When the caveat “but you’ll need a permit” follows a glowing recommendation for a backpacking trip, or is noted in a guidebook description or online trip report, what it actually means can vary significantly. In this article we'll detail the types of permits and passes that are typically required in National Parks, National Forests, and in other management areas where your next hiking trip may take you.

Hiking & Backpacking Permits & Passes Explained

For some trips, like backpacking in the Enchantments area of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, getting a permit requires getting lucky in a lottery (with roughly 500 to 1 odds) that occurs months before prime hiking season. Permits for many other “name brand” destinations and trails with high demand – think Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, North Cascades National Park, and the John Muir Trail – are also a matter of chance, although many hold back a limited number to be issued the day of a trip (including the Enchantments). Submitting applications for reserving sites in some of these parks involves submitting itineraries via e-mail or fax, although some parks – such as Olympic National Park – are shifting their permits to recreation.gov which has handled reservations for reserving some campsites, cabins, and lookouts for many years.

At other national parks, the process is almost as easy as booking a hotel online – Great Smoky Mountains National Park has one of the most user-friendly models as it uses a map that allows you to click on the backcountry sites you wish to reserve and shows you a calendar with the number of spots available. With no nationwide standard (despite the “national” in “National Parks”), the permit process varies but is usually somewhere in between being an efficient and relatively unremarkable formality with an immediate resolution, to crossing your fingers and worrying anxiously about whether your fax went through and not knowing for weeks whether you got your permit or not.

With hiking and backpacking becoming increasingly popular, some national forests (especially those near urban areas) have begun to require permits for certain areas or destinations as well. Conundrum Hot Springs, in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, recently began requiring permits that are reserved via recreation.gov. Other special places, such as Aravaipa Canyon in Arizona on BLM land, have required permits for years (Aravaipa Canyon permits are currently on recreation.gov as well).

Areas that aren’t currently experiencing high use and concentrated impacts of visitation, but still want to keep track of visitation and trends to assist in decision-making and planning, might require self-issue permits at the trailhead. The Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness and the Pasayten Wilderness are two examples. These permits are filled out by hikers at trailheads and include the number of hikers, days of the trip, and destinations. In some areas, you risk being fined if you do not complete these self-issue permits and in other areas they are completely voluntary but highly encouraged.

Some trailheads require parking passes – such as the Northwest Forest Pass in Oregon and Washington and parking passes are required at trailheads in the Red River Gorge area of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. These passes don’t require you to account for group size or itinerary, you simply purchase them (local vendors, like gas stations, often sell them in addition to ranger stations) and display them on your dash while you are parked at the trailhead. Many of these types of passes can also be found here at REI Co-op.

In Conclusion

Given the various boundaries, designations, and changing regulations it is always best to call the land management agency before your trip and make sure you know what permits, if any, are required for your trip.

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Issue 41 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here.