Please read this whole email as it contains important information.

This Sunday I'm congratulating myself for completing the Advanced CHS graduation hike of thru-hiking the Enchantments. I wasn't originally planning to lead this hike, but the original hike leader became injured and as one of the few experienced hike leaders on this route, I was the only substitute available. The seven folks I hiked and spent the weekend with made it a very fun, if grueling, day!

Despite mostly rainy predictions, the weather in the Enchantments ended up not being too bad. It was overcast, but the clouds were so high we could see everything—including Glacier Peak many, many miles away. It was very pleasant on the climb up Aasgard Pass--it took us only two hours to get up. We lingered in the upper Enchantments so that picture takers could take their time getting the right shots and took several breaks to sit and eat and watch the water. We even saw a few mountain goats! We managed to remain mostly dry until coming down below Lake Vivianne and then it started to rain. It really kicked into high gear about 1/2 mile below Nada Lake and then we got really hard wind too. Coming down the last mile was really entertaining in the wind and rain—my umbrella kept turning inside out. We made it out at 7:00 PM, 13 hours after we started at 6:00 AM. We had a nice dinner at Gustav's afterward. And then several of us adjourned to the house we had rented for the weekend in Leavenworth and had a nice pre-bed drink together. I'm a little sore today, but otherwise no worse for wear.

Congratulations to the ACHS, CHS1 and CHS2 folks who completed their graduation hikes this weekend!

Note: Heidi Walker's company has been sponsoring a series of volunteer events with the Mt Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. The next event will be held at Mt Pilchuck Sept 27th. They're working on some erosion control on the trail. This would be a good opportunity for people to fulfill their maintenance requirement if they haven't already, or just come out and have a little fun on the trail. Here's the link and sign-up: website

September Hike Signup

There is still space in the two remaining graduation hikes: CHS 1: Iron Peak/Ingalls Lake loop and CHS 2: Crater Mtn. Both are on Saturday, September 27th.

ACHS/CHS Graduation Party

The graduation party for all three groups will be on the afternoon/evening of Saturday, October 4th. If you haven't already, please respond to the RSVP I sent out a couple of weeks ago so that we can get an accurate headcount for the evening.

Trail Maintenance Requirement

All of our scheduled WTA/CHS trips have been completed, so if you haven't completed your trail maintenance requirement yet, check out the note earlier in this email or you can schedule an outing on a non CHS trail maintenance trip with either WTA or some of the other outdoor organizations. Once you have completed your trail maintenance requirement, please email me to let me know what date you did it on as we keep track of this information for graduation purposes.

CHS Pictures:

The drop-dead date for providing pictures to be included in the graduation CD is September 28th. Please be sure to send all pictures to the email by Monday, Sept 29th. Be sure to include the name and date of the hike in the subject line.

If you want to view the pictures, click on the following link and you will see an album for each hike: website

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Kelly Cleman