We were up and on the trail at 3:40am, August 3rd. We were taking the standard Peggy’s Pond via Cathedral Pass Trail. We flew through the first forested 5 miles and 2,500 feet up to Peggy’s Pond. Cathedral Rock is a really gorgeous formation and towers over Peggy’s Pond. At this point the hiking gets a bit steeper as you begin to ascend above the treeline to the ridge. We climbed up onto the ridgeline as the sun rose behind Cathedral Rock and we were treated to some pretty epic views. 

I’m happy we had the helmets with us as there is a lot of loose rock and class 3 hiking and one fairly exposed “bouldering” move to cross over a large rock. 

It’s pretty confusing on the map but there are two Mount Daniel summits. The first is the Eastern  summit (listed at 7,904) which you pass underneath to continue onto the “true summit”. Behind this Eastern summit is a very steep face covered in scree and loose gravel you must cross. There is a ~200 foot section in here that was very slick with loose rock and the sketchiest portion of the day. The last couple miles take significantly longer than the first few miles. 

They mentioned the snow and ice was entirely melted out. After wrapping around the east summit we ascended another loose gravel pile that required some route finding and very careful footing. Walking through the snow field may have avoided this but we had already ditched the spikes. 

You rejoin a ridgeline and it’s pretty smooth sailing to the top of Mount Daniel from here. The true top is a little 50 foot scramble up to the top of a rock pile where we signed into the registry. We topped out at 9:40am (6 hours later) and the views were certainly worth the effort. You tower over a number of alpine lakes (including Pea soup Lake just to the north) and have great views of Rainier, Helens, and Adams to the south as well as Baker and Glacier Peak to the north. 

Then we began the long, uneventful haul back to car and was on the road back to Seattle at 2:40pm. While AllTrails has this hike listed as 15miles 5,400 feet we clocked this closer to 17miles and 6,000 feet on Kaitlyn’s Garmin and took us just about 11 hours. 

We left the Airbnb in Wenatchee at 4am on Saturday, August 9th and drove back through Leavenworth to the end point of the trail (Snow Lakes Trailhead parking lot). We stashed a car and made our way further up the road to the start of the trail. The two points are only 24 minutes apart. Both ends were packed with people and there were a number of shuttle vans transporting hikers to the start of the hike.

From Colchuck you proceed around the lake and then up Asgard Pass. This pass is the majority of the vertical for the entire hike and there is a bit of loose rock and scrambling. It’s fairly steep but it wasn’t nearly as bad as we were mentally prepped for and we had some epic early morning views over the lake.

As you continue along the trail you weave around lake after lake after lake. There’s some fun rock scrambling and we saw at least 15 mountain goats that seemed completely unbothered by all the hikers. It’s truly a unique hike and the camp areas all look incredible (probably why it’s so hard to get the permit). 

From the top of Asgard Pass you’re pretty much descending for the remaining 14 miles of the hike. Eventually it turns into a bit of a slog as there is some uneven terrain to descend over. The last portion is a fairly flat dirt path through the woods as we (finally) descended to the car we spotted. We retrieved the car at the other end and made our way back to Leavenworth. While AllTrails has this listed at 18.5 miles the general consensus is it’s probably closer to 20.5 miles. It took us about 12.5 hours with plenty of scenic views at the lakes.