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 sbosecker »

paul wrote: Wed Mar 01, 2023 12:49 pm Scott, I think those camps in the North Fork will be available in September if you are approaching them from the east. The west side trailheads will be closed.
Paul,

Your post makes sense to me but...

Recreation.gov has a notification that indicates in plain English:

Round Prairie (ROU), Kintla Lake Head (KIN), Upper Kintla Lake (UPK), Boulder Pass (BOU), Hole in the Wall (HOL), Brown Pass (BRO), Bowman Lake Head (BOW), and Akokala Lake (AKO) campgrounds will be closed from 9/1/23 - 11/18/23 due to a bridge replacement project near the Polebridge ranger station.

https://www.recreation.gov/permits/4675321

At the top right of this linked page is a SHOW NOTIFCATIONS link. The above quote was taken from the 2nd of the 3 notifications presented when that link is clicked.

Might be a mistake but I don't know how else to read "...will be closed..." other than the obvious interpretation. HA!

I just sent Glacier NP an email asking for clarification on this.

Best regards,

Scott
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by paul »

Hey Scott,

Since this chatgroup isn't read much I don't think there's much harm of reposting this earlier post from Ohioguy ...
Spoke to Ranger on Friday Goat Haunt open with boat landings also.

The camp sites listed being closed in Sept. are only closed from the west side approach,
bridge out at the ranger station.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by sbosecker »

paul wrote: Wed Mar 01, 2023 4:34 pm Hey Scott,

Since this chatgroup isn't read much I don't think there's much harm of reposting this earlier post from Ohioguy ...
Spoke to Ranger on Friday Goat Haunt open with boat landings also.

The camp sites listed being closed in Sept. are only closed from the west side approach,
bridge out at the ranger station.
Paul,

I had seen that - and it makes sense - but it seemed less authoritative than a notification on the Government Website that we're going to use to make our advance reservations. HA!

In my email to Glacier NP I included the link to the Recreation.gov web page that had the Notifications. We'll see what kind of a response I get.

Best regards,

Scott
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by zozeppelin »

If you’re bored and/or want a laugh, here are the comments:
Link
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by paul »

Looks like the majority of comments were negative.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by zozeppelin »

paul wrote: Sat Mar 04, 2023 9:28 am Looks like the majority of comments were negative.
I'd agree. NPS determined otherwise:
In general, 46 letters (30%) expressed support for the
action and 25 (16%) expressed opposition. The remaining 85 letters (55%) did not express support or opposition
but many provided input in the form of suggestions, concerns, and/or questions.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by orin »

So in addition to watching the video, I logged into rec.gov and went to the North Cascades Backcountry Permit page. After looking at the Youtube video and visiting the page you get a good idea of how the selection process will work for Glacier. As near as I can tell you want to be logged in to rec.gov beforehand. When and if you get to the availability page, you enter a start date, area and # in group and get a matrix from which to choose your sites. Then click Book Now. The Glacier website page says however that you will get an error if someone else checked out and took a site you selected before you get checked out. You would then need to edit and try again. So even if sites seem to be available you may get stuck in a loop from which there is no escape. And the longer your itinerary the more likely that is to happen. It seems to me like the whole process could degenerate into a total cf where almost no one can make any progress and eventually just gives up. I guess I will give it a try and see what happens. If I get something, great. I'm not holding my breath.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by paul »

orin wrote: Sat Mar 04, 2023 6:47 pm So in addition to watching the video, I logged into rec.gov and went to the North Cascades Backcountry Permit page. After looking at the Youtube video and visiting the page you get a good idea of how the selection process will work for Glacier. As near as I can tell you want to be logged in to rec.gov beforehand. When and if you get to the availability page, you enter a start date, area and # in group and get a matrix from which to choose your sites. Then click Book Now. The Glacier website page says however that you will get an error if someone else checked out and took a site you selected before you get checked out. You would then need to edit and try again. So even if sites seem to be available you may get stuck in a loop from which there is no escape. And the longer your itinerary the more likely that is to happen. It seems to me like the whole process could degenerate into a total cf where almost no one can make any progress and eventually just gives up. I guess I will give it a try and see what happens. If I get something, great. I'm not holding my breath.
I was thinking the same thing. It will only take one site on your itinerary to get booked while you were in the process of selecting sites to cause you problems when you hit the book button. Each time you will need go back and try another combination and each time the options will be more limited. It doesn't make me very optimistic. I guess I can try to make a strategy of selecting less used sites or dates later in the season.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by zozeppelin »

Let me try and break this down based on my experience with other parks, some sneak peaks and Glacier specific thoughts.

First, Orin is 100% spot on - have your account created and logged in in advance, but not too soon such that you are logged off due to inactivity. Preferably on your computer with a good internet connection.

