Backpacking The Enchantments Part 1: The Walk-Up Lottery
Our day began at the Leavenworth Ranger Station, where we hoped to score a rare permit to camp in The Enchantments, one of Washington State’s most beloved nature areas.
The entire Enchantments Trail is a 20-mile hike with an elevation gain of nearly 5,000 feet that weaves through pine forests, boulder fields, and sketchy sections of scree. Eventually, you make it to a series of stunning alpine ponds and lakes (700 of them to be exact). And most of them live up to their excessive names: Isolation Lake, Inspiration Lake, and Perfection Lake, to name a few.
“There haven’t been many people showing up to the daily walk-up lottery the past few days,” said the friendly ranger on the phone when I called to verify the lottery system for the third time. Good, I thought. I was not looking forward to a friction-filled process and having to possibly resort to a back-up plan (though, let’s be honest, there is no shortage of gorgeous outdoor adventures in the Central Cascades).
Enchantment permits have gotten a lot more difficult to obtain since 1987, when they first enacted the system for overnight camping in order to prevent further destruction of the delicate alpine ecosystems. Out of nearly 30,000 applicants in 2022, only about 3,000 people were awarded a permit for the Core Enchantment Zone (where the majority of people aim to camp due to its prime location). I’d read somewhere that some people have been trying for literal years to get a permit in The Enchantments, in ANY of the four zones, to no avail, leaving them no other choice but to thru-hike the whole thing in one day. This is a challenging task in the summer, but life-threatening without proper training and technique at any other time of year.
As we drove up to the Leavenworth Ranger Station at 8am sharp on Saturday of 4th of July weekend, you’d think I’d be upset to find it WAY more crowded than Friendly Phone Ranger let on. At least half of these thirty or so eager hikers, just as packed and ready-to-go as we were, would leave permitless. But even though we were just as likely to be one of those disappointed hikers, I was actually more excited than anything. I thought this was going to be easy. And now, it was shaping up to be more interesting.
For some time, we waited underneath the awning of the ranger station, swatting away flies and other winged creatures while waiting to be let in like shoppers on the day of a big holiday sale. The sun was getting hotter, and so was the tension amongst the anxious hikers, some of whom I could have sworn were sizing us up.
At around 8:30am, a large, gray-haired ranger came out of the building, passed out maps of the different zones we could put our names in for, and explained the rules, the most important one being that you can’t put your name in for more than one camping zone. “You got one shot, and that’s it,” he said, with no compassion in his voice. Maybe he was jaded after running this thing for so many years, I thought.
After answering some questions, he headed back inside the ranger station, and the contestants were left to figure out their strategies.
As much as I knew this wasn’t a real competition - “It’s all luck,” Brandon kept reminding me calmly as I stood there sweating - I couldn’t help but feel like a case study for the Principle of Social Proof. The longer we stood out here, contemplating our strategy and catching periodic glances from other people trying to figure out what Zone we were aiming for, the more I wanted to get a permit and hike The Enchantments. I couldn’t tell whether this whole thing was funny - we were hoping for permission to sleep on the ground somewhere when we had a perfectly comfortable King-sized bed in the Airbnb we paid for - or whether it was deeply disturbing. The whole reason this system exists is because of destructive humans who don’t pack out their shit or who walk off-trail.
Brusque Lottery Man came back out with his assistant, Tentative Ranger Man, who seemed unsure about his role as name-picker. “Just to get a show of hands,” Brusque Ranger Man started, “How many people are tryin’ to camp in the Core?”. Nearly every hand shot straight up.
Given that our main goal was to just experience The Enchantments, and we were prepared to do the whole thing the next day anyway if we didn’t get a permit, we opted for better odds. So, we’d put our names in for the Snow Lakes Zone, the final Zone in the Enchantments, right after the Core if you’re starting your day at the Stuart Lake/Colchuck Trailhead.
“Alright, let’s begin with Eightmile,” Brusque Ranger Man announced. “Who’s in?”
