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ENCHANTMENT LAKES
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Enchantment Lakes [196 Kb]
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The Enchantment Lakes lie in a 2000 meter high alpine basin in Washington State,
in the dry eastern slopes of the Cascade Range near the town of Leavenworth.
This is one of the most famous destinations in all the Cascades, protected in
1976 as part of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.
We camped at Lake Wenatchee State Park the night before so that
we could get a reasonably early start on this hike.
After a hearty breakfast in Leavenworth, we drove to the Snow Lakes trailhead
on Icicle Creek, gathered our gear and started on our way.
From the 400 meter trailhead, we needed to gain 1760 meters over 18 km to reach
our campsite for the evening. Ordinarily this would be a grueling task, but
the weather conditions on this early autumn day were ideal -- sunny,
warm but not hot, and low humidity.
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Little Annapurna [353 Kb]
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The trail follows Snow Creek through pine forests, reaching Nada Lake at 9 km
and the Snow Lakes soon after. From Snow Lakes the trail climbs another
400 meters to finally reach Lake Viviane, the lowest of the Enchantment Lakes.
The Enchantment Lakes Basin stretches out over 3 km from here, rising another
300 meters to the Upper Enchantment Basin. The scenery in this high granite
lakes basin is magnificent, made even more stunning
by the autumn colours of the alpine larch which had now turned gold.
From Lake Viviane we walked another 2 km to Perfection Lake where
a couple of marmots watched curiously as we set up our camp,
home for the next two nights.
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Inspiration Lake and Prusik Peak [114 Kb]
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We spent the next day exploring the Upper Enchantment Basin, where
the scenery is just as magical but more stark than the lower basin.
Lakes are distributed throughout the Enchantment Basin right up
to the highest point at Colchuck Pass, which apparently
provides an alternate but more gruelling access to the area.
From Colchuck Pass we climbed Little Annapurna where we had
a magnificent panorama of the entire area.
The rock formations on the summit of Little Annapurna resemble the
walls of an ancient stone castle, adding to the mystic of this area.
On the third day we made the long descent back to our car
and drove back to Victoria.
As popular and crowded as this area can be at times, we were lucky to
have encountered only a few other hikers during our three day visit.
I returned a few years later to the Enchantment Lakes, this time
taking two days to reach the campsite at Perfection Lake.
We were frustrated on this trip by fierce gale-force winds which
forced us out the next day.
Other stuff:
Other pictures
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