Colchuck Lake

Last weekend, I was able to spend the weekend in a tiny house with some great people near Leavenworth, WA. I won’t go too much in depth about tiny houses, but here are a couple of pictures!

The trail starts off with an easy walk through a dense forest. We passed some neat boulders along the side of the trail, and we were never too far from running water. About 1.5 miles in, we reached the first real bridge, which crossed over the creek in the picture below. After the bridge, the hike became noticeably more difficult and we stopped more often to drink water and catch our breath. When we reached the fork, we followed signage to Colchuck Lake–I will definitely come back to do Stuart Lake someday! The next bridge we crossed next was very narrow and led to a large hill made of boulders. At first we thought it was a scramble, but luckily the trail curves around the base of the rocks, along the water.

As we got closer to the lake, the trail became steeper and steeper until we reached the end of the trail at about 2:45PM. We carefully climbed down a steep section to the lake, where we were able to find space for the four of us to sit on speckled rocks and eat snacks. Unfortunately, the air quality was pretty bad due to fire season and, while the view of the lake was still great, the peaks and glacier on the other side were heavily obscured by a low-hanging blanket of haze. Nevertheless, the lake was still a beautiful shade of blue, the water was refreshing (although we didn’t plan well enough to go for a swim), and we stayed at the lake for at least half an hour.

Within about 2 miles of leaving Colchuck Lake, we ran out of water and stopped to fill up our bottles at one of the streams before the scramble–this was the first time I had used my water filter and I’m so glad I had it with me! The trek back felt a lot longer than 4 miles and we didn’t end up getting back to the car until around 5:45PM. I think we were all wiped and our legs felt like jelly, but I know that this is a hike I will be returning to on a clearer day when I can see Colchuck in all its glory!