Colchuck Lake

I'm not sure what September might be like in other parts of the country, but here in the Northwest Corner, it's a hikers' paradise.  The sun is bright, but the air is cool.  The leaves are changing.  Just walking outside your own house in the morning is invigorating.  And the crowds of summer are off doing whatever crowds do in September.

Yesterday, I decided to nibble at the northern edge of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area.  The smartest way to do it would have beeen to stay overnight in Leavenworth -- that little ersatz Bavarian tourist Mecca, some 35 miles east of Stevens Pass.  But I opted to drive to and from Seattle, making a long, one-day adventure out of the hike.

It had been a while since I'd driven U.S. 2 over Stevens Pass.  The scenery is spectacular, even from the windshield of your car.  The Cascades in this area take on strange, bizarre shapes, jagged against the sky.  Among the evergreen forests, you can now spot just enough changing deciduous trees to add flashes of autumn color to the background green.  And you pass through strange little towns with strange little names -- Sultan, Gold Bar, and, my favorite, Startup.

My objective was Colchuck Lake.  From Leavenworth, you drive 8.5 miles south on Icicle Road, then turn left on the unpaved road marked "Stuart Lake."  Four miles of potholes and washboard surface later, assuming your suspension holds up, you reach the trailhead at the end of the road.

The trail itself is pretty straight forward.  It starts out smoothly surfaced with a gradual ascent.  It becomes increasingly steep as you proceed, following Mountaineer Creek.  At about 2.5 miles, you come to a junction -- the trail to Stuart Lake on the right, and Colchuck Lake on the left.  Once past the junction, you cross a log bridge, and find yourself in a rock-strewn landscape.  I remembered my guidebook's admonition, kept right, close to the creek, and quickly found the path ahead.

The trail then becomes very rough, over rocks and tangles of tree roots.  Going up isn't so bad, but coming down I wished I'd brought hiking sticks (or a younger person's sense of balance!).  Once you reach the top, you have a great view of the lake below you, and of surrounding peaks.  I met a number of backpackers who were planning to camp at lakeside, and climb the next day over Aasgard Pass into the Enchantments.  Good luck to them!  The pass looked difficult and treacherous, from where I sat, munching on my lunch and sharing a few nibbles with a chipmunk who was practically sitting on my lap.  (I know, don't feed the wildlife.  But he pled with me so winsomely!)

I could have taken a snooze in the sun, but I hadn't started up the trail until noon, and didn't want to get back to Seattle at midnight.  The trail to the lake was about 9 miles round trip, about 2,500 feet vertically.  The climb took me about 2 hours, 20 minutes, and the descent -- picking my way down from boulder to boulder -- not much less.