Colchuck Lake below Dragontail

Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.

Colchuck Lake sits at about 5,570 feet in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, eight miles west of Leavenworth, Washington. The cirque is bounded by Dragontail Peak and Colchuck Peak, the southern wall of the Stuart Range.

Rock flour. Colchuck Glacier grinds granitic and dolomitic stone into particles a few microns wide, and the meltwater carries the flour into the lake. The fine particles scatter shorter wavelengths of sunlight, so the water reads as turquoise rather than blue.

The standard route from the Stuart Lake Trailhead at the end of Eightmile Road is about eight miles round trip with roughly twenty-two hundred feet of climb. Most parties take five to seven hours including time at the shore.

Day hikers do not need a wilderness permit, but the trailhead requires a Northwest Forest Pass and the parking lot fills before sunrise on summer weekends. Overnight stays in the Enchantments core zone require a permit issued by lottery through the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

Late July through early October. Earlier than that and the upper basin holds snow and the trail is icy under the talus; later than that and the road and the lake begin to freeze. The first snow usually returns by Halloween.

Dragontail Peak is the highest summit of the southern Stuart Range at 8,840 feet, rising directly above the south shore of Colchuck Lake. Its north face holds the small Colchuck Glacier and is one of the major alpine rock walls in the Cascades.

Swimming is allowed and the lake is shallow near the inlet beach. The water rarely climbs above the mid-fifties Fahrenheit because of the constant cold input from Colchuck Glacier above. Most visitors wade rather than swim.

Yes. Colchuck Lake is the south gate to the Enchantments, and most through-hikers spend a long lunch at its shore before climbing Aasgard Pass. A Small or Medium with a handwritten note from the studio reads as a place the recipient knows by foot.

The piece carries cool turquoise greens and granite greys. It sits well in Mountain-modern, Pacific Northwest-modern, and Jewel-tone Maximalist rooms, settings with natural wood, wool, and stone. The colour answers well to deep forest green and warm cedar.

Yes. Alpine-modern has held since the rise of Pacific Northwest design houses in the late 2010s and now feeds Coastal-modern and Mountain-modern interiors across the West. Tiles in glacier blues and granite greys are core to that palette.

Above a standard sofa the Large reads as the focal piece. For a wider wall above a console or a credenza, a four-tile Mural carries the cirque horizontal, and a nine-tile Mural takes a full wall above a sectional or a long console run.

Yes, with the Dura Satin or Matte finish. Both are scratch-resistant and engineered for vertical wet installations like backsplashes and shower walls. The Glossy finish is for framed wall art in dry rooms.

A soft microfibre cloth and water. The colour lives in the ceramic surface beneath a thin clear finish, so it does not lift with cleaning. Skip abrasive pads and bleach-based sprays.

Yes. The work is original to Reid Wender's studio in Knoxville, Tennessee. We do not license, resell, or stock other artists' work, and each piece is hand-finished in-house before it ships.