’s three-tone, gray-brown-white feathers make it almost indistinguishable from the surrounding rocks. What sounded to me like far-off barking was its little cooing call.

We descend toward Inspiration Lake, Prusik Peak’s needle-like spires seeming to pull us along. There’s more vegetation the lower we go, and the landscape becomes less stark. Asters, paintbrush and other wildflowers add color to heather meadows and we pass stand upon stand of the area’s famous larch trees, still green in mid-August.

We drop farther down the basin, past Perfection Lake, which spills into tiny Sprite Lake, where we see a lone mountain goat picking its way along a rock slab. It eyes us, but quickly finds us not worthy of its attention. We cross a log bridge at the foot of Leprechaun Lake, and shortly thereafter reach Lake Viviane, at the easternmost edge of the Enchantment Lakes basin.

Sterling and I filter water and head down. It’s about 10 more miles, past the Snow Lakes, Nada Lake and a forest of blackened tree trunks that were burned 10 years ago in a massive fire. Closer to the trailhead, we see the huge billowing smoke plumes rising from the Fischer fire in Dryden, about four miles southeast of Leavenworth.

Back at my truck we shake hands, tired and giddy from a great hike. From the Stuart Lake Trailhead to the Snow Lakes Trailhead, it took us just about 11 hours. We estimate it to be 20 miles, and my altimeter tells me that we climbed 5,740 feet.

Driving back to Sterling’s car, we recount all we’ve seen. We luxuriate in the knowledge that back at the Obertal, we can shower, eat like lumberjacks (guilt-free) and last but not least, find out how our Yanks and Red Sox fared.

IF YOU GO
To do the point-to-point, Enchantment Lakes-in-a-day hike park one car at the Snow Lakes Trailhead, where you’ll finish and the other at the Stuart Lake Trailhead, where you’ll begin. Because the Stuart Lake Trailhead is about 2,000 feet higher than Snow Lakes, this way ensures that you have 2,000 feet less climbing to do than if you were to hike in the opposite direction.

Getting there: For the Snow Lakes Trail, go east on Highway 2 over Stevens Pass to Leavenworth. Just before entering the town, go right on Icicle Road and continue for 4.3 miles to the Snow Lakes Trailhead on your left. Elevation: 1,300 feet.

For the Stuart Lake Trailhead, continue on Icicle Road for 4.2 more miles and turn left on Forest Service Road 7601. Go left and drive 3.7 miles to the road-end trailhead parking lot. Northwest Forest Pass required for parking at both trailheads.
The hike: 20 miles point-to-point. Elevation gain: 5,740 feet; elevation loss: 7,600 feet. Subtract about 2 miles and 800 feet of elevation if you skip the side trip up Little Annapurna.
Follow the Stuart Lake Trail for 2.5 miles to the intersection with the Colchuck Lake Trail. Go left and follow for 1.6 miles to the lake. Follow the shoreline trail along the right side of the lake until you reach the foot of Aasgard Pass. Go up and up. Once over the pass, follow the zigzagging trail across the basin for about 3 miles to Lake Viviane. From there, it’s about 10 miles (almost all downhill) back to the Snow Lakes Trailhead.
Map: Green Trails, The Enchantments 209S
Permits: The Enchantments are perhaps the most lusted-after backpacking destination in the Northwest. So lusted-after that, to limit the damage to this fragile environment, overnight wilderness permits are required and they’re only available through a lottery system. Day hikers do not need overnight permits.
More information: Leavenworth Ranger District, 509-548-6977 or http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/wenatchee/recreation/wenatchee-river/trails/#enchantment