The Enchantments !!

On Saturday August 29, John, Joseph, and Henry tackled the famous Enchanments area as a through-hike. 

The hike goes through one of the most beautiful areas of Washington, but is known as extremely grueling. Most people do it over multiple days, however, camping overnight requires winning a hard-to-get lottery for the limited spots available. It is do-able as a day hike, but just barely - it is a 23 mile hike involving more than 5,000 feet of elevation gain. While we'd been working up to this with lots of hiking over the course of the summer, we had never done a hike longer than 12 miles, and while we had done hikes of about 4,000 feet of elevation gain, none had as long and steep an ascent as this hike had one-third of the way in. 

We left from the trailhead at 4:45am (thanks Mary Jo for dropping us off!) with headlamps to guide the way. The start of the hike went to Colchuck Lake, a hike that Henry, Mary Jo, and John had tackled three years ago. From there you climb up Aasgard Pass, an extremely steep stretch with much of the elevation gain. It takes about three hours to get to Aasgard and another two hours to climb it. Once climbed, though, you are in the Enchantments, which are an area of dozens of remote alpine lakes ringed by craggy mountains, snow, and rock (and mountain goats!). It's a relatively flat hike at that point, with one lake being more beautiful than the next.

The lakes continue for about three hours, and then you have a "short" (sarcasm intended) six hour steady descent, including past a few more lakes until the final two hours which is through the woods. We finished a mere fourteen hours after starting, with Mary Jo waiting for us in the car. 

All in all an amazing day, with lots of beautiful scenery and exertion!