Challenges in getting permits this year

[wildhiker]

As for people filing excess permits, this definitely seems like an easy trick for people with money. Reserve a permit everyday for a month then pick the best weather/convenience once the date gets closer. Still costs less than a single night at a cheap motel let alone a fancy trip. Back when Yosemite was doing entry permits, I envisioned a memorable event or wedding that someone could do by just reserving all 10,000 permits for yourself. Would require multiple different credit cards/straw buyers but you could have the entire valley to yourself for under $100,000. Way cheaper than anything comparable would normally cost and well worth it for plenty of silicon valley bros.

The reservation system limits you to only a few permits at a time (5, I believe) and a maximum of 14 nights reserved in any of the national parks per year and probably something similar in the national forests. So, it would take a grand conspiracy of many people to reserve a permit everyday for a month.

-Phil

[kpeter]

ERROR CREATING RESERVATION
This is a popular site and unfortunately, someone else has reserved it for the selected date(s). Please adjust your date(s).

What a mind fk when you see availability at 7:00 am, click on it, and get that awful popup , it made me livid to start my day out like that.

In the past, it has not been too hard as a solo hiker to find something available around the time I want to go in the general area west of Bishop (Lamarck, Bishop, Paiute etc). I have to be flexible when I show up and see what is there available.

But this year, I have a grand vision of creating a sacred journey for my people (not a commercial venture) I had a super powerful spiritual awakening in the high country last year that I was deeply inspired to share and hold the space with others in my spiritual community.

So this year I am trying for a group of 5. And I'm already disheartened and frustrated by the high demand, and the rec.gov reservation system. I am old school and remember being able to show up at the USFS ranger station to get issued a permit. I may have had to show up and wait in line the day before. But now it feels like with the demand, overpopulation, and private reservation contractors taking the place of USFS ranger staff, tech savvy bot script writers might be the people that get what they want. With a group, I can't just call a date and expect to get in somewhere without a messy change of itinerary. Most of the permits available at 7am require some expert level hiking to get into the deeper parts of the backcountry, where I intend to hold space for others. My companions are not expert level, so I need well graded trails.

This speaks to the sad state of affairs of overcrowding and overpopulation, and now in my 50s turning into one of those people who have remiss about the good old days of the 1980s when wilderness access was not so overburdened with reservation structures and exceedingly high demand issues. Yep, I have turned into that salty older mountain man backpacker who laments about the way things are now.

Thanks for listening to my 50-something rant from someone who has been backpacking since his teens in the Sierra Nevada.

-Sierra

Yes, I feel the pain too. Login at 7:00am sharp, get that message, and by 7:01 every reservation is taken. This seems to be true for all the trailheads that give access to the "good" eastside passes whether or not you are heading for the pass, and also for a few other eastside popular destinations like Sabrina Basin.

What I wonder is what if you want to enter at, for example South Lake, because you want to camp nearby and do the Chocolate Peak loop, but you are up against everyone who wants to go over Bishop Pass to start various loops or join the PCT? Shouldn't there be a different quota for those who are going over the pass from those who are staying on the trailhead side of it? I could not figure out that there was such a differentiation. The long distance through hikers who are merely passing through an area on the way to the pass are preventing the short distance people from camping at Long Lake, so far as I could tell, and that seems strange.

I echo what others have said about west side desinations. No reservations at all are needed for Trinity Alps, or for Emigrant--although perhaps they should be. I've been in both under overcrowded conditions at times. And those for Sierra National Forest are so far pretty available I have found. I have not had problems getting reservations out of Courtwright for Red Mountain Basin or Blackcap or Bench, nor out of Edison for Silver Divide area. At least you have more than 10 seconds to press the reservations.gov button.

[wildhiker]

What I wonder is what if you want to enter at, for example South Lake, because you want to camp nearby and do the Chocolate Peak loop, but you are up against everyone who wants to go over Bishop Pass to start various loops or join the PCT? Shouldn't there be a different quota for those who are going over the pass from those who are staying on the trailhead side of it? I could not figure out that there was such a differentiation. The long distance through hikers who are merely passing through an area on the way to the pass are preventing the short distance people from camping at Long Lake, so far as I could tell, and that seems strange.

