I believe this was my first trip to The Enchantments in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. It is truly a glorious area deserving of all the protection we can provide. My high school friend, Bill Chaffin, and I tagged along with a group of high school students being led by our former biology teachers, Bill Brockman and Coleman Leuthy.
The trip was the last of September/first of October. The Enchantments being a high elevation area (~7,000 feet), often receives a dusting of snow with the first Autumn storms as it did for us. Words hardly describe the delightful scenery of pristine snow over a landscape of granite boulders dotted with golden alpine larch trees all set against a stunningly blue sky.
We took the very common approach of ascending Snow Creek to Nada Lake the first day then hiking the remaining distance to the lower basin in The Enchantments the next day. I believe we camped the remaining two or three nights of our trip at either Lake Viviane or Leprechaun Lake. The photo at left is looking south towards McClellan Peak with Lake Viviane and Leprechaun Lake at the bottom.
On our day to explore the upper basin, we walked up the gentle north slope of Little Annapurna (peak in center of photo) at right.
Probably the most dramatic and most photographed peak in the area is Prusik Peak, the westernmost peak on the long Temple Ridge.
The photo below is Prusik Peak 
taken from near Gnome Tarn west of Lake Viviane. The right photo shows Prusik Peak with the rest of Temple Ridge to its right (east) and is taken from near Sprite Lake.
In later years I made more
trips to The Enchantments but this first trip and its picture perfect conditions always stood out in my memories.
Kurt-
ReplyDeleteI was on that trip. In the top picture, I am the person sitting on the rock on the left side of the picture. It was a great trip eexcept for a couple of the students getting drunk the 2nd night out. They stayed in camp as the group explored Little Annapurna and the upper basin.