Wilderness Permits 2023

Are you a seasoned hiker, or just starting out? Let us know your questions or experience with the backcountry permit process.

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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by paul »

Thanks Zozeppelin for all the great information.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by liketohike »

I agree, thanks Zozeppelin for all the info you're sharing and all the time you spend researching :)

From looking on the Grand Teton site, it appears it is possible to select more than one area at the time and have the pertaining sites appear on one screen, so that is encouraging - fingers crossed that it works the same for Glacier!
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by ohioguy »

It will be a mess but, when speaking to the rangers in the past the lottery was getting to labor intensive for them. IMO its everyone's fault for telling to many people how beautiful the back country is.

The first 6 back country hikes I put in for I got, so I thought it would be easy.
Always got the walk in permits we wanted, things have changed.

Well if you don't get the hikes you want there is always the coal creek area.
And the Two Medicine area is very under-rated.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by teapot57 »

Select a group size is redundant. The system is limiting to 1 site per reservation, such that the number of people is irrelevant until later, it's going to be 1 to 4, and it's winner take all on the site.
The reason for selecting a group size is because you will pay all of the permit costs up front through the checkout process. There is a $10 permit fee, plus $7 per day per person in your group.

How do I know this?

Because I was fortunate enough to get a mid size group permit. I paid a total of $272 for a permit for 6 for 6 nights ($10 permit fee times 2 for the 2 tent pads, plus $42 per person per night).

I got my second choice itinerary- GAB HEL ELF GLH GLH COS in mid-July.

I do think that people will cancel their permits in the event they can’t use them because of the significant up front cost. Although I really hate that Rec.gov will still collect the nonrefundable $10 permit fee.

I keep getting an error code when I try to post the last installment of my trip report. Sorry to keep you all waiting in suspense- lol.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by zozeppelin »

Hi Teapot,
Congrats on the permit- curious as to what you’re planning on the GLH day- Margaret? Sue?

If it makes you feel any better, I think Rec.gov and Glacier split the $10. Im still due my trip report as well - this weekend is crunch time!

I’m standing by the redundant comment- they’re not letting people reserve more than one site, so why bother with that detail? Sure, you’re supposed to pay up front, but are they really going to say no or not take your money when you pickup the permit with 3 people instead of 2? Presumably they’ll still need a system to process walkins and take their money.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by zozeppelin »

ohioguy wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 4:33 pm It will be a mess but, when speaking to the rangers in the past the lottery was getting to labor intensive for them. IMO its everyone's fault for telling to many people how beautiful the back country is.

The first 6 back country hikes I put in for I got, so I thought it would be easy.
Always got the walk in permits we wanted, things have changed.

Well if you don't get the hikes you want there is always the coal creek area.
And the Two Medicine area is very under-rated.
Speaking for myself, the complaint isn’t the change to Rec.gov- it is the removal of the lottery system. Cascades and Yellowstone both use rec.gov and have a lottery system, that is a fail on Glacier's part. I’m sure they’ll clean it up next year, but just a poor implementation this year - I expect a cluster and think there will be errors.

One other option was to keep the pay.gov lottery system and write a program to automatically process the applications. But alas, these are rangers and bureaucrats, not IT folk.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by sbosecker »

teapot57 wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 9:29 pm
Select a group size is redundant. The system is limiting to 1 site per reservation, such that the number of people is irrelevant until later, it's going to be 1 to 4, and it's winner take all on the site.
The reason for selecting a group size is because you will pay all of the permit costs up front through the checkout process. There is a $10 permit fee, plus $7 per day per person in your group...
Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see a need to select the number in the group until the online payment process - at least for Glacier NP.

My guess is that the "number in the group" is entered immediately after the "Start Date" because that's the way the templete was set up initially.

Perhaps this setup was necessary for another Park's situation but it unnecessarily slows down a frantic backpacker trying to select an itinerary at Glacier.

Best regards,

Scott
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by zozeppelin »

Hi Scott, it is in the page where the date and site availability grid shows up- but only if you select a “starting area” and number of people.

Your point is my point - one more thing to have to do in a scramble (that isn’t pertinent). My first hand experience with Tetons this year had me tripped up as well- precious seconds ticked by while I fidgeted with the settings. The confusing part there was they had two fields: group/person and quantity- so I was left messing around with those settings and refreshing to see results when the site when being completely bombed with requests- probably lost 30 seconds.

I looked later and found these are not well defined (presumably groups are for group sites, but there are group sites area filters, and group availability doesn’t show up there but does in non-group sites- just reduced by 25% or so and then what does group quantity even mean- the number of people or assumes a number of people or what).

Seconds many not seem like much, but you don’t truly know the inventory until you try to ‘book it’ as the results are stale the second after they load. So it may take 30 -60 seconds to quickly click your sites to get them added to itinerary, all looking good, then go to book it and it fails because someone snatched one site 1 second prior, so then you’re left with restarting the whole thing with inventory already picked over.

Apologies for continuing to kick the dead horse, but this importance of minutia was completely avoidable if they implemented a lottery like Cascades and Yellowstone. It could have been improved by not adding redundant fields like people count and not having an “all” filter so one doesn’t have to jump area to area.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by paul »

zozeppelin wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 9:58 pm
ohioguy wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 4:33 pm It will be a mess but, when speaking to the rangers in the past the lottery was getting to labor intensive for them. IMO its everyone's fault for telling to many people how beautiful the back country is.

