June 9, 2012 - Colchuck

Another weekend in June, and another weekend of weather cancelling plans! Not complaining.... but the marvelous days of May have quickly succomed to the often dreary days of June. Tauntingly the weather still offers up 2-3 day beautiful weather windows, but instead of falling like clockwork on the weekends, June's high pressure systems have been landing in the middle of the week, thus rendering them only useful for bike commuting (which I do apprecaite, to some extent!).

For a second time, plans for Baker fell through and we scrambled to find an area of the state which wasn't getting hammered with snow or pelted with rain. We settled on the eastside, and decided to use the last permit-free weekend in the Enchantments to camp at Colchuck Lake and explore options on the Colchuck Glacier or Aasguard pass for views into the basin and time on snow. Nicole and I met up with Bryan, Erika and Becky on Saturday morning and we were off over SR2. We headed up the trail to Colchuck lake in the early afternoon when weather was supposed to be clearing, but found plenty of clouds and a few raindrops still hanging around.

up through the woods to Colchuck

Weather slowly clearing...

The weather was taking its time improving, but we made it up to the lake in a few hours, and despite the crowds found a great campsite about 2/3 of the way along the lake, with a great rock to cook / eat and gawk at views upon.

Views from our cooking / dinner spot

After setting up camp we cooked, ate, and gawked at views, as Colchuck and Dragontail came in and out of the clouds. The weather mercifully held off overnight, and by morning blue skies dominated... ahh east side.

Beautiful AM weather. let's move!

The next morning we joined the crowds heading up the nearby slopes. We moved as a group up to the moraine on Colchuck to have a look- the wet slides looked daunting and those on foot decided to try their luck at Aasguard with the better chance for views out towards the Enchantments Basin.

Nicole on Colchuck glacier

Gus, an early morning addition to the crew, and I continued up with skis on our backs, to the top of Colchuck col. The climbing was pretty straightforward - being in the shade during the morning hours the snow was solid. The slid paths from the wet slides left behind something close to glacial ice, which proved to make the climb a bit more interesting... rolling your ankle in AT boots is NOT straightforward.

Crowds heading up the glacier and beautiful views behind

Ways to go up the glacier still

nearing the col... this line would dictate where good snow started and where bulletproof ended...

Gus aimed for the true summit from the col while I rushed back down and went up Aasguard, looking to meet up with Nicole and crew (for the second trip in a row, I had her lunch...oops!). We all met up near "one of" the tops of Aasguard Pass, and everyone enjoyed their ski / glissade down the softening snow. From there on out it was pack up camp and trudge downhill.