Girls Gone Wildwood

We haven't been quite as scheduled as pre-pandemic times, but back in July, the week before Cascade Lakes Relay, we drove up to Leavenworth for an epic day-off adventure run. Colchuck Lake selfie I had never been to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, and I was in for a treat. We stayed the night at the Snow Lakes Trailhead, and caught an early shuttle to the Colchuck Lake Trailhead.  Enchantments map It's a good 4 miles to Colchuck Lake, getting a feel for the elevation, with the massive payoff of seeing the shockingly bright blue water. We got a little lost at one point, trying to follow the trail over big boulders, but figured it out and made the boulder-hopping journey over to Aasgard Pass. Sunrise morning view from Snow Creek Trailhead Just a note here: I'm so glad I knew absolutely nothing about this trail and Aasgard Pass. When Ann pointed it out across the lake, I thought she was just pointing out a feature; I had no idea that it was the trail. Bridge to... a bunch of boul...

  In preparation for the Backcountry Rise 50 mile race, Susan and I decided to run a 30ish mile route as our last big run before the race. (editor note we later dropped to the 50k) We had originally thought we would run the last 30 miles of the Oregon PCT heading towards Washington (Lolo Pass to Cascade Locks) but we saw a posting on Oregon Hikers that said there was a lot of blowdown from winter storms that made large parts of the trail nearly impassable. After dealing with that on Hunchback Mountain we decided to come up with Plan B. Luckily Plan B was literally on the other side of the river. We decided to run the first 30ish miles of the PCT in Washington going north. Yassine and a few other folks had also done it recently and confirmed the trail was in great condition.  Running in a cloud and happy about it We decided to start at the Bonneville trailhead and run the PCT to Wind River, which meant we needed both our cars for shuttling. The great thing about thi...