Hiking the Enchantments 2002: Start

My friend Paul had a hiking pass for the Enchantments alpine lake area near Leavenworth for September 2002. I had been there once before and jumped at the chance to return.

We chose to go in the steeper Aasgard Pass access. We had to go around Colchuck Lake and up the pass on the far side.

We took lunch at a beach on the far side.

Unfortunately, it took so long to get to the top that the sun had gone down and it got cold.

There was a wind storm that night. Sometimes sand blew against my closed eyes through a tiny hole at the closed end of the tent zipper. The tent of another in our party even collapsed. I was grateful it did not rain.

It stayed cold and windy the next day. There were small whitecaps on some of the lakes.

We wore everything we had as we hiked to the lower lakes.

More green showed up as we hiked down, and the lakes were beautiful.

The trees had this incredible silver weathered color.