About this permit
The Colchuck Zone is one of five overnight permit zones in the Enchantment Permit Area, inside the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. USFS allocates three groups per day to it, a separate allocation from the Core Zone, which is counted in people rather than groups. A group can be up to eight people, and the permit is good for up to 14 days in the zone named on it.
USFS defines the zone as the entire Colchuck Lake Trail from its junction with the Stuart Lake Trail to a contour line mid-slope below Aasgard Pass at 6,500 feet. Camping immediately below Aasgard Pass is not allowed on this permit. You may camp in any established campsite at Colchuck Lake, and climbers may use established bivouac sites below Colchuck Col and elsewhere in the upper basin.
Permits come three ways, and the one to set an alert on is the online reservation calendar: whatever the February advance lottery leaves unclaimed goes back on sale there, and so do cancellations. The other two are the advance lottery itself, which opens in February, and the daily lottery, which holds one permit from each zone and requires you to be inside the geofence on a location-enabled device to enter. A visitor may only obtain one permit per season.
The route
From the Stuart Lake Trailhead the trail climbs through forest along Mountaineer Creek and splits at the Colchuck junction. USFS puts the trail to Colchuck Lake at 4.2 miles, gaining 2,100 feet.
The zone boundary matters more here than at any other Enchantments permit. USFS defines the Colchuck Zone as the entire Colchuck Lake Trail from its junction with the Stuart Lake Trail up to a contour line mid-slope below Aasgard Pass, at 6,500 feet, and camping immediately below Aasgard Pass on a Colchuck permit is not allowed. Camp in an established site at the lake, or at a bivouac site below Colchuck Col.
Day use across all five zones is open to anyone with the free self-issued trailhead permit, so the Core Zone is a legal day hike from your Colchuck camp. That is what makes this permit the value play: same country, a third of the lottery pressure, and no full pack on Aasgard.
Why it matters
Colchuck is the way into the Enchantments that does not require you to win the hardest permit in Washington. The Core Zone takes 24 people a day and is counted by the head; the Colchuck Zone gets its own separate allocation of three groups a night, and from a camp at the lake you can day hike the whole Core basin without carrying a pack over Aasgard Pass.
The feeling
Colchuck Lake is the colour of antifreeze and sits directly under a thousand feet of granite. Dragontail and Colchuck Peak close off the far end, the Colchuck Glacier hangs between them, and the whole basin goes into shadow early because of it. Day hikers stream out around five and the lake goes quiet.