Second, there are two stages of reservation where you actually 'hold' the sites. Each of these come with a 15 minute timer (that you are prompted with 5 minutes left to add more time to, so don't panic too much):
  • Book Now: this is where you take the sites (unconfirmed) that you selected and add them to your cart. Once in your cart, they are yours, for 15 minutes
  • Proceed to Payment: this is where you take all the permits in your cart and attempt to pay. Each permit likely requires more details beyond what was added to the cart from the Book Now button, such as emergency contact, trip leader details, entry / exit trailheads, etc. From here it is just the usual credit card information
Here is a sneak peak:
Image

Comments:
  • This is where you will land on D-Day, where it currently shows 'reservations closed' on rec.gov, that will be replaced with 'check availability' button with a calendar date selection box
  • You will need to select an area (more on this later)
  • You will need to select your group size (more on this later)
  • Once those two are complete, the grid will populate for the area, showing blue quantities of available sites, clicking in the site/date box will add it to your 'itinerary' in the right had side.
  • Add as many sites as you'd like. When you add a date, other sites on that date are made unavailable
  • Click 'Book Now' at bottom to add to cart (secure / check against availability). It is possible that someone selected and booked what you see available prior to you clicking book now. The availability you see is what is available at the moment of the webpage load or date / area change (requests are made to the server).
Select an area is singular, so if you have an itinerary that crosses multiple areas, you will have to bounce around areas with extra clicks. This is dumb. Tetons has an 'All' option, this is smart.

Select an area is called 'select a starting area', which isn't accurate, as one could start in a different area and have the first night be in another. Semantics but an example of a theme of not understanding.

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.

Questions / Curiosities
How will the rules be enforced? Max distance, consecutive days at a site, can't begin/end at a site, September closure of NF, etc.
At this point, none of the data has been loaded, so I can't decipher much, but will keep looking as I suspect this will be loaded prior to the 15th.

The only observation I do have is that some of the 'first night' restrictions appear to be in there as MAN, REY, and TWO are not listed - but this is an error because the rule is 'It may not be the first night of a trip that starts on the Going-to-the-Sun Road' or 'not available on the first night of an itinerary if the trip begins at Many Glacier or Two Medicine' - which makes for valid itineraries with those as a first night, such as East Glacier-TMO (common CDT), Many Glacier-REY (via Piegan), or Siyeh Bend - MAN (via Piegan). If this error is realized, I'd recommend just adding a dummy site the day prior.

MOK and FIF are showing, which I think are the furthest away from a trailhead, so the mileage limitation isn't working I think, but it could be checked later, or perhaps they are greyed out when availability is populated. (edit: they look to assume Goat Haunt starting point, so it technically works, with exception of Beaver Woman, which the math was fudged - I think it's all just a punt to avoid having to do distance calculations by saying they all are valid - which is fine, but just a foreshadow to other issues where 'close enough' isn't going to cut it).

The main curiosity I have is how multi-itineraries work. For instance, if you are doing the Northern Circle, you want GRN, FIF, and STO and what you get in the Belly River isn't important / can be fixed at walk-in. So if you quickly add GRN-FIF-STO and 'Book Now' to secure and continue shopping for Belly River sites, add those and 'Book Now' - how does that work? Presumably two permits. Will it choke on distance if you terminate at STO (or does it assume Goat Haunt is valid exit)? How will Glacier handle two itineraries? Common sense would say one thing .... but letter of the law is you can't pickup your permit until the day before .. Same question, but two browsers if you're wanting to piecemeal an itinerary.

I anticipate a complete CF, which was completely avoidable if they went with Cascades or Yellowstone's lottery system on rec.gov, which is highly ironic as they point to Cascades tutorial but don't follow their system.

Last word of advice from the road reservations, is that if you did miss out, just be patience and check back around t+15 and t+30, as people who were able to hold sites with 'Book Now', either didn't process it in time or didn't pay in time.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by teapot57 »

Thanks, Zozeppelin! Curious how you were able to navigate to the page you show as a sneak peek? I’d love to get into the system and feel my way around, if possible.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by sbosecker »

zozeppelin wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 1:23 pm Select an area is singular, so if you have an itinerary that crosses multiple areas, you will have to bounce around areas with extra clicks. This is dumb. Tetons has an 'All' option, this is smart.

Select an area is called 'select a starting area', which isn't accurate, as one could start in a different area and have the first night be in another. Semantics but an example of a theme of not understanding.
zozeppelin,

Are you more optimistic than I am... or do you know something?

My question is: How do you know that you can, for example, pick a choke point campsite on day 3 in one area and then move to another area to fill in the first couple of days ...or move to another area and pick another choke point campsite on day 5, then backfill?

I mean I hope that's how it works but I don't know that it HAS to work that way and us not have to enter campsites chronologically from the starting date.

Hmmm... Now that I read your post more closely I see I misunderstood the part of your post I quoted above. You too seem concerned about multi-area itineraries.

However, it does look like maybe you can switch between areas without hitting the "Book Now" button... or do you know from prevous experience at other Parks that this isn't possible?

IF one doesn't have to hit the "Book Now" button to leave an area, maybe one WILL be able to...

Let's again consider the Northern Circle itinerary.

I see they have lumped all the Belly River campsites & everything east of Stoney Indian Pass into the Many Glacier "Area". Stoney Indian & Fifty Mountain are in the Goat Haunt "Area". Granite Park is in the Lake McDonald "Area".

