…beyond nice.

Oi! My laziness knows no bounds! What is the point of my going to these magical backpacking destination and taking hundreds of pictures if I can’t be bothered to share them with others!?
Enchantments is often considered one of the most beautiful backpacking destination in Washington and if you’ve ever been there you’d probably agree. It’s so beautiful that it got too packed at some point and now there is a permit system in place to save this place from being over-used. Permit season ends October 15th so my friends and I have decided we’ll go there once a year when it’s open to everyone.
When we were there last year, we had clear blue skies every day and there was hardly a breeze in the air. It was the best weather one could hope for. In order to get to Lower Enchantment, we had to scramble up a steep section with large granite slabs, this section also known as “the wall”. While we scrambled up and down the “the wall” we talked about how suicidal it would be to attempt that same wall with snow on it. There was even a small spot where metal bars were attached to the granite slabs to reduce risk of injury.

This year, we knew we were in for some shitty weather. We expected some snow and knew that we might have to turn back at the wall (when we called the ranger station to check on conditions, they highly advised against going near the wall). There were four of us planning to go, Daniel, Fraser, Jason and me. Our fifth, Sto, dropped out because he didn’t have enough vacation days to cover this trip. The trip spans Friday October 19th to Monday the 22nd.
On Friday morning, we met at Fraser’s house at 8 and were down one Daniel because he caught the company flu. The three of us got to the trailhead by 11 and made our way toward our first destination 7 miles in, Snow Lakes.

The day started out nice and dry just like the trail, and then about 4 miles in, it started snowing HARD. By the time we got to our first camp, there was a good layer of snow everywhere. We set up camp, had some dinner and drinks and wandered around for a bit before bedding down for the night.

It was such good sleep to listen to snow softly fall on my tent.
The next day, we packed up and made our way to “the wall”. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit scared that my buddies would drag us into stuff that was way over our heads. I had horrific images of us being rescued from boulder ledges which made for sugary entertainment for the head while we slogged through the flat part of the hike. When we got to the wall, we found much of it covered in a good foot of snow which made finding the trial a bit more difficult, but at the same time, because the snow was so deep, it kept us in place just fine so we didn’t have to worry about sliding to our doom down various boulder fields.

We could tell we were the only foolhardy idiots to attempt this trip because we had to stamp down our trail through fresh snow. The hike up was grueling and mentally draining but god damned was it ever worth it.
Howling wind pushed us around once we got to the top, but we managed to drag ourselves over to Leprechaun Lake. We wandered around to ensure we had the best camp spot for view and wind shelter. Since we were the only ones there, we had all of Enchantments to choose from. We found a nice spot, set up camp and proceeded to eat and get drunk off our asses warm ourselves up. Because we had the place to ourselves, we shameless did our loud drunk talk until well past 1 in the morning.
The next morning we woke up and set off to check out all the lakes in Lower Enchantment. It snowed on and off all day.
To be continued…

Slide of hike here.

No Comments »

I’m alive and well.  The trip was amazing, but it was quite different from how I remembered it.

Here’s a picture of Leprechaun Lake on October 21, 2006:

Then here’s the same lake from a different angle October 20, 2007:

I’ll do a proper write-up of the place when I’m not working my ass off.  Hope everyone else had a great weekend as well.

No Comments »

Whoever you are that is in charge of weather for Seattle this year, you suck!  It’s the day before my annual backpacking trip, and there’s supposed to be a wind storm coming through and lights have been flickering at the office all day.  I had to work both days last weekend and I hear from people that the weather was fantastic?  Fuck you, you’re fired!
Less than a year ago, Seattlites scoffed at the idea of people being afraid of a little wind.  What wind coming this way?  We should all relax and try to harness some of that natural energy and do the earth a favor?  I’ll just go back to sipping my latte and toting my green bag to Whole Foods for some fine fresh produce.  Now we hear “wind storm” and people freak out, trample over each other to get to the power generators and stock up on Twinkies and bottled water.  During the last major storm, my girlfriend’s house was out of power for 2 weeks, she was 5 months pregnant at the time so she and her husband ran to her mom’s house.  When they went back to check on the house about a week after, there was a pool of blood in front of their fridge from the freezer thaw.
My trip is supposed to be 4 days/3 nights.  On the plus side, being out in the woods means I will not having to worry about trivial things like power outage, on the other side, I have to worry about other minor details - like whether or not my shelter will hold up in the storm.
Here’s another prayer for better weather.  In case you worry about me being out there, I’m about 4/5 of the way through the last Harry Potter book, I’ll be back soon enough to finish that damned thing.

No Comments »

My backpacking buddies and I made a pact to return to the most beautiful backpacking destination in Washington every year the weekend after permit season is over. That weekend is this coming one. I’ve been wavering on whether or not I should go because the weather has been biting cold and rainy and our project is going Alpha this Friday. I assumed half the backpacking crew would be on the same fence because of the weather, but we met up during lunch today to discuss trip plans and everyone was gung-ho over the trip, which got me equally giddy in no time.
The last time I was this giddy was…oh gee, for the last trip, so it seems like the only thing that gets me excited these days is dragging a ridiculously heaving pack up some mountain in freezing ass rain – glutton for punishment that I am. I’ve been in a bit of an odd mental funk these days and no amount of partying or hanging out with friends was able to shake me out of it. This mental funk is something that I think hits a lot of the 30 something crowd…I call it “The Beginning of Feeling Mortal.”
Hitting 31 was when I first felt a twinge of understanding that I will one day die from old age, prior to that, death by aging is a concept as foggy as counting to one trillion. Mind you, I understand I’m still far from “old age” but it’s just no longer a number that I can’t count to.  With that feeling came a need to make peace with the idea of death, which led to the need to constantly over-analyze life – to question every moment because “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Then the more I questioned life on making peace with death, the more I came across the answer of simply stop pulling myself out of moment and to live a good life…but if a good life requires examining, I’m back to square one.
Obviously, I’m going crazy here and I’m two steps away from committing myself, but before I do that I have important unfinished business to attend to, like finishing Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. It’s so damned good that I’m a little pissed that I didn’t think of half the puzzle concepts they came up with. I’m a bit irked by how many times they make you go back to the Ocean King dungeon but I freaking love the boomerang. They should consider renaming “Legend of Zelda” to “Legend of Cutting Grass” because that’s all that you really do in all the games.

No Comments »

Sorry for my complete lack of posting, I’ve been busy drowning my sorrow, now that backpacking season is officially over and snowboarding season has yet to come, in much too much alcohol and definitely too much anime.

I’ve taken up dorking out by watching every episode of Bleach from start to 143 in the last week.  I’ve been told I should always watch Death Note and Shaman King, so here’s to having zero life.

Things will be a bit quiet around here because I plan on jumping back to my old hobby of reading snippets of too many books and never completing one.

In the mean time, I hope everyone is having a great autumn and may there be many hot slutty costumed girls in your near future.

1 Comment »