It is precisely this problem that caused Yosemite National Park to institute an EXIT quota a few years ago for the John Muir Trail southbound. JMT thru-hikers were grabbing all the permits for any trail out of Yosemite Valley or Tuolumne Meadows that would let them connect up to the JMT. Then folks who just wanted to backpack in the park couldn't get a permit. So now, only 45 people per day are allowed to exit the park on the JMT over Donohue Pass, and they have to compete for one of two special permit types: "Happy Isles - Donohue Pass eligible" or "Lyell Canyon - Donohue Pass eligible". No other trailhead permit can be used for a JMT southbound thru-hike. I suppose the park must station a ranger up by the pass sometimes to check permits as enforcement. I personally benefitted from this new policy in 2022. I was able to get a Lyell Canyon (NOT Donohue Pass eligible) trailhead "walkup" permit a couple of weeks in advance in order to do a hike that stayed (mostly) within the park. In the past, the entire Lyell Canyon quota would have been immediately snatched up by JMT thru-hikers.
-Phil

[KT5519]

For some perspective, does anyone remember back in the day reserving wilderness permits by POSTAL MAIL? Oh boy, that was painful. I have a vague memory of Yosemite and SEKI being mail-only well into the 2000's.

Oh my gosh, I do remember that! Faxing permit requests to SEKI at midnight on the date that permit season opened sometime in March each year. Printing the Sierra NF permit, filling it out, and mailing it.

The thing that’s blowing my mind with Inyo is that even the less popular trailheads are selling out shortly after 7. Such as Taboose Pass. And McGee, although I guess I wouldn’t call that one unpopular. The problem is that those trailheads, and others like them, have a very small number of reservable permits, making them even more challenging to get. I keep wondering, is it that all roads lead to the JMT? And/or everyone that postponed due to conditions last summer are rescheduling? Maybe it will be a short lived phenomenon? (That’s probably rather optimistic…)

[Wandering Daisy]

I have yet tried to get a permit this year. Does anyone know if once you get a permit for a block of days, does the system prevents you from overlapping days of another permit? If not, the problem may be a lot of people getting overlapping permits. Does the system know who has PCT permits and then blocks them out of getting other permits? Or are PCT hikers taking some permits.

I have also wondered what if you enter at some off-trail location that has nothing to do with any trailhead? What permit do you get?

The more common cause probably is getting a group permit for more people than go on the trip. I have rarely been on a group trip, especially if it is booked months in advance, that at least one person does not show up at the trailhead. At that point, how do you free up the unused permit? Was simple when you had to pick up your permit at a ranger office- the unused permit is then given to people like me, who were waiting in person for a same-day walk-up. I wonder if charges were per-person instead of per-permit would help (or is that already done).

I really question the permit system. Does restricting daily trailhead entry really make any difference in the population density after the first day? I would like to see ALL trailheads have two quotas, those for nearby overnight users, and "pass-through". Each type of backpacker would benefit from this system.

[dave54]

Even places without popular use are going there.
LAVO now requires going through Recreation.gov. You used to be able to get permits from the Park website and there were no quotas or limits. Some trailheads in Oregon now require permits for day hiking. At least that is not common yet.

Boondocking and off-trail hiking in the no-name areas is about the only option left.

[sunnyvalley]

I feel like this year is the hardest for obtaining wilderness permits. If the system operates as it did last year, permits for August 30th, 31st, and September 1st will be released tomorrow at 7 AM PST. Good luck.

[Bishop_Bob]

The situation has a gatekeeping/monopolistic appearance that could ripen into a legal case challenging restricted access to public lands by private enterprise under the guise of government bureaucracy.

[Lumbergh21]

The situation has a gatekeeping/monopolistic appearance that could ripen into a legal case challenging restricted access to public lands by private enterprise under the guise of government bureaucracy.

Booze Allen Hamilton, who run the Recreation.gov reservation system, set the processing fees, which they also keep. There has already been one successful lawsuit against them and currently at least one more filed for how they set fees. See page 5 of the Inyo Permit Gripes post for an example of how much more money goes to them for running the Yosemite permit lottery versus what Yosemite gets for the permits. Someone posted on another site that spending $100 in lottery fees (what you would need to do for a 50:50 chance at a one person JMT permit) is cheap, and anyone complaining is a big crybaby. So much for public lands, I know $100 or just the thought of risking $10 for a small chance at a permit would have kept me from getting a JMT permit. The thought that anyone who can't afford that doesn't belong on the JMT is gatekeeping at best.

[thegib]

(Rant Alert!) Every year I want a half dome day hike permit. As it stands now the issuer (BAH) is incentivized to encourage applications - which means their incentive is to deny your application and to tell you to try again. I'd feel irritated if the excess money went to the NPS, but it doesn't - it goes to BAH - which is outrageous. Gov't outsourcing seems to lead to efficiency in extracting public money, not in delivering public goods.