Now that our bike problem had been solved we went back to Leavenworth to do what the locals call the classic must do climb of the area, Prussik Peak. We still had to deal with getting a permit so we woke up at the crack of dawn and headed over to the permit office to try our hand at entering the daily lottery to get our designated area. Pulling into the parking lot, we were the 3rd car to arrive and thankfully that's all we had to compete with. Fortunately for all of us, we all were after permits to camp in different areas so we were all able to get what we wanted for the day. We got 2 nights in our basin because we wanted to make it well worth our time after we hiked up a few thousand grueling feet up 7 miles to our campsite. According to our guidebook this approach is the mellowest but longest of all the areas that take you into the climb. For it being classified as the most relaxed way in it certainly felt unrelentless as we never took a downhill step the entire way in. Even with the steepness of the hike we made it into camp in a pretty quick time! I typically set myself goals when we hike in to keep myself at a constant pace and by starting the hike at noon I had set us a 6 hour goal to make it to camp. And...at 4:30 we were rolling into our home away from home for the next 2 days! WOOHOO! we got right down to setting up camp, filtering water, and making dinner. We had brought in 1 extra plain tortilla shell to divide up between both nights for dinner. We decided that if you smell your food really really really hard that you could actually have more than whats actually in front of you. Hence the picture of me really enjoying the smell of my tortilla! :)
After dinner was done we crawled into bed somewhere around 8pm. We had another early morning wake up and needed some shut eye before another long day. I think we got up at 4 or 5 ate our usual peanutbutter role up and coffee and then got on the ol' dusty trail. The hike was kind of a slap in the rear end to start the day off. We had 3 miles to go before hitting the base of the climb and the trail went straight up out of the basin which we steadily pushed through. We were going up the West Ridge which has a crux pitch of 5.6 and is listed at 7 pitches but we did it in roughly 3 pitches.
Even though we got to the base of the climb fairly early there were 2 other parties that we caught up to really really quickly. Luckily the bottle-neck happened on a huge ludge where we sprawled out and ate some snacks while we waited for them to finish ahead of us. The weather wasn't terrible but compared to the day before it looked pretty ugly. It looked like a snow storm was headed our way but thankfully it wasn't windy or even really that cold. With one more pitch to the summit we went on up and took some breathtaking photo's of the area that we looked out into. This area is called the Enchantments and an extremely popular area for hikers and climbers. It's a small region that is unlike it's surrounding areas. In the middle of Jungle-like territory these huge granite spires and snowfields erupt out of the ground creating a harsh and rugged terrain.
On our descent as one would have guessed, it started snowing on us. Nothing that left much on the ground but we did put on our rain jackets to keep dry. In no time we had made it back to camp with plenty of evening left to relax and read our books. We did some sleeping in the next morning as all we had to do was hike out to the van. After a relaxing breakfast we packed up camp and headed out at about 11AM. This area really is very very popular, when we got to the trailhead it was like an over populated ant hill with more cars than should ever fit in the parking lot. We scarcely could back out of our spot but once we finagaled our way around we left town to begin our drive to Washington Pass. We stopped at a rest area to clean the van and take a break in the grass. I even had to part with my much beloved and well traveled pink water bottle. It has seen many good days, but it's time had come to rest in peace in the trashcan. :(
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