My friend Stucker managed to snag an overnight permit for the Enchantments near Leavenworth, September 3rd and 4th in the Eightmile/Caroline Lakes zone. I don't think I've talked about Stucker much on here yet, but he and I do a lot of hiking and climbing together and he is a super cool dude. He also asked me not to use his real name, so Stucker it is. Anyway. Two days, one night, two friends and a single objective: tag Cashmere Mountain, a Bulger summit.
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| By "pretty brushy", I mean this. |
Basically, the Eightmile/Caroline zone doesn't easily connect to the rest of the Enchantments area, meaning peaks like Colchuck and Dragontail are, while not impossible, fairly shall we say ambitious objectives. So we settled on Cashmere as our target, since it resides within the area we had a permit to camp. Being who we are, we decided to take a less-common route up the mountain. We entered at the usual trailhead, but instead of heading to Caroline Lake and then continuing up to traverse across for the summit, we cut up from the trail and began following an arm up the hill. The plan was to summit, then descend to Caroline Lake and camp, exiting on the trail the following day and making a loop instead of the more conventional out-and-back via the lake. The first part of this loop route is wholly unmarked, without even a bootpath or flagging tape to follow, and at points was pretty brushy. Given that we were talking 5000' and change of elevation gain in under 4 miles, the answer to "Which way do we go now?" was almost always as simple as "Up".
If only the descent route had been as obvious. (Foreshadowing!)
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| Cashmere Mountain |
Though brutally steep and filled with close encounters of the shrub kind, our ascent was fairly uneventful. (We weren't moving especially fast, mostly thanks to me. Stucker is much quicker than I am. In my defense, we would not long after discover that I had an undiagnosed broken arm, which I consider kind of a viable excuse.) The route is sun-exposed and entirely dry, so bring plenty of water. Early September still meant temperatures above 80F, and during breaks we could see fire control aircraft flying nearby. During those breaks we could also hear the wind in the dead trees below (snags left behind from old fires) - as I'd read ahead of time, it really does sound creepily like a group of happy enthusiastic people laughing or cheering. We carried on through the heat, dust, and huckleberry bushes and even with my slowpoke ways, we did make the summit block before our cutoff time.
This is where things got interesting.
We decided, instead of staying high and scrambling over toward the ridge, to drop down, cross the meadow below, and reconnect with the route to Caroline Lake. This decision was fueled in part by the fact that I had been struggling some on scramblier sections, and we were hoping to both make my life a bit easier and also save some time. (See above about the broken arm thing.) We'd also both seen reports online of others crossing the meadow rather than doing the higher scramble traverse, and we felt ok about taking that option. Well, long story short, our GPS froze up and we missed the connection back over to the lake. Daylight was fading and it felt like we were caught in an endless cycle of optimistically following game trails (I dubbed them "trails of lies" because they all looked promisingly like bootpaths, and they all led exactly nowhere) and yelling at the GPS. There was bear poop everywhere, in festively seasonal shades of berry reds and blues, and we were both growing frustrated. I think it speaks volumes about our friendship that neither of us screamed at the other one.
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| Crossing the meadow. Scenery was ok. |
We eventually ended up roughly a half mile below the lake, on the opposite side of a ridge from the trail, down in a creekbed in the densest brush I've ever seen. At least there was water there - we were both pretty much empty. We refilled from the creek, then commenced intense brushwhacking. The terrain was too steep and uneven to put a tent on so truth be told, we were racing daylight to find a flat spot where the tent would fit.
Eventually, thanks to yet another trail of lies, we found one. We came upon a spot along the "path" where all the thick, tall grasses and bushes had been flattened; it was almost exactly the size of our tent footprint, and flat enough to pitch on. It actually looked like someone had camped there within the past day or two, given the size and shape of the flattened-out spot. Since it was pretty much dark, this was chosen as our bivvy site for the night - largely for lack of a better idea or option. We began setting up the tent, chatting as we did so.
Stucker: We better hope the bear doesn't come back.
Me: ...what bear?
Stucker: The bear that pooped everywhere back there. I think this is his bed.
Me: Dude bears don't make beds in the summer, they sleep in dens in the winter but I think in summer they just wander around.
Stucker: I think this belongs to the bear.
Me: Well we're sleeping here tonight anyway, so I'm just going to keep telling myself it was people.
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| Sidehill THIS, suckas! |
All's well that ends well: no bear materialized (though a gently herbally-influenced Stucker almost fell off a log while bear-bagging our food) and we did manage to navigate our way out the next day (though it was an epically sketchy sidehilling extravaganza). I will forever refer to that campsite as "Goldilocks Bivvy", and harbor a healthy skepticism when it comes to relying on my GPS, but overall I'd count the trip as a win. (I will say however that I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a trailhead in my life.)
Cashmere is a strenuous but not technically difficult scramble. The typical and more heavily-trafficked route via Caroline Lake is likely easier to follow; I can't say for sure since we literally never saw it. The loop method shaves a bunch of mileage, and it's beautiful and intense (this whole thing totaled under 10 miles, and you worked for every inch of it). Have your routefinding skills on point, and beware the trails of lies.
Trek on and tag more Bulgers!
