Dragontail Peak

Summit: 8,845ft

14m 5,800ft gain

Who wouldn’t want to climb a mountain named Dragontail Peak? Along with the sweet name it’s the 2nd highest peak in the Stuart Range and the 19th highest peak in the State. It’s also 1st peak to catch your eye when walking up to Colchuck Lake, the grand entrance to the Enchantments. The easiest route takes you up Aasgard Pass. From there it’s a relatively short and easy scramble to the summit.   

From many trips to Colchuck Lake and the Enchantments:

From Aasgard Pass:

From Hex Mountain (center & right):

1st Trip: 7/12/19

You can certainly hike Dragontail in a day (we have done a thru hike of the Enchantments in a day) but being so beautiful it’s a shame to rush. Thanks to Ellie we were able to get a walk up permit to camp at Colchuck Lake. They always save a few permits for walk ups and we were the only ones that wanted Colchuck after not getting core enchantment permits. We started later in the afternoon and quickly scurried up the 4 miles and 2,200ft to Colchuck Lake. 

We’ve been here a few times and remembered a little beach on the other side of the lake right before the trail starts to go up towards Aasgard Pass. So we followed the trail around the lake and boulder hoped until we arrived at the beach and thankfully no one was there! 

The view across the water towards Cashmere Mountain was wonderful!

And so was the view of our objective behind us. 

We had a fun night but were eventually driven into the tent by mosquitoes. 

Would have been nice to camp in the core enchantments but we were happy to have light packs for next day. Sunset was nice, fish were even jumping out of the water to catch a peek.

We were up early the next day and for the first time we had the trail up Aasgard all to ourselves! 

We made it up quickly with fresh legs and were greeted by the sweetest mountain goats!

We stopped to admire the first little tarn and check out the route ahead.

The rest of the trail felt like an extension of Aasgard outside of one steep snow patch. It was really cool to look down on the core enchantments!

At 8am we had the summit to ourselves and the light was the best of the day! Rainier(Tahoma):

Glacier Peak(Dakobed):

Mount Adams(Pahto):

Mount Baker(Koma Kulshan):

Sloan Peak:

Mount Daniel:

Colchuck Lake and Cashmere Mountain:

It felt like we could reach out and touch Mount Stuart:

Check out the Dragontail!

Perfect morning!

We could see our tent on the one patch of beach.

After 30 minutes of enjoying the summit we retraced our steps back to our tent.

Ran into a few more mountain goats and witnessed one eating with a chipmunk.

We also saw a Marmot.

Back at our tent we had some lunch and then packed up. 

Of course we made a few more stops on the way out to gaze at Dragontail. It is always an enchanting experience here!