Permits: Good Luck.

I haven’t gotten a permit in over five years, so things may have changed. AND, I was always hiking alone. that said, I almost always managed to get a same day walk in (drive up) reservation out of Tuolumne Meadows (!!) several times a year. And that, after driving up from Berkeley and hitting the north entrance wilderness station (hint: use that) around 11:00 am. Late, in other words.   And when I couldn’t get a same day permit,  I’d stay in the campground at Tuolomne, get up early enough to be first or second in line, and score a permit that way. Campground full? Use the backpackers campground. So part of it is knowing how the finesse the system: go in on a weekday, the earlier in the week the better; get to know the rangers (I was up a lot); be flexible about trail heads (altho I almost always got the one I wanted); carry a bear canister and show that you know what you’re doing so won’t be a problem. But all of this may be irrelevant if things are now as they Craig reports.

Oh and in the early Spring I’d hike out of Yosemite valley towards Lake Merced with no problems getting a permit after I arrived late in the afternoon.  At that time of the year, no one’s hiking into the backcountry. So again, finesse the system. Choose less trafficked trail heads if possible. Go in early in the season ahead of the rush.

all that being said, I totally agree with the notion of heavily penalizing no shows. People have plenty of time to cancel, even a day or two in advance. Make them do it.

So part of it is knowing how the finesse the system: go in on a weekday, the earlier in the week the better; get to know the rangers (I was up a lot); be flexible about trail heads (altho I almost always got the one I wanted); carry a bear canister and show that you know what you’re doing so won’t be a problem.

I think you nailed everything I just mentioned: familiarity, weekday flexibility, and the ability to enter any trailhead available (which potentially requires fitness).

;)

Wisner, I agree with your sentiments. The online reservation system for camping and permits has become ridiculous. I, too, have successfully gambled on walk-up reservations and I hope they keep those at 40% of total permits.

I’m so fed up with the Yosemite permit system that I prefer to head down to Kings Canyon (fewer people anyway) after the wilderness quota season ends in late September. I’ll just pick a trailhead and walk off in the distance with a weeks worth of food.

I agree that a no-show fee (or losing the privilege of reserving a permit in the future) would be helpful.

I’m looking into the backcountry discovery routes to see if it’s possible to use them to get to trails without the crowds, and I ordered an out of print book by Ira Spring (2002) called Roads to Trails Northwest Washington: Mount Baker and Snoqualmie National Forests on using forest roads to avoid crowds.

At least for Inyo National Forest, the walk up permits aren’t walk up anymore – they also become available online 2 weeks in advance.

One other thing I have noticed online is that people will reserve permits for 5-6 people, many of whom will bail on the trip. Then instead of adjusting the permit to the lower number of people actually on the permit, the trip leader will post on Facebook if anyone wants to join them. I tell them to just adjust their permit and many respond they didn’t know that was possible. So computer ignorance or laziness – I never know. There is no incentive or partial refund to update your permit in these cases though.

“One massive problem with many of our online reservation systems, for both wilderness permits as well as campsites, is the permits and sites are relatively cheap and there is no real incentive to cancel (thus putting the permit/site back into circulation) as opposed to a no-show. I see a ridiculous number of empty sites in parks due to this.”

And then the discussion goes on to ways to work around.

“Just about every entry point puts me somewhere I find interesting, or close enough to be somewhere interesting on day 2”

One of the real “road-blocks” is the pressure on sites one day in. Most of these “who cares if I’m a no-show” types are only going as far as they can go in a day.  This can tend to create a situation where all the one day in sites create like a wall or fence around the sites further in that require a multi-day hike to reach. The Smokies is a great example of this pattern. Shaped like an oblong oval or a sorta skinny, long baked potato It’s ringed by one day in sites and you can almost always reach the 1-day  site on the opposite side by night 3 so you’re blocked coming and going.

Maybe there could be some priority given to multi day routes but how would that even work?

