Larch Marching in the Cascades (Part 2) - Oct. 7-9, 2021
It’s been a really hectic eight months but I wanted to finish writing about fall escapades before moving on to other trips. I took two days to rest after Stuart Lake/Horseshow Lake hoping that it would allow my knee to recover. I planned to do a day hike on Thursday and then head out to the Chelan Sawtooths again with my friend Tobin. While I’d initially thought to head to the North Cascades, I decided at the last minute to do a thru-hike of the Enchantments.
The ascent up to the core went by fairly quickly, including a quick stop off to take a photo of Colchuck Lake in the morning stillness. I accidentally punched through the ice over one of the small streams dotting Aasgard Pass, but by that time the sun had come out and it wasn’t too difficult to keep my wet feet warm. I’d seen most of the core on previous trips already. This was the first time in peak larch season, though. I made a quick loop up to Prusik Pass to see Gnome Tarn which has been on my bucket list for years. Unfortunately, the tarn was completely frozen and had no reflections on it. Still beautiful.
I was trying to be mindful of my pace since I still had to drive back to Seattle and then meet Tobin in time the next morning for another Sawtooths trip. All had been going fine until the descent of Aasgard. Both of my knees began to act up badly. With each impact on the ground it felt like a knife driving into the back of my knees. A descent I should have been able to manage in 30 minutes ended up taking nearly three times that, and nothing seemed to help much — Tylenol, changing my gait, a compression sleeve for my knee. This was incidentally the point at which I absolutely knew I needed to see a doctor/physical therapist when I got back home.
Eventually, I made it back to Colchuck Lake after which the situation improved dramatically. I think the last 90 minutes of hiking were in the dark with plenty of late stragglers behind me. I was a little nervous to go backpacking the next morning and seriously considered dropping out, but I decided to take the risk since I knew nothing on the planned trip would be as steep as Aasgard.
Without getting into too many details, Tobin and I climbed Courtney Peak and camped at Star Lake. We watched the sun set from Courtney before spending a relatively cold night at the lake. The trail was in amazing condition and I only had minor knee troubles descending the peak. A fantastic trip to round out larch season for me! I ended up seeing a physical therapist for several months once I got back home. He correctly identified that my issue was an extremely tight hamstring and was able to correct it by Christmas. Of course, I’ve been sedentary all winter and spring again and am frantically doing my prescribed stretches just as summer hiking season is nearly upon us again…
(Side note: after doing a bunch of hiking in 2022, my knee acted up on my very first hike, which, granted, was an incredibly dumb choice of hike for someone who hadn’t been on a trail since October. I made sure to do hamstring stretches on my off days and scale back my hiking in a way that allowed me to ease back in to the more difficult ones, and I’m happy to report in September 2022 that I haven’t had anymore knee problems. I’m planning to get out more this fall and winter and make sure I don’t experience anything like I did earlier this summer again.)
