-Trail Notes from The Enchantments-
My grandfather’s last words to me were, “Go get ‘em.” They have echoed in my mind for years. They are a call to adventure and carry me onward. They push me to experience more, see more, and pick myself up.
He said those words with a smile.
This past September, one of my longtime friends, Jack Soliday, invited me to thru-hike The Enchantments. While I considered myself a competent hiker, this would be my greatest challenge yet. People clock this hike at around 21 miles with approximately 6,000 feet of elevation gain; 2,200 of those feet occur in less than one mile as you ascend Aasgard Pass, the entrance to the upper enchantments.
Many in Washington State consider The Enchantments to be some of the most beautiful hiking in the state, if not the country. To mitigate an excess of traffic, camping is strictly controlled by a lottery system. It is a lottery that is notoriously hard to win. The only way around the system is to thru-hike the route in a day which is doable for those who do not mind a torturous, knee-buckling journey.
For me, this hike was about more than seeing alpine lakes and eating sour gummy worms in the mountains. My grandfather, Pete Schnebele, passed away in December of 2020. He was a lover of the outdoors and one of my heroes growing up. Pete talked about The Enchantments on multiple occasions. He spoke about its incredible beauty and how we would go as a family one day. The time for that came and went.
The morning of the hike, Jack, his stepdad Ben Jones, and I woke at 3:30 a.m. to drive to the trail. The hike began in the dark with headlights swishing through the trees, illuminating a well-trodden path in front of us. After five miles, we reached Colchuck Lake, one of the most Instagrammed alpine lakes in Washington. Across the lake, we could see Aasgard Pass, a notoriously difficult 2,200-foot scramble in less than a mile, and the entrance into the upper Enchantments.
As I climbed up the pass, kicking rocks and sliding every few feet, I found myself not feeling the exhaustion or the pain in my legs nearly as much as I should have. With the emerald-tinted Lake Colchuck growing smaller beneath us, my thoughts turned to Pete, or Papa Pete to his grandkids. He walked up this same hill years ago. Maybe we stopped at the same viewpoints to admire the blankets of moss and trees that cover the mountainside. We could have felt the same mountain air wash over us as the morning light first splashed the side of Dragon Tail Peak above the lake. We could have stopped in the same places to grab a drink of water, temporarily easing the strain on our legs.
Pete was all around me. He was in the trees and the rocks and the dirt. He was in the clouds pushing themselves over the top of the ridgeline, tangling themselves amongst the mountains. He was the breeze, egging me on, pushing me to keep stepping up the incline. He was the stone monolith mountains, chiseled by time and sharpened to points shooting into the sky.
I had reached the top.
As I crested the top of Aasgard Pass, the wind hit me as if to shake me awake, jolting me in different directions. The sun was next, warming me and presenting me with the beauty in the valley. White boulders, bleached from time, lay scattered everywhere I looked. Among them were pockets of the deepest blue. Lake after lake, slowly crept into view as I rounded the next bend and peaked over the next hill.
It had been a long time since I had been that happy.
For the past four years, I have struggled with depression and anxiety. Like many others, I’ve found nature as an escape. To see mountains so tall and lakes so blue, makes problems seem small. The problems return of course. They come and go like waves.
At one point, I began getting anxiety on my hikes. I thought I was safe in the mountains, but my anxiety followed me up the talus fields and the meadows, crowding my mind and spinning me into a ball of tension. It felt inescapable.
But at the top of Aasgard Pass, at least for a moment, I felt free. I let the wind hit my face. I was truly present. Pete was there with me.
I fired off a few frames with my shitty Minolta film camera that I love dearly, trying to use the camera in a desperate attempt to capture all that I was feeling. I had made it to The Enchantments after years of dreaming about it.
My earliest memories of my grandpa involve a lot of camping and being outdoors. Pete and my grandmother Judy took me to Mount Rainier on multiple occasions. We glissaded down snowfields by sitting on our raincoats and searched for frogs in mountain lakes. More than anyone, Pete was able to see and appreciate the beauty of the world. I think that he was trying to educate me on that.
Pete was the kind of man that wanted to be a part of everything. He was a passionate community member, taking part in Operation Nightwatch, which provides services for the unhoused community in Seattle. He loved to travel, going to South Africa for safaris and Spain to bike the famous Camino de Santiago. Through all of it, Pete had a huge presence in my family, always making time for his grandkids and organizing a getaway each year where we could camp and enjoy being outside.
So, as I traversed around the blue-green lakes of the Upper Enchantments, I thought of Pete.
Jack, Ben and I forged on, momentarily stopping at lakes to breathe in the crisp, alpine air and admire the scenes around us. It would have been hard to navigate if not for the cairns that guided us through largely open boulder fields. The Enchantments were overstimulating in their special way. It became hard to grasp just how beautiful the area was. The colors inspired me the most, stark-white cliffs cut through by vibrant green trees and pastel meadows.
As we reached Leprechaun Lake, we dropped our packs for a snack and an obligatory dip. The water was numbing. It bit into your skin and surrounded you in a painful but refreshing way, cutting through the aches and the soreness. This was our last stop before the hike down.
The rest of the hike is arguably the most difficult and soul-crushing part. After a full day’s walk, you are subjected to a steep, seven-mile descent spotted with talus fields and boulders. It is a long and painful trek and also a form of payment for what you have seen so far.
Our trio rounded the last switchback, running the last bit of the trail on wobbly legs and throbbing knees. We assuaged some of this with a beer and bratwurst in Leavenworth before settling down for the night.
The next day, I was homeward-bound. Tired and annoyed as I navigated through Tacoma traffic, I reminisced about what I had seen the day before. It was an incredible adventure and one I would do again in a heartbeat. All the while, Pete’s words were still echoing in my head — “Go get ‘em” — and I had a thought that had probably passed through my grandpa’s head before.
What’s my next adventure?