Also the on-line reservation system is now operated as a private concession (free enterprise often aka monopoly) instead of being operated by the park service, aka the gummint, aka we the people. I guarantee you they don’t give a tinker’s damn about no-shows.

I guess that in time this sudden wave of camping popularity will pass and also some of these folks will actually become backpackers. In the meantime we can 1. expand our horizons, push for 2. expansion of opportunities and locations, and 3. demand some systemic accountability for un-used reservations beyond simply forfeiture of fee.

But that last one is a head-scratcher. A (potentially non) refundable deposit? How would that be administered? How does one systematically verify the site is not used? That would require personnel. You know; jobs. Gummint jobs. Bureaucracy! Shudder. No profit there.

Some incentive for cancelling permits/reservations would be welcome.  I see the same thing in USFS campgrounds when I visit:  all the sites appear booked online but there are unoccupied sites when I arrive, presumably from no-shows.

at some campgrounds I’ve noticed, they don’t care if it’s a no show.  The person paid, that’s all they care about.  The least they could do would be if the person doesn’t show up by midnight, give out the site for 2nd and successive days.

For a trailhead with not assigned sites, just allow more permits to account for no shows.  If it gets too crowded, then decrease number in the future, if it’s too un-crowded then increase the number.

Last summer at the Lava Lake trailhead at McKenzie Pass in Three Sisters, I noticed just one car parked overnight.  Previously, there’d be more like 30 cars overnight.  That area can accommodate many overnighters because it’s a huge area.  It’s crazy to so limit such a nice area

One of the real “road-blocks” is the pressure on sites one day in.

Which is a bit frustrating for those of us that do the miles, entering via a popular trailhead but putting significant distance between us and the high use sites <10 miles from the car.

It’s OK though. I’m sure when we eventually turn the parks over to an Amazon subsidiary they will do a much more efficient job at managing all of this ;)

I think this is a direct cause of the increase in SAR activities.

Using alternate routes gets people in over their heads…

The current system 100% encourages people to to do this.

familiarity, weekday flexibility, and the ability to enter any trailhead available (which potentially requires fitness).

If you don’t have the first 2, the current system only offers the third strategy.

“Which is a bit frustrating for those of us that do the miles, entering via a popular trailhead but putting significant distance between us and the high use sites <10 miles from the car.”

There’s some really high percentage, like 95%+ of all recreational activity in the National Park System and probably the US Forest system as well occurs within 10 miles of a point easily accessible by some sort of vehicle (boat/raft/kayak/canoe all-terrain) Horses stretch the limits of the no-walkers. I’ve been surprised by some of the locations I’ve seen sign of horse traffic. Traditional uses like hunting keep it hard for Nat Forests to limit all-terrain vehicles and horses and not advocating along those lines.

Maybe there could be “deep” access corridors that are conceived or sited to be less appealing to people looking for an easy trip with convenient vehicular access. IDK. Spit-balling or throwing spaghetti against the fridge and it’s not sticking.

Not quite the same, but similar – I road tripped to Oregon last summer and pulled into a state forest campground around dusk. It said full but I drove the loop and there were at least 6 open sites out of 20 or 25. I talked to the host and asked if I could take one. She said I’d have to reserve it online and she couldnt help me. Online said Full. So I just camped there anyways without issue.

Dumb rules and systems are meant to be ignored. I know the back country with rangers is somewhat different, but honestly how do they expect compliance when rational people see right through the charade that is our current online reservation system? I generally try to comply, but when it defies common sense ive been known to just go. Although Im not in the sierra’s as much and do see rangers there regularly. too bad they are obligated to enforce a junk system.

