Enchantment Lakes. A stunning basin at the 7,000-foot level of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness outside Leavenworth, the Enchantments represent perhaps the most renowned hiking region in the Cascade Mountains. Sparkling lakes connected by streams and waterfalls are rimmed by the jagged edge of the Stuart Range in a magical land of water, glacier-polished rock and ice, studded with larch trees that turn golden in fall. The basin is reached via a long approache from the Snow Lake Trailhead or shorter spproach from the Stuart/Colchuck trailhead. The entire trip if you loop through is 17 miles.
Access is restricted via a permit system; 75 percent of the Permit's are issued ahead of time via a lottery with the deadline being March 1 and the other 25 percent are day of permits issued on a first come first serve basis at 7:30 am at the Leavenworth Ranger Station. The Enchantments area is divided into 5 zones, the three of major and primary use are the Snow Zone, from Icicle Creek up to Snow Lakes, the Colchuck Zone, the area surrounding Colchuck Lake and between those tow the Enchantment Zone for the upper basin. Zone Overview Map
First Leg from Stuart Lake Trailhead to Colchuck
Colchuck Lake up over Asgard Pass through Enchantments to Snow Lake
Snow Lake to Icicle Creek Road
Climbing Route up to DragonTail
Myth has it that the Colchuck Lake approach to the Upper Enchantments, pioneered by climbers aiming at the peaks of the Dragontail group, is an easy shortcut and has solitude to boot. Don't believe it. Four things are terribly wrong with the entry via Aasgard Pass: It's not easy; actually it's a climber's route, usually requiring an ice ax, sometimes rope and crampons, and in early summer the ability to recognize avalanche instability. It's dangerous, not only from falling off cliffs or slippery boulders or snowfields or from being fallen upon by snow or rock, but also from summer storms that at these elevations can be distinctly hypothermic and from summer snowfalls the already difficult descent of boulder fields a very long nightmare...Why, then, is the route in this book? As a warning against myths. To save the innocent from being suckered in by "the easy way to the Enchantments." Also to quash the faddy notion that this is a classy and sassy way, the route of the big kids. For anyone it's a tasteless route. For hikers lacking climbing equipment and training, it's a route silly to the point of suicidal.
Ira Spring The Mountaineers
