The Rat Creek Affair

Rainer and I woke early to get a jump start on what we knew would be a long day. Our next outing was not to be a technical climb, but more of a cross-country enduro event. We slept in my old Ford Econoline panel van at the trailhead parking lot not far up the Icicle Creek Road. It wasn’t your classic, middle-of-the-night alpine start, but it was good enough.

Packing light with summit packs, wind shells, gaiters, water bottles, some food, and our ice axes, we headed up the trail on a crisp spring morning wearing mountain boots, shorts, and t-shirts. It was pretty chilly early in the day, but it would warm up to be searingly hot. I had hiked up the Snow Lakes trail before, laden with a heavy pack filled with overnight gear and food and fuel enough for a few days of camping and exploring the fabled Enchantment Lakes.

Our traverse was back in the days before the current permit system, and we came on a schedule that we determined, driven by a recent weather forecast and a whim, not by a lottery date. We camped at our discretion and never saw another person while we were up there. That may be hard to believe now, but then we had it all to ourselves.

What is currently known as the Core Zone, which is the heart of the Enchantment Lakes Basin, is an expansive environment, and so it would be easy not to see any other parties even if they were up there. Backpackers came to camp and explore the Enchantment Lakes, taking several days to do so. Unlike today, few, if any, hikers would traverse the basin in a day.

It seemed like a perverse, outrageous, crazy idea when I conceived it and called on Rainer to join me in doing it. It would be about 20 miles with well over 6,000 feet of cumulative elevation gain. He readily agreed to my ‘Enchantments in a Day’ concept. We did not think that anyone had yet done it. That and the physical challenge were a big part of the appeal. Someone may have traversed the Enchantments, but that sure wasn’t obvious. No published record existed, anywhere. On these kinds of fringe exploits, you never really knew. And it didn’t matter. You just went out and did them.

We practically flew up the trail past Nada and Snow Lakes with our flyweight packs. It was a heady feeling as the elevation gain could be a killer with a heavy backpack. We paused briefly at the lakes along the way to slake our thirst as the day grew hotter. We were on a mission. Once in the zone, we kept constantly moving, passing Lake Viviane, Leprechaun and Perfection on the way to Prusik Pass.

We each paused before the dramatic spire of Prusik Peak for the obligatory hero shot, Rainer’s bare-chested visage looking far more heroic than mine. We lingered at the pass, took a quick look back, and then, ice axes in hand, plunge stepped down a steep snowfield towards Shield Lake. Both exuberant and pumped, the day had been unfurling before us, as amazing as we had imagined it would be.

The feeling would not last. The next section of our route was not routinely traveled. There was no trail. That had ended at the pass. Our traverse had been very enjoyable up to the snowfield descent from Prusik Pass, but once we reached the Rat Creek drainage, it all went straight to hell.

The section down Rat Creek back to Icicle Creek Road was surprisingly torturous. We ended up bushwhacking out and down through the drainage, up and over boulders, in and out of the water, and through thickets of slide alder and Devil’s Club. Also known as the devil’s walking stick, its erect and woody stems have despicable, needle-sharp spines. Their scientific name seems apt, Oplopanax horridus. The noxious plants were impossible to avoid and the profuse woody spines stung like hell. That part of the route was a form of self-imposed torture, which made it epic, which was about the only good thing you could say about it. Epic was cool. But the price you had to pay often was not.

Once Rat Creek finally entered Icicle Creek, we made an improvised crossing and clambered back up to the dirt road. The overall miles covered, the accumulated elevation gain and the final bushwhack had taken us to our physical limits. We were both thrashed. We stumbled down the road in those final miles, our feet hurt, and we were famished. It was remarkable that we had not lost our sense of humor. But that last bushwhack had been so ridiculously stupid that we had to laugh about it.

That descent from Prusik Pass sure seemed like a good idea at the time. It was a considered decision as the route down Aasgard Pass and exit via the Stuart Lake Trail would have been impossibly long when combined with a walk from that trailhead back down the roads to my van. It was a variant of an Enchantments traverse that was yet to come.

These days Enchantment day-trippers make a 20-mile traverse from one trailhead to another by having either two vehicles or a shuttle for the drive between trailheads. The recent popularity of today’s traverse is, of course, driven by the extreme difficulty of getting an overnight permit. If it were easy to get an overnight permit, few would opt for the arduous traverse.

For us, back in the ’70s, it was just an inspiration that had nothing to do with permits, as there were none. We had neither a second vehicle nor a shuttle and planned to walk from our exit point at the end of Rat Creek down the road a few miles and back to the initial trailhead parking lot and my van.

At least the whole adventure would make a good story over beers, a story that would endure well into the future, and it was our epic story. And we would soon be engaged in the telling of it for our friends. It was that good. And if you, the reader, think this sounds interesting and that it might be a fun alternative route instead of today’s usual Stuart Lake trailhead to Snow Lake trailhead route (or the reverse direction), I have some advice for you.

“Don’t even think about it!”

This is an excerpt from a chapter titled ‘We Could Be Heroes,’ a mountaineering adventure story about our one-day Enchantment traverse and two other exploits. The story is told in my mountain memoir, Banquet of the Infinite, which is available as an illustrated eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.