For each Zone, there were a limited number of walk-up permits they gave out. The Eightmile Zone, for example, had two spaces available, which means that only two people could camp there. Stuart Lake, two as well. Colchuck, five. The Core had eight spaces available, and Snow Lakes just had two.
Camping at Snow Lakes would require about a 12-mile jaunt on day 1, so no easy feat, but probably more enjoyable than trying to rush through the whole thing before dark (Brandon is afraid of the dark) or missing out on the camping experience altogether because we were overly optimistic about our 1.9% odds of snagging a coveted Core permit.
I reoriented my attention to the lottery process. Two people won, and were permitted access inside the ranger station, where they’d receive their permits for Eightmile.
“Next up, Stuart Lake.”
As we waited for him to announce Snow Lakes, I found myself wondering if this whole thing was just way overly-hyped. Maybe it was just my risk-averse brain's way of preparing me for an inevitable loss, but some of the most popular places I’d visited were also some of the biggest letdowns. Disney World and Cheesecake Factory came to mind.
The Stuart Lake winners giddily went inside the ranger station to fetch their permits.
“Alright, Colchuck is next.”
But then again, sometimes things are famous for a reason. The whole reason permit systems like this exist in the first place is that they are special. They want to keep these wild, enchanting places wild and enchanting, rather than turning them into actual Disney World, but with mountain goats.
I heard some curse words coming from my left and an emphatic “yes!” from my right as the Brusque Ranger Man picked the next set of names for Colchuck Lake Zone.
It was curious how some of the not-so-lucky hikers stuck around. You could tell who they were by the look of defeat on their faces. Why didn’t they want to leave? Either they got strange entertainment from watching this weird process unfold, or more likely, they were hoping that there would be unclaimed permits from round one, and that they’d be able to put their names in on a potential second round. I took another scan at the hoard of people standing around the entrance of the ranger station, still waiting to put their names in for their desired Zone. I didn’t want to be the one to break it to them. There probably weren’t going to be any leftover permits.
“Alright,” I sensed dread in Brusque Ranger Man’s voice. “Time for the Core”.
The energy immediately changed as people rushed to put their names in; I could almost smell the dopamine rising. I looked around to see if I could figure out who WASN’T putting their names in, like us. The more people who put their names in for the Core, the greater our chances of getting a Snow Lakes permit.
A friend I described the process to after put it aptly: it’s like the Hunger Games, but where you want your name to be picked!
Tentative Ranger plucked out the first name for the Core and read it like a timid Katniss Everdeen before being scarred by the Games. A series of siren-like girl screams followed, reminding me of that one Justin Bieber concert I went to when I was 16. The awarded permit was for a large group of six, which meant that only one more group of two, or two groups of one, could be chosen next, eliminating almost twenty people (but not us! At least not yet).
After the gleeful group of six and a (less vocally braggy) group of two went inside to get their Core permits, it kind of felt like the whole thing was over.
If disappointment had a sound, it would be the thirty seconds following the final name being picked for the Core: a cacophony of oh wells and cars unlocking and reversing out of the parking lot. As the place emptied out, I couldn’t help but wonder, did we make a mistake by not putting our names in for the Core, and going for Snow Lakes? Did Snow Lakes suck for some reason? Or were all those people just bad at statistics?
Brusque Ranger Man looked around, and his eyes landed on Brandon and I, “Snow Lakes?” he asked, a hint of a smile forming around his mouth.
Aside from a briefly stressful moment where another remaining couple who already put their name in for the Core tried to put it in again for Snow Lakes (!!), our process with the lottery was relatively uneventful. We were the only two remaining people who hadn’t yet put their names in, meaning that we got the only two allotted Snow Lakes permits for that day.
Ironically, that’s not where we ended up camping, but that part of the story comes later.
We made our way inside, joining the other happy campers. When we made it to the front of the line, we met up once again with Brusque Ranger Man. This time, on the other side. Here, he was friendly and chatty.
“You guys, congratulations!” Brandon and I looked at each other, and smiled. He went on, “This is where I’d choose to camp, hands down,” he said smiling. “You guys are gunna love it. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
And it really was.