A friend and I had planned to attempt to get into the core enchantments in the winter. We looked at both approach routes, and selected the Snow Lakes route over Colchuck and Asgard pass, as it looks like the pass could have some serious avalanche risk. The trailhead to Snow Lakes is pretty snowy, but with some rain, it is mostly slush. The road to the trailhead is completely plowed, so the only snow your car will encounter is in the parking lot. The trail is pretty much snow-covered from the start. After the first 2-3 miles you will probably want to start using snowshoes, which we used for a majority of the route. The trail is pretty easy to make out all the way up to snow lakes, although we didn't see any recent footprints beyond about 3-4 miles. However, we snowshoed all the way to the lake, so the path should be fairly evident for a little bit into the future. While we spent the night at Snow lake, it did snow several inches, somewhat obscuring our path. Be ready to navigate without a trail, and definitely have a map/compass/gps/knowledge to use them.
The route has several sections that are a bit more technical/sketchy in the winter. There are potential avalanche chutes along the route, and there are several "pillowfields" that you need to cross. Although these have about 1-3 feet of snow on them right now, with about 1-2 more feet of snow, these could become drastically more hazardous than what we crossed. There are other, smoother slopes that are approx. 35 degrees that you have to cross in small increments. Understand avalanches, use NWAC, check the weather, use good judgement, and have the tools necessary to enter avalanche terrain. Snowshoes are incredibly useful for dealing with the deeper snow, which gets up to about 4 feet by the time you reach Snow Lake. Similarly, and ice ax and crampons wouldn't be amiss. There was one gully that we had to cross on the way down, that had been easy in the midday as the snow was somewhat melted, but when we returned it had solidified into 35-40 degree ice. You would not want to slide in this area, and we were glad we had our axes.
The new snow ends at about 4500 feet. The weather for our trip was decent, with intermittent fog both mornings, and a clearer day near the start of the trail. It was originally clear when we got to snow lakes, but in the morning it was cloudy and snowy. It was also quite windy at Snow Lakes. We camped in a more exposed spot, and I would definitely recommend placing the tent in some trees to provide shelter. The wind was intense, and probably gusted to 30-40 mph at night. This made for a very loud night, and we were glad to have a 4-season tent (North Face VE 25). We built a wind wall, guyed out the tent completely, and still had the wind pop one of our snow stakes out of the ground. Similarly, the wind blew about a foot of snow into our vestibule, totally filling our boots with snow. My friend's canister stove did not work in the cold, and we were glad to have a white fuel stove to melt snow. There are several creeks running along the approach which are not frozen, but at the lakes you will need to melt snow for water. Bring plenty of fuel.
We ultimately decided to bail on our plans to enter the core enchantments, as we were concerned about wind slabs along the route, as we had experienced heavy winds, snowfall, and saw lots of drifted snow. We hiked out the next day, making sure to be cautious around any terrain that could slide. We had quite an adventure, and we're glad we were able to get out there, but know what you're getting into if you do decide to go out there.
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