Officials at North Cascades National Park in Washington state will begin testing a backcountry permit reservations program in mid-March for popular areas in the park. The pilot program, to start March 15, stems from an increase in backcountry travelers over the past several years that has made permits difficult to obtain in certain areas of the park.
A $20 cost recovery fee will be charged for the reservation application, which can be submitted from March 15 to May 15 for camping between May 15 and September 30. Reservations can be made for 60 percent of the available sites, with the remainder of the campsites available for no-cost walk-up permits on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Reservations can be made for the following areas:
- Ross Lake (including the East Bank Trail)
- Diablo Lake
- Copper Ridge area (including ridge camps and Chilliwack Valley camps)
- Cascade Pass area (including Sahale, Pelton Basin, Basin Creek, Johannesburg, and Cottonwood)
- Stehekin area (Lakeview, Purple Point, and Harlequin)
- Climbing areas – all cross-country zones around Mount Shuksan, Forbidden and Sharkfin Peaks (including Boston Basin), Eldorado, and Mount Triumph
Stock camps within these areas can be reserved with priority given to stock parties.
You can learn more about the pilot program at this page.
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Comments
Someone needs to close the backcountry fee floodgate so widely opened under Jarvis. Manufactured data in the form of padded visitation numbers is always the justification for these fees. Sadly, no one ever challenges the NPS when they put out this false data and the folks who may agree that the NPS does pad numbers will fall in the "well, they need the money" club. Dishonesty is dishonesty whether on the right or the left and is unjustified on any level. There are always certain campsites that are more popular in any unit, but they globally apply this small piece of data to the entire backcountry and it goes unchallenged because the majority of folks will never see any part of a backcountry campsite.
I'm so glad North Cascades is piloting this. It's so competitive to secure a Copper Ridge-Chilliwack loop permit that, when coming from the East Coast, knowing in advance whether I'll have the permit will make all the difference in planning a trip.