reserving a hard-to-get national park backcountry permit

Backpackers on the Wonderland Trail west of Sunrise in Mount Rainier National Park.

How to Get a Permit to Backpack Rainier’s Wonderland Trail

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By Michael Lanza

Any backpacker making the substantial effort to hike the 93-mile Wonderland Trail around Washington’s Mount Rainier soon discovers why it’s one of the most popular backpacking trips in the country. Those reasons include regularly wading through some of the best wildflower meadows you’ll see anywhere, the numerous waterfalls and raging rivers gray with glacial flour—and the countless times that the most heavily glaciated peak in the Lower 48, 14,410-foot Mount Rainier, suddenly pops into view, looking impossibly massive.

That’s also why few backcountry permits are harder to get than one for the Wonderland—unquestionably one of “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips” and “The 10 Best National Park Backpacking Trips.”

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A backpacker above Elizabeth Lake in Glacier National Park.

How to Get a Permit to Backpack in Glacier National Park

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By Michael Lanza

There are two immutable truths about backpacking in Glacier National Park. First, from its stirring landscape, where glaciers hang off muscular mountains and sheer cliffs soar above deeply green valleys dappled with lakes and waterfalls, to almost certain sightings of wildlife like mountain goats, bighorn sheep, moose, elk, and grizzly and black bears, there’s really no place in the continental United States quite like Glacier.

Second, it’s one of the hardest backcountry permits to get in the National Park System. But the new wilderness permit reservation system that Glacier adopted in 2023 and greatly improved in 2024 brings equity and order to the process. Still, knowing when and how to get a Glacier permit is critical if you want to backpack there.

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A backpacker hiking to Iceberg Lake in the Ansel Adams Wilderness, High Sierra.

How to Get a Yosemite or High Sierra Wilderness Permit

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By Michael Lanza

Ah, the High Sierra. Yosemite. Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. The John Muir Wilderness and Ansel Adams Wilderness, Mount Whitney, and countless other, less famous but equally beautiful places. Every backpacker who has ever walked for days through any of these wildlands holds them in special reverence—and for good reasons, given this seemingly infinite landscape’s constellations of sharply pointed granite peaks and alpine lakes, too many waterfalls to name, and rivers and creeks so pretty they make your heart glad. Plus, with thousands of miles of trails, you could spend a lifetime wandering here without seeing it all.

Little wonder there’s so much competition for backcountry permits throughout most of the High Sierra. But read on because the time for planning and reserving a permit for trips this summer is coming up fast.

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A backpacker on the John Muir Trail hiking toward Silver Pass in the John Muir Wilderness.

How to Get a John Muir Trail Wilderness Permit in 2026

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By Michael Lanza

Sometimes it can seem like everyone who’s ever carried a backpack through mountains somewhere wants to thru-hike the John Muir Trail—especially when it comes time to reserve a JMT wilderness permit. And why not? “America’s Most Beautiful Trail” earns its nickname and ranks indisputably among “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips.” Consequently, few permits are harder to get; most people who enter one of the JMT rolling permit lotteries get rejected. This story explains the various ways to reserve a John Muir Trail wilderness permit—which you must do months ahead of your trip dates.

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A backpacker hiking the Ptarmigan Tunnel Trail in Glacier National Park.

Backpacking Glacier National Park: What You Need to Know

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By Michael Lanza

I remember my first backpacking trip in Glacier National Park, more than 30 years ago, feeling magical—and a little bit intimidating, which is best illustrated by the fact that I had probably carried bear spray only once before. But I’m pretty sure my girlfriend (now wife) and I did not reserve a backcountry permit months before—we just showed up and got one. (Good luck doing that today.) We did little, if any, research on a route. We encountered some surprises and had what we considered a mostly wonderful adventure.

Today, though, with several multi-day hikes in Glacier under my hipbelt and knowing the park’s terrain, trails, climate, regulations, and permit system well, our uninformed strategy for planning that first, long-ago trip seems both quaint and like a formula that invites frustration and disappointment—especially in this era of much higher numbers of backpackers. Now, I take a very different approach to planning trips there.

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