About this permit
The Enchantment Permit Area sits inside the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in Washington's Cascade Mountains: rugged glaciated peaks and a chain of lakes ranging from 4,400 to 7,800 feet. The Forest Service is blunt about the trails: "Although the area is high use, trails are very primitive with steep, rocky sections. Travel is difficult in areas."
The Core Enchantment Zone is the hardest of the five zones to get into, and the quota is written in people rather than groups. A total of 24 visitors may enter the Core Zone per day. Sixteen of those spaces come from the advanced lottery held each February; the remaining eight come from the daily lottery, which runs May through October and requires you to be inside a geofenced area near Leavenworth to apply. Group size tops out at eight, and once the advanced lottery is done your group size cannot be increased.
Permits are required for overnight stays from May 15 through October 31. The rest of the year no permit is needed, though the Forest Service asks visitors to self-register at the trailhead box.
The route
The Core Enchantment Zone is the high lake basin between Aasgard Pass and Upper Snow Lake. The Forest Service describes two routes in. The first begins at the Stuart Lake Trailhead and travels past Colchuck Lake (4.2 miles and 2,100 feet on the Colchuck Lake Trail), then climbs very steeply to Aasgard Pass on loose rocky terrain. The second begins at the Snow Lakes Trailhead, climbing 6.5 miles and 4,100 feet to Upper Snow Lake, then ascending slabs of bedrock that can be treacherous if icy.
Once you are in, travel is on an unmaintained route often marked only by cairns, and the Forest Service asks visitors to take care not to trample sensitive vegetation. The lakes across the permit area range from 4,400 to 7,800 feet.
One rule makes the trip far more manageable than it looks: because of the long and arduous approach, groups holding a Core Zone permit may camp in any of the other zones on their entry or exit. That turns a brutal single push into a staged trip.
Why it matters
The Core is the one zone whose quota is written in people rather than groups, which tells you how tightly the Forest Service holds it. Sixteen of the 24 daily spaces come from the February advanced lottery and eight from the daily lottery. Everything about the permit is designed around the fact that the basin is small, the vegetation is fragile, and demand for overnight permits far exceeds the number available.
The feeling
Getting here costs you something either way. From Colchuck the route climbs very steeply on loose rock; from Snow Lakes it goes up bedrock slabs that ice over without warning. Then it levels out and you are in a basin of pale granite and lakes with larches scattered through it, and there are at most 23 other people in the whole zone. You set the tent on rock, not vegetation, and watch the goats work the slabs.