The first 6 back country hikes I put in for I got, so I thought it would be easy.
Always got the walk in permits we wanted, things have changed.

Well if you don't get the hikes you want there is always the coal creek area.
And the Two Medicine area is very under-rated.
Speaking for myself, the complaint isn’t the change to Rec.gov- it is the removal of the lottery system. Cascades and Yellowstone both use rec.gov and have a lottery system, that is a fail on Glacier's part. I’m sure they’ll clean it up next year, but just a poor implementation this year - I expect a cluster and think there will be errors.

One other option was to keep the pay.gov lottery system and write a program to automatically process the applications. But alas, these are rangers and bureaucrats, not IT folk.
I don't like the excuse that the rangers were bogged down with the manually processing of permits. They certainly could have created a program to automate processing of permits. It wouldn't be done by the rangers, but by a tech contractor under their direction.
Last edited by paul on Fri Mar 10, 2023 7:58 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by paul »

sbosecker wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 11:21 pm
teapot57 wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 9:29 pm
Select a group size is redundant. The system is limiting to 1 site per reservation, such that the number of people is irrelevant until later, it's going to be 1 to 4, and it's winner take all on the site.
The reason for selecting a group size is because you will pay all of the permit costs up front through the checkout process. There is a $10 permit fee, plus $7 per day per person in your group...
Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see a need to select the number in the group until the online payment process - at least for Glacier NP.

My guess is that the "number in the group" is entered immediately after the "Start Date" because that's the way the templete was set up initially.

Perhaps this setup was necessary for another Park's situation but it unnecessarily slows down a frantic backpacker trying to select an itinerary at Glacier.

Best regards,

Scott
I plan to put in the group size of one, and if I add people I will do it when I pick up my permit. There's no point to putting in more than one for regular permits unless you are sure that other people are joining you.
We are in the mountains and the mountains are in us. - John Muir
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by paul »

teapot57 wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 9:29 pm

Because I was fortunate enough to get a mid size group permit. I paid a total of $272 for a permit for 6 for 6 nights ($10 permit fee times 2 for the 2 tent pads, plus $42 per person per night).

I got my second choice itinerary- GAB HEL ELF GLH GLH COS in mid-July.
Congrats on the permit score!
We are in the mountains and the mountains are in us. - John Muir
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by paul »

teapot57 wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 9:29 pm

Because I was fortunate enough to get a mid size group permit. I paid a total of $272 for a permit for 6 for 6 nights ($10 permit fee times 2 for the 2 tent pads, plus $42 per person per night).

I got my second choice itinerary- GAB HEL ELF GLH GLH COS in mid-July.
Just wondering how did you reserve Helen Lake for your group permit? I thought only one site was reserveable at Helen lake for advanced reservations. There are only two sites at Helen so you will have reserved them 100% in advance for that day.
We are in the mountains and the mountains are in us. - John Muir
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by sbosecker »

zozeppelin wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 7:08 am Hi Scott, it is in the page where the date and site availability grid shows up- but only if you select a “starting area” and number of people.

Your point is my point - one more thing to have to do in a scramble (that isn’t pertinent)...
zozeppelin,

We're both on the same page...

Why does the templete need to ask the number in the group at the start of the process? That just slows things down and it isn't necessary to know that (for Glacier NP at least) until sometime later.

My point was the number in the group could wait until the payment page as that seems to be the only reason for that value to be entered. It doesn't drive anything other than the total cost for the reservation.

That's what I was trying to write in my post... probably wasn't clear.

Good luck to us all!

Scott
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by zozeppelin »

paul wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 7:57 am
I plan to put in the group size of one, and if I add people I will do it when I pick up my permit. There's no point to putting in more than one for regular permits unless you are sure that other people are joining you.
This is my plan as well, because it shouldn’t matter - it’s like reserving hotel rooms, as long as you’re under the occupancy limit who cares (pay the fee at checkin if applicable)? Conversely I would always put in 4 with previous applications, because again who knows and who cares, it’ll all be sorted when picking up the permit and I don’t want to have to deal with ‘well you only have 2 in the application but brought 4’. Unfortunately the form defaults to none so you have to pick/click something.

As an aside, I think there is a real ‘business’ opportunity here. Reserve a norther circle for 1 person, sell it on eBay/Facebook, prearrange cancelation time/date such that the buyer can swoop in when availability refreshes. This wasn’t possible before because there was a huge lag /uncertainty between cancelations being released and then filled due to manual processing- too much risk- now much more methodical. Could be applied to road passes as well. Shady? Yes. Would I ever do it? No.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by teapot57 »

I agree that they could ask for the # of people later in the process. It does look like you can modify your reservation at a later date to add more people as your plans solidify.

On the GLH layover day, we will either do Margaret Lake, Sue Lake Bench or even Stoney Indian Pass as a few in the group have never been there. But most likely Margaret. Conditions may play a factor since it’s early season. We will decide as it gets closer but I really love that area for all the options.

As for HEL, they will book the whole campground for larger groups. But if you have a group of 9, you would not be able to book it because there are only 2 tent pads. If you’ll remember Paul, in 2018 when we had the group permit and you stayed with us at STO, we had the whole campground. We were a group of 9 and there were 3 sites.
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