Chatter Creek, Lake Edna — Saturday, Sep. 30, 2023

First off, ignore everything from 2022 and prior about there only being 2 other people on the trail all day. This trail has been discovered! I must have seen 20 trail runners, 20 day hikers and 10 backpackers each day. I shared camp at Lake Edna with 4 other people, and saw another couple hiking over Ladies Pass at 5pm Saturday evening, presumably to Snowgrass or Lake Florence.

The report from the previous day by Kidz Won't Hike and Ngie offer a better description than I could. I too tried Cape Horn and found conditions to be treacherous. I followed the footprints to where they ended, which GAIA showed to be 80ft from the summit, but being alone, with no helmet and not having told anyone I might scramble, it felt like a Darwin Award to continue. 

Temps at the lake overnight were in the mid-20s. I had my 0* bag and 5.4R pad, plus down booties, puffy and pants, so I was toasty. The cap on my filter froze, even though it was in my backpack, but the filter and water didn't freeze. There was a layer of ice over part of the lake Sunday morning. Microspikes were helpful for getting down to the basin/meadow and up to Ladies Pass. 

The larches are spectacular right now. In the basin at 6300ft, they are in all stages of turning, from green-gold to fiery gold to the last stage of orange-pink before their needles drop. Up at 6700, at the lake, they are mostly dried out and the needles are falling, though a couple are holding steady. Hopefully the decent weather this week/end will allow a few more people to see them before they are done. Really glad I did this one, instead of joining the Conga line for the Enchantments again. Nate did Little Annapurna and said Asgard was icy and treacherous, the core was inundated with thru-hikers, and the climb required breaking trail on boulders with 4ft holes in between where the snow hadn't compacted.