This reminds me of this article and discussion from last June: https://backpackinglight.com/unpacked-permits/

That prompted me to make the following observation:

[In early July] I… did a quick reservation check of 8 of Alaska’s Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge public use cabins for July, August, and September. Of 736 total possible reservation nights, as of right now 145 (20%) are booked. The Bluefox Bay cabin (the most beautiful location and best for exploring in my opinion) currently has 11 nights out of the next 92 reserved. And I’m not even talking about KNWR wild camping which is totally permit free and completely unregulated. The AK State Parks cabins on Shuyak Island are similarly languishing with few visitors, and again, no permits for visiting or camping.

East Coaster here so this may be a stupid question…

This may be a function of the online permitting process, but don’t you have trips where you never had to show your permit at all or are you required to pick up your permit at a ranger station?  I thought you could print your permit at home and carry it with you in case you need to produce it.

If you can print your permit at home then how would the park ever know whether you showed up or not?

I have the same frustration with the PA State Parks reservation system for car-camping sites.  The sites are $22 per night and if you cancel you pay a 50% cancellation fee so people are not throwing away much if they don’t bother to show up.

^^ So we should move to Kodiak?   ;)     Or maybe just Homer.

A couple years back I checked on the relatively remote Swan cabin in far SW NC and it was booked out for 6 months. But you can drive to it.

There is an incentive to cancel, in that you get a refund. BUT… I think  you have to cancel something like two weeks in advance!!! After that there is no refund and zero incentive to cancel… sometimes you don’t know that you can’t do the trip until a day or two or three before.

But one problem with many of the ideas to improve, is that others have different points of view and will complain/protest to the government agencies. Politics are involved in park management… park superintendents don’t want to get a call form the local congressman… Many already complain that permit fees are too high. Some are outraged at the fact that you can’t just park your car and hike anywhere any time you want… we have ‘rights’ you know!!! Isn’t it a ‘free country’????

I randomly came across this today since it showed up as a top site associated with recreation.gov.

https://campflare.com/manifesto

Hey,

Camping is no longer available to everyone. In fact, it’s rigged. Places that were set aside for everyone, are now only available to the rich and technically advanced. Let me explain.

In most areas, the demand for campsites far exceeds the supply. When campsites are released, they are booked in seconds. In turn, people take whatever reservations they can find — months in advance. Given that people don’t get their ideal dates, and don’t know their plans months ahead of time, tons of people end up canceling. This is not the problem.

The problem arises when paid services take advantage of this fact. These companies (Campnab, Campsite Assist, etc) have created expensive paid services that will let you know when someone cancels their reservation, so you can snag it. This has led to their customers being the majority of people getting canceled campsites.

Not everyone can afford to pay $30/mo+ for the off-chance of getting a campground reservation — everyone deserves equal access to our public lands. Regulation and captchas are not the solution as tech will always find a way around it. The only way to stop the paid services is to drown them out.

Campflare is a free service that will send you a text or email when a campground becomes available. It’s free, available to everyone, and it always will be.

I like the idea of charging $100 for a permit reservation.  90% of that is refunded when you collect your permit or cancel it.

We do have some permits for this summer, one through the Yosemite lottery, and one for a less popular trailhead in Inyo.  But also using some of the notes above:  less popular trailhead, and in each case, we opted for starting the trip on a Tuesday.  We’re retired, so we can play the middle of the week card.

It is very frustrating to see the numbers of empty campsites in campgrounds that are fully booked, and I have no reason to think the situation is any different with these permits.

I guess we will find out as summer progresses…if the permits are not picked up, I hope they are made available that day…makes it tough for those who are arriving from distant homes to make any plans at all….sigh

“I guess we will find out as summer progresses…if the permits are not picked up, I hope they are made available that day…makes it tough for those who are arriving from distant homes to make any plans at all….sigh”

Ah… I think the way it worked for Inyo permits last summer was you don’t actually pick up the permits; rather, they email them to you. So… after they email them to you,  you could not show up and not cancel and no one gets the spot… and… if I remember correctly, last year, after they email you the permit you CAN NOT CANCEL if something comes up or if you change your mind… Crazy!!!

