Death Valley joins National Park peers in moving backcountry permit process to Recreation.gov

The old days of accessing the respective backcountries of our nation’s National Parks was something of an educational process in itself. There was no set method; rather, each park had its own language, its own set of hoops and loops through which you must jump to land the approved ability to see their most secret gems.

As recently as 2021, accessing the Glacier National Park backcountry required submitting a written request populated with the entire trip you wanted to do by a set date in early March. You needed to pick your campsites, give a window of time, and mail it off to the rangers, who would then decide if they could fit your trip into the giant moving-parts spreadsheet that included every other permit request they received during the open window.

Maybe you’d get your dream trip…during the final week of June!

Maybe you’d get that same trip…during the first week of August!

Maybe you wouldn’t get it at all…or you’d get your third choice trip (you could submit multiple options) at the single least preferential date in your range!

Effectively, it made planning ahead nearly impossible, something that Death Valley National Park placed on their would-be backcountry visitors in a different manner. In the world’s hottest place, the backcountry permits were reserved for only day-of walk-ups, meaning you had to venture all the way to the border of California/Nevada without a planned trip in mind only to hope there would be something open you wanted to visit while your on your trip in the area.

That is set to change for 2024, however. As the National Park Service relayed over the weekend, Death Valley will move all backcountry permit reservations to Recreation.gov beginning on April 30th, 2024, and will open booking for up to 6 months in advance. There will be a $10 fee for both roadside campsite reservations and backcountry permit reservations, and now you can go ahead and get your trip on the books in advance of planning how the heck to make your way to one of the more remote portions of the American southwest.

Now you can know ahead of time if you’ll be able to make the trek out to Homestake Campground and see The Racetrack, or when you’ll need to plan your trek to make that happen. The same goes for Butte Valley or Lee Flat. All it will take is a little pre-planning over at Recreation.gov, just like it does for Glacier, Yellowstone, and most of the rest of the most heavily visited National Parks in our country.