Washington State
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Finding Our Way to Vancouver Part II
Sunday morning We arrived at the Motel 6 at around 3:30 am after landing and sitting on the runway for about 20 minutes because of a backup in Seattle. While waiting for our luggage I’d begun feeling poorly again. I’d felt bad since the day before when our flight issues had occurred but I’d chalked it up to nerves. It had settled later that day and I had felt better when we left Houston. But as we settled in for what meager sleep we could get that night I knew I wasn’t doing well at all. Morning came and we slept in as long as possible but our bodies were…
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Eightmile Lake | Wenatchee National Forest
On our third night of backpacking in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, we took a relatively flat hike over to Eightmile Lake. There were a few rolling areas but it was an easy hike after our climb up and down Aasgard Pass. It was also a very quiet hike. There were a few people camping on the far side of the lake but we never interacted with them, and we saw no one on our hike into the lake. It might not have been alpine as the Enchantment Lakes were, but it wasn’t without a lot of grand scenery! There was a very cool old dam near the end of the…
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Rainier From The Road | Wordless Wednesday
As seen from I-90, heading west
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Aasgard Pass Descent
If you’ve been reading here long enough you know that Chris and I went to Seattle and the Cascades for our 10th anniversary in 2012. I never actually finished sharing the photos from that time and since I don’t always have a lot of excursions and adventures to share these days, I thought would try to finish sharing those photos over the next few weeks. If you missed any of those posts you can flip through them here. The big chunk of time we spent in Washington State, the primary reason for going, was to hike in the Enchantment Lakes. We had a permit for the Core Enchantment Zone which…
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Evening On Top of Aasgard Pass | Enchantment Lakes
Pitching our tent on top of the Pass turned out to be perfect. We found an out of the way alcove, pitched the tent and took an afternoon nap. I alternated between reading and napping and of course poking my head out to check on our gear in case the goats were out snacking on it or our food. Chris saw some other folks climbing one of the mountains nearby so he followed in their tracks after dinner in order to try to see about taking sunset photos. I can’t remember if it was a success or not, but I’m sure the view was even better a few hundred feet…
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View From Aasgard Pass | Enchantment Lakes
I stared at the snow covered peak in the far background on the right for a long time. It looked gigantic, threatening, exciting. I later determined it was Glacier Peak. When we arrived back at Aasgard Pass we stopped to take a short break and take in the view. I hadn’t taken any photos on our summit, having been tired and ready to filter water at one of the lakes. That afternoon we were planning on descending and camping somewhere down at Colchuck Lake but I decided that we should camp up top, enjoy the view through the evening, especially since we had the permits to be up there. So…
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Return Traverse Of Upper Enchantments
Since it is coming up on almost a year since our trip to Washington I thought it wise to start finishing up these photos. This is our walk back towards Aasgard Pass through the Upper Enchantments, showing some of the area that I didn’t cover on our trip into the lakes. The pink on the snow is snow algae, also called watermelon snow. Going back through these photos makes me wish I was out adventuring somewhere. Maybe sometime later this summer or the fall.
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More Goats! | Enchantment Lakes NF
(yep, still working on these posts from August….) When Chris and I left Leprechaun Lake we decided to go to the north end of Perfection Lake at the trail junction to Prusick Pass. I wanted to go up there and see what was that way but after lunch Chris wasn’t feeling it, however we did wander down that trail just a bit and found, what do you know…more goats! So adorable!! Our lunch view! We sat just a bit further up, literally at the sign junction. This wouldn’t be our last encounter with goats, we had some hang out with us at our final campsite on Aasgard Pass. To Be…
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Leprechaun Lake | Enchantment Lakes
On our hike through the Enchantment Lakes we hiked as far as Leprechaun Lake before deciding we didn’t want to descend further down into the Snow Lakes zone. We figured that going down meant having to come back up and well, we liked up already. Looking back I think we should have sucked it up and gone down into those zones, but at the same time what we ended up doing worked out too, leaving us time to explore other areas of Washington instead of staying only in the Enchantments. There was some rock hopping and precarious log walking involved to get across the streams leading to the lake. I…
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Alpine Wildflowers In Macro | Enchantment Lakes