Almost Enchanting

August 18-20, 2006

Last weekend I had an almost perfect and almost enchanting weekend in the mountains. I say it was almost enchanting because I was near the Enchantment Lakes Basin but actually in a completely different basin which has some of the same benefits: rocks, cold clear lakes and high alpine scenery. It was almost perfect because the weather was spectacular and the fishing was a blast, but my fish cooking didn't work out too well!

I went to Leavenworth with the intention of getting an Enchantments permit. Unfortunately I did not win the morning lottery so I had to pick a different destination. I decided to do a thru-hike into the Mormon Ladies Lakes. I started at the end of the Icicle Creek Road on the Icicle Creek Trail, hiked up Icicle Creek and French Creek then took a right on the trail to Frosty Pass. I passed Lake Margaret and ended up camping my first night at Lake Mary which is just past Frosty Pass.

The fish at Lake Mary were really fun to catch even though they were pretty small. I think the largest one may have been 8 to 10 inches (probably 8). These fish weren't afraid of anything. One nearly swam right up to my leg when I was wading in the lake!

On Saturday I continued on up over Mary Pass and dropped down to Upper Florence Lake. I also took a few minutes to run up the ridge near Mary Pass. I can't remember the name of the peak on the ridge but I decided not to go to the top as I didn't really feel like scrambing up the loose rock.

I dropped down to Upper Florence Lake and started to have some lunch. While eating I noticed that the fish were humongous (at least relative to those at Lake Mary). So I had to throw on a fly and try to catch them. It took awhile but I finally caught a whale of a cutthroat off a large boulder at the rock slide. Unfortunately, he slipped away after I de-hooked him as I was thinking about keeping him for dinner. I never quite figured out what these fish wanted to eat but I was able to catch a few (3 on Sat. and 1 on Sun) off a couple flies. These fish were challenging but really fun to catch since they were so large, especially for a high alpine lake. So I decided to stay at this lake on Saturday night and keep stalking the fish.

In the late afternoon when the fishing was really frustrating I took off on a great trail run over to the next lake, Lake Edna. Running on the wide open trails up on the ridges here was spectacular. It was even more fun with Dylan on the MP3 player! After my trail run I came back to the lake and finally landed a pan-size fish; a nice cutthroat of 12-14 inches. I kept him and quickly got to work cleaning and cooking him up for dinner. The gutting, cleaning and filleting didn't go so smoothly, primarily because I didn't know what I was doing and also because my knife was dull. But that was nothing compared to trying to fry the fish on top of my whisperlite. After a lot of burning I finally gave up on creating the perfect fish and just made sure it was over-cooked by setting the pan (lid) on top of a pot of boiling water. I ate most of the fish and a freeze-dried dinner as well.

On Sunday I hiked out passing Lake Edna, going over another pass and descending the Chatter Creek trail. I stopped at Lake Edna for a very cold skinny-dip before hurrying toward the car. On the way down Chatter Creek I met some other hikers: Jennie, Lindsay and Wendy along with Max and Heidi the dogs. After passing them I stopped on the trail for a snack and was surprised to hear loud scratching on a nearby tree. I looked over only to find that a bear cub was up a tree about 20 feet off the ground. Since I had no idea where mama bear was I quickly threw the food back in the pack and headed back up the trail. I waited with J, L, and W for a couple minutes before heading back past the spot where I saw the bear. Then amazingly, less than 5 minutes later I was startled by heavy crashing through the brush. I knew what it had to be. It was the mama bear. The only problem is that I had no idea if she was headed towards me or away from me so I backtracked quickly. After running into J, L, and W for the second time I set off down the trail which was now clear of bears.

An added bonus to the great weekend is that I went out to dinner with J, L, and W at Gustavs in Leavenworth. These three had spent a night up on Chatter Creek and had apparently had a pretty good time as well.