Rocky Mountain National Park backcountry permit window opens March 1st

Gaining permitted access to the pristine backcountry areas of both Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks has evolved tremendously in recent years. The old process consisted of you, your map, and some hand-written notes about where you’d like to go, taking notes on which campsites were along the way that might suit your route the best. You’d fire that off to the park with a wide date-range, wait a few weeks, and hear back if – and when – said trip might happen.

The ball was in their court to give you the go-ahead, and even then they’d often tweak campsites given demand and availability.

Now, the ball is in your court – if you’re lucky enough to hit the basic lottery window. You simply enter your name and contact info when their windows open – March 1st for Yellowstone, March 15th for Glacier – and if you’re picked at random, you head to Recreation.gov when prompted and pick whichever route that’s both available and so desired.

I spelled all of that out to create a natural contrast with the system still in place at Rocky Mountain National Park, whose backcountry permit window also opens on March 1st. Their system, unlike the evolved versions of its peers, is perhaps the most ridiculous to manage.

At exactly 8:00 AM MST on the morning of March 1st, backcountry permit reservations will be available on RMNP’s Recreation.gov page, and you book your entire route at that moment. This isn’t like the others where you put your name in and, if you get selected, show back up later for an uninterrupted 15 minute window to casual peruse what’s open and book what you like. It all goes down right there, with digital elbows flying and sites you think you’d like getting booked out from underneath you every second.

(By the way, it’s worth going ahead and setting up your Recreation.gov account now so you don’t shed valuable minutes doing so when you log-on on March 1st.)

The entire summer’s worth of trekking in RMNP gets booked up right then and there, and the insanely high demand to visit the park’s vast array of peaks and lakes means it won’t take but a matter of a few minutes. So, you’ve got to show up not just ready, but ready with plans B, C, M, Q, and Z.

Want to backpack up to Lake Verna on the park’s west side in June? Be prepared to build your trip around campsite flexibility, as there are sites along the East Inlet Trail at Gray Jay, Cats Lair, Slickrock, Solitaire, Upper East Inlet, and Lake Verna itself. Staying at any would let you complete the on-foot section – including being adventurous up to Spirit, Fourth, and Fifth Lakes – so long as you don’t get too tied up looking at just one campsite. Oh, and the June portion of this hypothetical? Maybe be ready to see if it’s open in July, August, or September, too.

The Bear Lake and Glacier Gorge Trailheads see massive numbers of hikers, and rightfully so. Heading out to Sky Pond and staying at Andrews Creek is a dream trip, but the limited number of campsites on the route means landing that permit would be threading a very tiny needle’s eye. Just a little bit north of those, though, are the options out of Fern Lake and Cub Lake Trailheads, and there are a much greater concentration of campsites in that basin that could allow you to still pull off your overnight trips.

Finally, don’t overlook the Wild Basin backcountry options. They’re typically not as busy as the Bear Lake routes just to their north, and the trips up to Thunder Lake and Pear Lake are some of the most pristine, remote in the entire park. There are reasons the most crowded places are the most crowded, obviously, but looking just a hair over the shoulder from some of RMNP’s busiest areas can work to your advantage. If everyone else’s Plan B is your Plan A, in other words, you’ll have a better chance at getting exactly what you want, when you want it, without having to pivot and rearrange your entire summer schedule.

You west-coasters are going to have to get up early and get your coffee pots on, since swinging by at 11:30 AM MST on March 1st is going to leave you with precious little, if any, left to book. For you east-coasters, well, I suggest you just don’t get your time zones confused for this one – they’re going to get booked up early, and often.

Know Before You Go

• There are no fires in the RMNP backcountry, so save yourself the trouble of trying to build a route around having those at night. Such is life there when the wilderness already sees such incredible traffic, yet the devastating East Troublesome Fire and the 21,000 acres within the park that it burned left an equally indelible impact on how fires are managed within park boundaries. You’ll need a stove to cook anything while camping.
• Speaking of camping, RMNP is a campsite-only wilderness. You must stay in designated sites only.
• RMNP has an extensively detailed list of their backcountry sites, the rules and regulations that apply to each, and even has them sorted by the regions of the park. When planning your Plans A, B, and C routes beforehand, I’d suggest starting with a destination you’d like to see and working backwards from there, prioritizing which campsite options are a) the best for your specifications and b) available on-route to the destination you’re seeking.
• For my money, the best map of RMNP is Trails Illustrated #200 (Rocky Mountain National Park). Use it in conjunction with the RMNP list above to help pick where to stay on your backcountry trek.
• You must carry a pre-approved bear canister in which you’ll keep your food and other scented items while in camp. As of 2019, Ursack bags (with their accompanying aluminum liners) were approved for use, as Andrew Skurka relayed. (Please notice his note on rangers enforcing the ‘aluminum liner’ portion of their approval, since merely carrying the bag itself is not enough.)
• As always, Leave No Trace principles are required.
• Finally, remember that the backcountry permit process is the best defense against there being hundreds, if not thousands of folks trying to camp in the RMNP wilderness each night. The process itself has turned getting the permits into the busy, dizzy mess so that the actual backpacking and camping is much less so. And while the process itself is often frustrating, you’ve got to keep in mind the beautiful things you’ll get to see by going through it. Get your options ready, land at least one, and I’ll see you out there on the trail!