Paul, I like the idea of a refundable fee except that it makes access to the outdoors even further out of reach for people with less money.

I would rather see consequences  that are not related to money. Something like: People that don’t use or cancel their reservations lose the privilege of permit eligibility for 24 months.  This would impact people at different income levels more equitably.

There are some really informative posts upstream! Campflare. Who knew? CS are those mostly or almost exclusively drive up sites or is there a re-sale market for backcountry sites as well?  And hey if there’s a thriving resale market what’s to stop an organization from “buying” a reservation as a citizen Jane and then re-selling privately?

What needs doing is something to incentivize both the private “official” booking franchisee as well as the public agencies (NPS and USFS) to avoid un-cancelled vacancies.

In the property management business the guest pays a premium for an un-cancellable reservation and/or also must have cancellation insurance which covers ‘Act of God’ type cancellations.

I suspect the very low cost nature of these reservations is the ‘management’ problem. Not enough $ all the way round to be worth the trouble for either the private booking agency, or the public agency. Heck the public agency engaged the services of the private booking agent franchise in the first place to avoid becoming or continuing to be a ‘rental agency.’ (That and maybe a little nepotism or crony capitalism)

If  “We the People” want a more thorough, fair, economical and impartial system then “we” need to pay more eventually in the form of taxes to pay for it ( a buck a year per capita would raise $330,000,000 so don’t despair!)  because any private for profit reservation system is going to make a commodity of these sites. This is how the “free-market” works. It’s not an opinion.

One possible way would be to separate ‘front country’ drive up sites and that whole process from back country sites. There’s more $ in the  public side of front country sites to work with on both carrots and sticks for cancellations and reservations. A multi-day stay at drive up sites typically involves quite a bit more of a commitment to planning, equipment and associated costs. If this weren’t true we would not see the growth of  much more expensive private drive-up sites around the country. But yeah even that will push those sites further from the reach of people with limited means. But it’s happening anyway. It’s a desirable commodity that now evidently can be ‘gamed’ and even the resources to make a reservation and plan a trip take means.

As I’m advancing in years I have noticed a tendency to become more and more ‘concerned’ about ‘trends’ that I’d like to think are more apparent if nothing else simply from the vantage point of observing the decades roll by. So putting on my Cassandra hat I’d say that ‘consumers’ of back country sites might be well advised not to be too complacent about the commoditization of public access.

Of note is the Yosemite visitor statistics over the years: https://irma.nps.gov/STATS/Reports/Park/YOSE

In 2021, 3,287,595 visited the park. These numbers are actually down from a high of 5,028,868 in 2016 and quite similar to what they were from the 80’s through the 2000s. 1988 saw 3,216,681 visitors – quite similar to last year. Of course these numbers don’t tell us the actual overnight and backpack usage, but those numbers, too, haven’t changed much (the data doesn’t go back as far). Statistics for Overnight Use.

Overnight use has actually trended down overall since 1979, when the data was first tracked.

I’d argue that its not the actual visitor amount that is problematic, but the online system itself. The Sierras have been just as crowded since 1988. However, my feeling that social media hashtags and selfies ARE opening opening a flood of people in more easily accessible places like Joshua Tree and the Alabama Hills (both closer to Los Angeles).

Its not just camping sites. National parks have become extremely crowded. I remember going to Zion in 1999. There were 2 of us on the Angel’s landing hike and we had the whole place to ourselves. Then in 2010 (no more cars allowed inside unless you have a room in the lodge inside), we saw maybe 50 people on the Angel’s landing hike. Now, they are talking about reservations system for that hike. Looking at the lines, it looks like Disney world.

I feel population has increased to the point that there are just too many people in the world – all fighting to get the few available resources. Yellowstone was crazy even in 1999 – here families can drive to most of the popular sight seeing places. Grand Tetons was less crowded in 1999 as you actually have to hike to see places.

Yosemite is of course like a circus!