[rubywrangler]

A few folks TR'd on a similar loop last year and Martin posted a recent report on conditions, so this will mainly be a photo dump. I lucked out and happened to be perusing recreation.gov soon after somebody cancelled their core permit reservation a couple weeks ago, so I snatched it up and recruited Julia to come along. She had never been to the enchantments at all and I had only been to the core once before, years ago, and on that trip I ended up in a whiteout and didn't see much. The plan was: - hike in Thursday night and camp at Colchuck Lake - spend the next 2 nights in the core and climb some stuff - go back down Aasgard on Sunday; Julia would head home and I would camp at the lake and climb Colchuck peak Monday morning. The first 2 days went according to plan. We hiked up Dragontail and Little A on Friday. On Saturday we meandered a bit too long on Enchantment peak (NE) and lost momentum for Cannon, so we did a little core tour instead and then hung out at camp with two goats that adopted us for the weekend. We decided to hike over to Cannon on Sunday morning and then take the NE/N ridge route back to the trailhead. I had cell service from the tops of all the peaks and was able to download some info. Unfortunately none of the reports I looked at emphasized the unpleasantness of this route. Hiking through the Rat Creek burn SUCKED. An obstacle course of downed logs and a jungle of new growth, with just enough rain to make everything slick. I lost count of the number of times I fell, but it was enough that I spent the past 2 days sitting on an ice pack! Aside from the last 4 miserable hours, it was an awesome weekend! We only saw a handful of people on Friday, maybe 20 on Saturday (mostly in the distance) and zero on Sunday. Although we were prepared to camp on snow, there were plenty of melted out spots so we didn't need to. The only other campers we saw were clustered around the outlet of Lake Viviane so it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves, which I imagine is pretty rare on a weekend in permit season!

morning at colchuck

bottom of aasgard

top of aasgard

kicking steps up to dragontail

core from dragontail

dragontail summit pano

heading into the core

clouds over witches tower + dragontail

going up little annapurna for sunset

sun setting

sunset pano

morning camp views

talisman/isolation lake + enchantment peak

looking back from prusik pass, camp is somewhere on the rocks in the center

prusik

up to enchantment peak

cannon and druid plateau

SW enchantment from NE

back at prusik pass, lost world plateau + shield lake

prusik + puddle

mcclellan + sprite

we followed the rocky ridge down to perfection/rune

perfection/rune lake

next stop crystal lake

where i noticed this den, due to it's terrible smell

and these prints. who made them?

we climbed this gully back to camp

where we had visitors

our visitors did a lot of posing

posers cont'd

and more posing

sunset clouds, a little LOTRish

sunrise

posers chasing me back to camp

sunrise on little a + dragontail

NE face of NE enchantment peak

lost world pano

boulder-hopping to the edge of the druid plateau. we were surprised to see a large bear up here.

view from the edge

heading back to cannon

julia found a seat just west of cannon summit

cannon pano

julia working her way down from cannon

we came down the steep gully in the center

coney lake

things you notice when looking at your feet to try to stay upright in a burn

Totals for the trip, about 21 miles and 10,200' gain. Ice axe and crampons were helpful I took over 400 photos but only these 177 made the final cut

[silence]

Way to go girls! Awesome dump of photos ...

[geyer]

So many posers!

[fffej50]

having gone into the enchantments via Hook creek and exited via Rat creek I can empathize with the misery....I remember tripping and somersaulting several times in the dark while descending what we thought was going to be a clever shortcut.

[Bootpathguy]

[rubywrangler]

[DadFly]

I figured out the "right way" to go up and down Rat Creek. Still not easy but very little blow down. I can't find a pic of Rat Creek or I would draw the route on a photo.

[mbravenboer]

I very much enjoyed your photos. Great trip! Thanks for the warning on the Cannon approach . Hope to visit that area some time, so that's good to know.

[Jake Robinson]

This is the approximate route we took last year through the Rat Creek burn, from the TH to the ridge above Coney Lake. Just hike the old road to the big washout then head more or less directly uphill. I don't remember any particularly bad brush or blowdown, it's just steep. Having said that, we only went up that way and I'm sure it would be much worse going down.