With resplendent larches, rugged granite peaks, and a fraction of the crowds of the Enchantments, the Chelan Sawtooths are a great alternative to some of the more popular larch havens in Washington State. Katie, my dad, and I planned to spend a few days camping, summitting some peaks, and appreciating the golden fall color.
We made the longgg drive from the Seattle area and located the West Fork Buttermilk Trailhead. Evening was already fast approaching, but our goal was to reach Star Lake that night to maximize our time on the trip. Plus, with a long, relatively flat trail ahead of us, it would make for an enjoyable night hike.
We got started at 6:15 pm and began the long journey towards Fish Creek Pass. The trail was gentle, and darkness set in relatively quickly. None of us were feeling 100%, having just been cramped in a car for 5 hours, but we made steady progress. The trail began to gain elevation more seriously as we approached the pass, and it wasn’t long before we were cresting the saddle, over 6 and a half miles from the trailhead. Even in the darkness, we could tell that we were entering a spectacular setting that was packed to the gills with larches.
From the pass, it was a short but steep journey down into the Star Lake basin. It took us a bit of searching to find a site in the dark because there were a couple parties already occupying some of the prime tent sites. But after a bit we found a nice spot tucked back amongst some trees away from the lake. We proceeded to set up camp and were satisfied with our effort to get there, knowing that it would set us up for success the next day.
When the sun finally rose the next day (it took a while to come over Star Peak), we were pretty stunned by the sheer number of larches and the beauty of the lake area. I had never seen so much golden color in one place in my life. It seemed like we had timed our trip perfectly!
Katie was content sitting by the lake and reading for the morning, while my dad and I set off for Oval Peak. Oval is the tallest peak in this part of the Sawtooths, and a bit of a geographic outlier from the main crest of the range. It is a massive mountain, but not very steep and is mostly a giant pile of rocks. Nevertheless, it was begging to be climbed, so we headed back up and over Fish Creek Pass and descended the other side for about a half mile. Here we located a faint side trail that would take us over to in the direction of Oval.
This trail was in surprisingly good shape, with only occasional blowdowns we had to navigate. A mile and a half of walking from the turnoff brought us to a pretty lake that I’m not sure of the name of. From here we could see the massive hump of Oval rising above the lake to the northwest. Here we cut across country, aiming for the obvious ridgeline above us. Travel was easy and open before steepening slightly as we joined the ridgeline. The ridgeline was simply 1100 feet of class 2 talus hopping, with amazing views of the golden larch basins and surrounding peaks. We took our time on the summit, savoring the glorious fall day we were having.
Our return trip followed the exact same route in reverse and posed no major difficulty. The whole Oval excursion took a decent bit longer than I would have expected – the peak is deceptively far away from Star Lake.
Katie had just started to wonder where we were, so had wandered up the pass, and we met her with near perfect timing on top. We then proceeded to head back down to the lake as a group, spending some glorious hours swimming and hanging out by the lake. There were a truly amazing number of larches ringing the lake, which seemed to cast everything in a warm glow.
After a highly relaxing afternoon, we gathered up our daypacks and began the trudge back up Fish Creek Pass in pursuit of Courtney Peak. Since it was one of the easiest Bulgers and quite close to camp, our plan was to catch the sunset from the top. The ascent turned out to be quite easy, rising about 800 feet in a short distance on a class 2 ridgeline above the pass.
The summit had amazing views back to Star Lake and the granite flanks of Star Peak. There were also great vistas out toward the rest of the more distant Cascades – with the sun setting in the direction of Bonanza and the Fernow group across Lake Chelan. Satisfied with our sunset viewing experience, we began our short descent from the peak in the dusk light and settled in for another night at camp.
An ascent of Star Peak, the third Bulger of the trip, was on tap for our third and final day. We planned to get an early start to climb the peak, hike out, and drive all the way back to Seattle that day. We had been dubiously eyeing the “trail” up to join the ridge of Star from camp and it looked horribly steep and loose. We could see just a faint line of lighter rock where people had walked and carved a path into the steep choss. As with many things in the mountains, the view was subject to a lot of foreshortening, and the actual ascent wasn’t too steep at all. We made quick work of this, before wrapping around the south side of a knob and rejoining the obvious ridge.
We made quick work of the ridge, with some fun class 2-3 scrambling. Star Peak was definitely the most interesting of the three peaks on the trip. The summit views were spectacular again, and we took our time appreciating them. It was a little bit colder and windier that day, a sign that fall was indeed coming, but still had crystal clear skies.
We eventually reversed course and followed the same route back to the lake, where we sadly began packing up camp. The trip back up Fish Creek Pass (my third of the trip) was bittersweet. We had accomplished all our goals and seen some amazing larches, but it was still sad to tear ourselves away from such a beautiful place.
The hike out was uneventful but long, and the miles seemed to stretch on forever in the flat valley. We eventually did reach the car and began our journey back to the city – with a stop for Mexican food at a food truck in Chelan.
Final Stats: 25.95 miles / 9061 feet of gain
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