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Colchuck trailhead > Snow lakes trailhead, 19.55miles, 5,300ft of gain, 8.5 hours💨
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← All stories Colchuck trailhead > Snow lakes trailhead, 19.55miles, 5,300ft of gain, 8.5 hours💨
Colchuck trailhead > Snow lakes trailhead, 19.55miles, 5,300ft of gain, 8.5 hours💨
Let me start by saying, anyone can be a trail runner and running on anything but road checks as a pass in my books. But for some reason, I had it in my head that in order for me to call myself a trail runner in the PNW, I’d need to answer pass the enchantments thru test. Running (and walking) 20 miles through one of the most well known thru hikes in WA felt like a rite of passage. If we could do this, then sure, we could call ourselves trail runners.
We honestly really surprised ourselves with this one. We had some insane logistical challenges to pull this off (more on that below), and we were both anticipating this day to be much longer. Max thought we’d finish in 10hrs, and I was betting 12hrs car to car. Looking back, I don’t think either of us really understoond how time and walking speed work 😅. We thought we’d maybe run one section, but mostly just fast walk as much as we could muster.
We knew the shuttles were dropping people off at the Colchuck lake trailhead, which is where most folks choose to start, at 5:30am, so we opted to arrive at 5am to give ourselves a bit of a head start. Since it’s not peak summer anymore, we were in darkness for about an hour and a half. We tried to shuffle/lightly jog when it was flat and walked relatively quickly on the uphill sections. We ended up getting to Colchuck lake in just under 2 hours, and by then the sun was coming up.
We had mentally prepared for Aasgards Pass (2K+ ft of gain in under a mile 🤯) to be the most physically demanding part of our day. Aasgards pass is by no means fun, but it didn’t hurt as bad as we thought. We got up the pass in just over an hour, and rewarded ourselves with our bagel sandwiches and pickles.
We casually meandered through the ‘core’ zone (aka the zone you want to camp in if you win the lottery permits) and enjoyed the sunshine. We knew we were too early for peak larch season, but we did see 1 full yellow tree!
Then it came time to descend to Snow lakes. This was the most mentally challenging part for us, because we were ready to be done 😅. The descent is kind of a drag, because it’s steep, is easy to get off trail, and it’s root-y. We didn’t move super quick here.
Once we got to Snow lakes, we refilled our waters and then decided that we’d start jogging. My goal was to run this section, so we tried to stay true to that and kept moving. There were sections where we slowed down to go over rocks or to eat a quick snack, but for the most part I’d say we ran about 75% of the way from Snow lakes to the trailhead! At some point our legs just kicked into gear, and the pain went away and we got back to the car wayyyy quicker than anticipated.
We celebrated with our car snacks (cookies and Coke and Mela Water) and then hopped in the car to retrieve our other car from the starting trailhead, and rewarded ourselves with sausages and gingerbread cookies for dinner.
So I think we call ourselves trail runners now???
To make this happen, you either need 2 cars or to pay for a shuttle ride or to try your luck at hitch hiking. We’re not that brave, so hitch hiking wasn’t an option for us, and all the shuttle spots were full. So as a single car family, we decided we’d rent a car (we used credit card points so it’s free right?).
We rented a cabin in Leavenworth so we could actually get some sleep the night before and we’d have a place for Kashi to hang out. Some people full send it by waking up at 2am and driving the 3 hours from Seattle the same day, but honestly I feel too old for that. If we didn’t have the dog, we would have slept at the trailhead in our car.
For us, our journey started with a nail in our tire. Max quickly found a place that would replace our tires and he took our car to the shop while I took a lyft to pick up our other rental car. I grabbed groceries and drove out to Leavenworth to start pulling together our food + snacks. Max ended up being ~2 hours behind me because the car people changed the wrong tires so he had to have them fix it and then he started his drive out 🥲.
We packed everything the night before, ate dinner and tried to get to sleep relatively early.
The next morning we caravanned to the trailheads, dropping the rental car off at the Snow lakes trailhead, and storing our car snacks in that car (this is critical if you want to treat yourself to snacks when you’re done). Then I hopped in our other car and we drove to Colchuck late trailhead to start our day.
🗺️ AllTrails link (Get 30% off AllTrails subscription with this link)
🥾 Gear
Would we do it again? 100% and next year I’d time it for the larches to be peak yellow (typically 1st week of October), and maybe we’ll even go for sub-6 hours???
Highlights include
Lowlights include
What would we do differently? Honestly, I felt like we were really dialed in for this, so these things are relatively small things I’d do differently:
