Backpacking The Enchantments Part 4: The Snow Lakes Death March
The next morning, I woke up with the sun at around 4:30am. The late evenings and early mornings are one of the things I simultaneously love and hate about this part of the world.
As you might have been able to guess from my previous post, I didn’t have the best sleep due to the prior day’s cortisol-elevating activities, namely, the 30-45mph wind gusts that we later learned plagued others camping at Lake Vivian. Plus, I kept thinking that the sounds of the windbreaker brushing up against the tent were mountain goats or bears or something.
I zipped open the tent to witness a thin line of dark orange sun hugging the peaks of the mountains in front of us.
I almost woke up Brandon so he could enjoy the view with me, but there was something peaceful about this moment just as it was. Brandon’s gentle snores, the first few bird songs of the day, and my tired eyes peeking through the tent. Later, I learned that this was the site where, in 2022, a man got trapped underneath a boulder and had to be rescued. I’m glad Lake Vivian was more hospitable to us.
I dozed in and out of light sleep for the next hour and a half, knowing that some more Z’s would do me good. We had another big day ahead of us. But hey, at least the descent would be easier!
Ha.
At around 6:30, the sun was fully up, and so was I. I jostled Brandon, “Hey, we should probably get up now and get going.”
Within the first mile of Day 2, we learned a few things.
One: last night, if we had walked just 0.1 more miles, we would have come across a section of much more established, much less exposed campsites. Oh well.
Two: we were glad we didn’t keep going last night in the dark to try and find a better campsite. The descent down to Snow Lakes sucks (it’s pretty much constant route-finding, warding off nosy mountain goats, and awkward shimmying down boulders), and besides that one nice camp area just barely past ours, the next one would not be for another mile and a half, which took us at least a few hours in daylight.
And three: we did not bring enough food. All we had was a sack of nuts. It served as all of our meals for the day.
When we finally made it to the Snow Lakes Zone, it was both relieving and hilarious. Relieving because we finally got what we prayed for: a straightforward path. And hilarious because… DAMN. The campsites at Snow Lakes ROCKED.
They were exactly what I was picturing when I thought of camping in the Enchantments: a flat section of ground to set up our tent at sunset. Plenty of time to wade in Upper or Lower Snow Lake before putting our heads down for the night. Lulled to sleep by the peaceful babbling of lake water.
Yeah, no. But the hardcore experience gave us a good story, I guess?
To appease our FOMO, we stopped and rested at each of the stunning Snow Lakes: Upper, Lower, and Nada Lakes.
While Brandon was on the toilet near Upper Snow Lake, I thought about something he and I joke about sometimes; something that happened with some frequency in Brandon’s last relationship. Apparently, there were many times when Brandon would take his ex on a hike, cross country ski trip, etc. that unintentionally turned into something more than what she signed up for. When he first told me how annoyed she’d get with him, I coined the term “to Brandon someone”, and told him it would be unlikely he’d ever be able to Brandon me.
To this day, about four years in, he’s still not succeeded in Brandoning me. But if we were to apply the same concept to our experience hiking the Enchantments, it was painfully clear that we Enchanted ourselves.
I was physically and mentally exhausted, and as someone who prides herself on doing hard things frequently, and with relative ease, I had a hard time admitting that for the first time, I had found my limit. The high I had after Aasgard throughout the Core Zone had certainly worn off.
My mind saw this as a golden opportunity to flood me with insecurities and worries, given that I was too tired to see beyond them:
- OMG, you’re getting OLDER!
- Wow, I guess you’re not as fit as you think.
- All you have is your nut sack. You should have been more prepared with food.
- The fact that you’re not having fun right now means the trip is ruined.
But then I remembered one of my first ever hiking trips. The trip where I fell in love with hiking.
It was circa 2013. I was with my dad and a few aunts and uncles, and we were hiking up Mt. St. Helens, one of the most famous volcanoes in Washington.
It was during a formative time in my life. Not only was I healing from a soul-crushing breakup, but I was also about to go to college.
The hike was hard; 5,000 feet of elevation gain in just 9 miles (The Enchantments Trail gains basically the same amount of elevation, but spread out over an additional 10 or so miles, so St. Helens is steeper, and therefore arguably more difficult).
