Navigating Recreation.gov
Recreation.gov is a federal website for obtaining campground reservations and backpacking permits throughout the United States.
Creating an Account:
Creating an account with recreation.gov will allow you to reserve campsites and backpacking permits, plan future trips, and look back at which campsites and permits you’ve previously reserved.
To create an account, click on Sign Up in the upper righthand corner of the main website.
Booking a wilderness permit:
If you’re looking to expand your hiking experience to overnight backpacking, you’ll need to obtain a wilderness permit. Each wilderness area has a quota-- or a maximum amount of people allowed to overnight travel from each trailhead. While wilderness areas are managed by different organizations, many wilderness areas utilize Recreation.gov for their permitting process.
Many wilderness permits can be reserved up to 6 months in advance. This means you’ll need to access the website on January 1 for a permit on July 1.
Here’s a step by step guide for booking your permit.
Start at recreation.gov, then scroll down and click on ‘Permits’.
Once on the permits page, you can search for a wilderness area. For explanation purposes, we’ll use Inyo National Forest.
Once you’re on the web page for your desired wilderness area, it will look like this.
This page of recreation.gov will have tons of information for you to plan your trip, including an overview of the wilderness area and more specific information about permits, including fee information and quotas for each trailhead in this wilderness area.
To book your permit you’ll want to click on explore available permits.
Once you’ve clicked on explore available permits you’ll arrive at a webpage like this:
From here, you’ll fill in the details of your trip to see if permits are available.
Start with your ‘Permit type’- which will typically be ‘overnight’ unless you are planning to exit via the Mt. Whitney trail.
Next, use the + button to adjust your group size, which may be no more than 15 people but is subject to the trailhead quota.
Then, pick the date you’d ideally like to start your trip. You can adjust your start date once you’re in the system. Remember that permits are available up to 6 months in advance and are reserved on a rolling basis.
Finally, state whether this is a commercial or guided trip. Unless you’re a commercial guiding company-- click no.
Once you’ve filled in all the details of your intended trip, you’ll be able to see how many permits are available for each trailhead in the wilderness area. The web page will look something like this:
As you can see, each trailhead either has a number or a W for the dates around your selected start date. The number indicates how many permits are left for advance reservation for each date. The W indicates that all advance permits have been reserved, and now only walkup permits are available.
As you can see, you can select different dates depending on when permits are available.
Carefully choose your entry point and entry date – these cannot be modified later without creating a new reservation.
Once you’ve found an available permit, scroll to the bottom of the page and click ‘Book now’. This will take you to your checkout page.
The final step of getting your application is to fill out all your information and pay for your permit. Remember that the trip leader (or 3 listed alternative leaders) are the ONLY people that may pick up the permit and must be present on the trip. You can pay for your permit in Recreation.gov, and you should receive a confirmation email.
Your confirmation email is NOT your permit.
You must pick up your permit from the closest wilderness station prior to your backpacking trip, and your permit must be carried with you at all times. Details of your permit are available in the email you’ll receive.