If the system would let me, I'd go to Goat Haunt Area first, grab Stoney Indian & Fifty Mountain on Day 3 & 4; then go to Lake McDonald Area and grab Granite Park; followed by Many Glacier Area and grab Elizabeth Lake Foot for the first night and then something suitable between Elizabeth Lake & Stoney Indian for the 2nd night.

I hope we're able to hop around like that.

Best regards,

Scott
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by zozeppelin »

teapot57 wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 4:53 pm Thanks, Zozeppelin! Curious how you were able to navigate to the page you show as a sneak peek? I’d love to get into the system and feel my way around, if possible.
Hi Teapot - check your PMs. If anyone else would like a link, feel free to message me.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by zozeppelin »

sbosecker wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 9:52 pm
zozeppelin wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 1:23 pm Select an area is singular, so if you have an itinerary that crosses multiple areas, you will have to bounce around areas with extra clicks. This is dumb. Tetons has an 'All' option, this is smart.

Select an area is called 'select a starting area', which isn't accurate, as one could start in a different area and have the first night be in another. Semantics but an example of a theme of not understanding.
zozeppelin,

Are you more optimistic than I am... or do you know something?

My question is: How do you know that you can, for example, pick a choke point campsite on day 3 in one area and then move to another area to fill in the first couple of days ...or move to another area and pick another choke point campsite on day 5, then backfill?

I mean I hope that's how it works but I don't know that it HAS to work that way and us not have to enter campsites chronologically from the starting date.

Hmmm... Now that I read your post more closely I see I misunderstood the part of your post I quoted above. You too seem concerned about multi-area itineraries.

However, it does look like maybe you can switch between areas without hitting the "Book Now" button... or do you know from prevous experience at other Parks that this isn't possible?

IF one doesn't have to hit the "Book Now" button to leave an area, maybe one WILL be able to...

Let's again consider the Northern Circle itinerary.

I see they have lumped all the Belly River campsites & everything east of Stoney Indian Pass into the Many Glacier "Area". Stoney Indian & Fifty Mountain are in the Goat Haunt "Area". Granite Park is in the Lake McDonald "Area".

If the system would let me, I'd go to Goat Haunt Area first, grab Stoney Indian & Fifty Mountain on Day 3 & 4; then go to Lake McDonald Area and grab Granite Park; followed by Many Glacier Area and grab Elizabeth Lake Foot for the first night and then something suitable between Elizabeth Lake & Stoney Indian for the 2nd night.

I hope we're able to hop around like that.

Best regards,

Scott
Hi Scott,
My suspicion/experience has been that you'll be able to hop around between areas and add as you go, with the itinerary continuing to populate on the right hand side. Now whether the logic is working (distance, starting/ending, trailheads, etc) that is another story. Try looking at the teton backcountry permit site on recreaction.gov, where you can attempt some dummy constructions. It isn't helpful regarding the construction because you can pretty much get to/from any site at any time the way the canyons connect the front country to the Teton Crest Trail.

I watched the Cascades video, which Glacier appears to be a carbon copy of (minus the lottery, here's to hoping for next year), and I noticed they the availability does dynamically change (they added Lightning Creek, then Hozomeen went from 0 to 1). So you may have to do it in chronological order - I'd assume that as to not create undue problems.

My curiosity was whether you can do quick piecemeal grabs as to 'hold' the key sites as fast as possible (via 'book it'), then fill in the blanks slightly less frantically with other 'book it's. I think that 'may' work (depending on the logic they have for continuous itinerary and distances), but it would generate two unique applications (in their system), so the permit office may not like that. Presumably you could cancel them at a random future time and remake the reservation with little risk of losing them (if you are mildly quick), but that is awfully complicated and probably not required if you are punctual on the initial reservation, so more of an IT implementation curiosity compared to a practical concern.

Long story short, my recommendation would be to be logged in, and have the permit website up with your start date entered, start area selected, and keep hitting refresh as fast as it loads, starting at about t-2 minutes. Once it availability loads add likely crazy, jumping between areas, and hit 'book it'. Then reassess, and add more as needed (you can always delete the initial book it), then finally checkout with the one you are most happy with.
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by IHB Mike »

zozeppelin wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 10:56 pm
teapot57 wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 4:53 pm Thanks, Zozeppelin! Curious how you were able to navigate to the page you show as a sneak peek? I’d love to get into the system and feel my way around, if possible.
Hi Teapot - check your PMs. If anyone else would like a link, feel free to message me.

If your are willing to share that link with me I would greatly appreciate it. Many thanks!

Mike
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Re: Wilderness Permits 2023

Post by paul »

IHB Mike wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 9:38 am
zozeppelin wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 10:56 pm
teapot57 wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 4:53 pm Thanks, Zozeppelin! Curious how you were able to navigate to the page you show as a sneak peek? I’d love to get into the system and feel my way around, if possible.
Hi Teapot - check your PMs. If anyone else would like a link, feel free to message me.

If your are willing to share that link with me I would greatly appreciate it. Many thanks!

Mike
Me too!

Thanks!
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