We hiked the Enchantments in Alpine Lakes Wilderness and man was that a fitting name for this area. This was probably one of the best day hikes I’ve ever done 😊! The mountain peaks ended in solid granite spires that made you just want to go climb them. The trees had a beautiful yellowish tint...do Larchen trees change color in fall? The trail had some granite scrambling to get up to the icy blue alpine lakes. This trail is setup so you can stage cars at both ends of it, but, not knowing anyone around here and disliking shuttle services for hiking, we opted for riding our bikes to the other trailhead (adding 8mi to our hike), something we started doing back when we hiked the presidential traverse in New Hampshire. We had chosen to hike the non-conventional direction because you can makeup more time biking down hill than hiking. This resulted in the theme of the day, “You’re gonna die.” Something everyone felt the need to tell us as they passed. Partially because we had to do a lot more elevation gain hiking this direction,but more so because of a steep snowy screw slope, called Aasgard Pass (2200ft elevation change in 0.75mi), that they had been traumatized by earlier that day. Their concern was that we were going down it, instead of up, and only had trekking poles...no micro spikes or crampons. Fortunately, going down the slope wasn’t really a problem. The very bottom by the Lake was actually the area I disliked...I had thought I had traversed bad boulder fields before, but boulder fields covered in ice (we wouldn’t have minded the micro spikes here 😉) takes them to a whole new level. I’ll take the minivan size boulders over icy ones any day! Some people had gone off trail, thinking you had to hike all the way down to the lake, and we stupidly followed their tracks, when there was a nice trail to walk across up higher. Not a big deal as they both led you to the same place, but it would’ve been nice to avoid the icy boulders. All in all, a great day with spectacular views!! On top of the biking, we hiked 18mi with 8600ft of elevation gain and now I am feeling quite sore...

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