I think it was BECAUSE of its difficulty and BECAUSE of its unfamiliarity that hiking up Mount St Helens was so memorable, and so impactful. This trip led me straight to my fears, and put me in touch with feelings I wasn’t able to access on flat ground.
There was one particular moment on the mountain that will forever be etched in my brain.
At 18, resting was not really a thing that I did. I was always striving for straight A’s, so in my free time, I was probably either compulsively studying or doing homework. And the only reason I went to bed so early was so that I could wake up early in order to get a ten mile run in before school.
At some point half-way through the hike up, I was alone, and was forced to rest for the first time. I wasn’t too happy about it, telling myself a story that I was supposed to be faster and that this wasn’t what a “fit” person would do. But, I paused anyway. For like, the first time in my life.
This pause was life-changing. I had been walking by so much incredible scenery - snow-capped peaks, volcanic craters, alpine flora - but I wasn’t really SEEING it. I was so focused on getting somewhere, preventing me from feeling the awe that comes so naturally in the mountains (and arguably, in day-to-day life) when you’re present.
But at that moment, I saw the beauty. I felt the awe. And with the awe came a landslide of other emotions, some of which, looking back now, were probably behind this obsessive need to maintain my “fit and perfect” identity: sadness about losing someone important to me. Fear about moving out of my parents house, and going to college. Regret about not having paused and appreciated my surroundings until now. I let myself cry.
I was amazed at the power of nature to put me face-to-face with exactly what I needed to learn at the time.
It would certainly not be the last time nature would help me feel exactly what I needed to feel. But it was the first time where I was faced with such a palpable sense of uncertainty, the kind of uncertainty that’s inherent in life but which can be shoved in the cracks of our consciousnesses so it’s not so disturbing.
That was the moment I had the not-so-revolutionary-but-felt-revolutionary-at-the-time realization that hiking was like life. There were moments of peace and contentment, followed by, often in mere minutes, a steep, unrelenting uphill. There were moments of knee-buckling fear, and moments of “everything is going to be alright”. And I realized that just like with life, a hike is a lot more enjoyable when you go with the flow. When you accept and manage whatever the moment brings, whether it’s an unexpected rainstorm, a technical section you weren’t expecting, an insanely windy night, sore hands from death gripping boulders, or a horrid last mile of slipping down scree.
From that moment on, I’ve been hooked on hiking.
Fast forward ten years to 28-year old Anne, hiking the world-class Enchantments, sitting on a log overlooking Upper Snow Lake, still waiting for Brandon to return from his ventures on the toilet. I was thinking about Mt. St. Helens, and it led me to wonder, what are The Enchantments teaching me about where I am in my life now? How can I lean into what is happening, rather than resist it?
It became clear that I still struggle with the same sort of complex around resting, albeit I’m a bit less tangled up in it now than ten years ago. I was also under the illusion that things not being perfect meant they were bad, ruined. And of course, as so many of us do, I was judging myself for these thoughts, because well, I teach and write about this stuff, so I should be an EXPERT on it!!!!! Yeah, okay.
Brandon returned. He felt like a new man, and I felt like a new woman (for a different reason). I was still totally exhausted and very much looking forward to a rich meal and a (windless) full night’s rest on that King bed we had back at our Airbnb.
But for our last several miles, I was determined to let this hike be what it was. Nope, it wouldn’t be pleasant. It was hot, exposed, and there was little shade to provide a respite. It felt like Nada Lake behind us was the last chapter of the hike, and now we were just dragging our feet along, like a series of a show that should have ended two seasons ago when it was still awesome.
Do I wish it had been more pleasant? Sure, I guess.
But thinking back on those last four miles, there was something kind of funny about slogging along, asking Brandon every 5 mins to check his GPS to see how much longer we had left.
Something kind of nostalgic about fighting Brandon for the last few M&M’s in that infamous nut sack.
Something kind of sweet about finishing the trail, and promising myself I’d never do that kind of hike again (while knowing that, deep inside, that promise was probably going to be as much of a promise as when you tell yourself you’ll never eat ice cream again, after one night of going a bit too hard on a carton of chocolate chip cookie dough).
I can’t wait for my next adventure.