National Park Service

Young girl rock climbing at Idaho's City of Rocks National Reserve.

Ask Me: Finding ‘More Complicated’ Family Adventures and Hiring Guides

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Mr. Lanza,

I am writing to ask your advice on how to find more complicated active outdoors experiences for my kids. I live on the East Coast (small town, coastal South Carolina), but as a family we’ve been camping and hiking in the North Carolina mountains for some time now. My children are six and seven, and we are starting to head west to the national parks now that they are older. I love your photos of mountain climbing, bouldering, etc. and I’m wondering if you have suggestions for good places to introduce these activities to kids. We do not have your experience, so I’m guessing we would find a guide and if you have thoughts on that I’d welcome it as well.

I appreciate any time or thoughts, I love your website.

Patty
Beaufort, SC

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Mount Rainier National Park.

Will the National Parks Bring Their Backcountry Permit System Into the Digital Era?

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By Michael Lanza

Last month, a storm caused a power outage at Mount Rainier National Park during a two-week period when rangers received about 2,000 requests from backpackers and climbers for backcountry permit reservations for 2016. (One of those requests, coincidentally, was mine.) The outage sparked a “critical failure” of the park’s reservation system, forcing management to abandon it and announce they would issue permits only first-come, first-served for all of 2016—not convenient for anyone traveling a distance to explore Rainier’s backcountry or thru-hike the Wonderland Trail.

Rainier’s crisis throws a spotlight on a larger dilemma facing the National Park Service: In an age when we can swipe and click to purchase almost any product or service, many national parks have plodded into the Digital Era with an archaically 20th-century system for reserving and issuing permits to camp in the backcountry—a system involving snail mail and fax machines. (If you’re not old enough to remember the 1980s and 1990s, Google “fax” on your smartphone.) At some parks, you must actually still show up in person, stand in line, and hope for the best.

Finally, though, it appears the national parks are making a bold leap into the 21st century, a change that should make exploring the backcountry of most parks—or at least getting permission to do so—much easier.

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