The Enchantments is a series of lakes high up in the Cascades mountain range in eastern Washington. The average elevation of these lakes is ~7700 ft and it is definitely worth your time and effort if you decide to camp out over 4 days and scope the area out.

This is considered the 8th most difficult day hike in the United States with a total hiking ditance of 20 miles(!). It took my brother,me and some friends, 14 hours with almost no breaks to cover it. We left on Sunday at 6AM in the morning and came back on Monday at 5AM. Now, before I go any further, here is a map of the area and the route we took.

We started out as a group of 9 at the Stuart/Colchuck trail head and finished at the Snow Lakes trail head. (The nine of us met earlier in Leavenworth and left my car at the snow lake trail head on the way to our starting point). We did leave a little later than we wanted to and started out at the Colchuk trail head at 9:20AM. It took us about 2.5 hours to get to the bottom of the dreaded ‘Aasgard Pass’. Nothing that I can say here would do justice to how hard the pass really is. Do some searching and find out more for yourself. This pass gains 2200ft in about a mile and that is one of the steepest hikes in this country. We got to the top of the pass at around 3PM and knew that we had to hustle if we wanted to make it to the other trail head by 9 in the night.

It was a pretty hot day and we ran out of our water supply/fluids(3 liters) half way up the Aasgard pass. It took us another 30-45 mintues to get to Inspirations (and Lake Perfection, etc) where we refilled our water supplies. We spoke to a number of people on the way, who were all campers, and everyone seemed to be really impressed that we were ‘through hikers’ and some were even surprised that we were attempting a through hike that late in the day. We made sure to remind them that we had our lights (just in case) and would get down by 9 in the night. Our topography map was a little misleading in this case because we had calculated the distance from Perfection to the Snow Lake trail head to be about 9 miles. Unfortunately, these maps do not account for the switchbacks and my guess is that this part turned out to be a little more than 12 miles and took us 7 hours to complete from Perfection Lake. We picked up our pace near the Snow Lakes around 8:40PM when it started to get dark and a couple we met told us that it took them 6 hours to get to that point from the trail head (snow lakes TH) where we were planning to go. This is when we got a little worried and blasted our way down to the end point in pitch darkness with our lights.

We got down to the Snow Lake trail head at 11:20PM, exactly 14 hours after we started. Four of us(bro, me, tyler and lea) finished at 11:20 PM, 3 decided to turn around near Colchuck Lake and 2 people got lost (and panicked, we had to call search and rescue to help them out) It was just a bit of unwanted drama especially after the 2 had ‘claimed’ to conquer the Himalayas and made stupid decisions along the way to hike in the dark without lights or any sort of equipment (or water or food!!). This did strain the relationship between the rest of us that were down at the bottom trying desperately to help them out. Luckily, they had met some good people along the way who lent them batteries for their phones and torch lights. These people almost broke down some 2 miles from the finish and sounded a bit delusional when they first called us.

This is where the rest of us stepped up and the deputy sheriff of Leavenworth helped us out with GPS tracking and some flashing police lights. The deputy was really helpful and talked some sense to the people who got lost and they finally made their way down some 2 hours later at 1:30AM. We then started driving back and reached home at 4:30AM on Monday.

Putting aside this incident, this was the best, craziest and the most challenging hikes that my brother and I have done(ever!). Tyler and Lea were also very well packed and made up for some great hiking partners along the way. I must say that the deputy sheriff was really impressed that we had done the 20 mile hike in 14 hours. He also had some valuable tips about hiking and said – ‘What differentiates novice and expert hikers is that when they get lost, the novices keep going thinking they can make it out while the expert pitch their tents and wait for day break’. (This is something that I will never forget.)

Would I recommend this as a day hike?? well, not unless you are really fit and can hike 14 hours straight.

Would I recommend this as a camping trip?? YES! This will be one of the best 4 day camping trips you have ever done.

Would I try this again?? Most definitely not. At least not in the near future considering how hard I had to push myself and how dangerous it got at the end. (we had thunderstorms approaching and heavy winds)

But of course, every hiker that I have talked to since, tells me that I should be proud of making it across the enchantments in 14 hours and I most certainly agree!

Tags: aasgard pass, camping, colchuck, day hike, enchantments, gokul, hiking, inspiration, koshal, leavenworth, perfection, sheriff, snow lake, through hike, vivian, washington