Permit Day

Permits: Why and How

An odd thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), of the 3 major national scenic trails the PCT is the only trail that requires you to have a thru-hiking permit.  Meaning you get a "start" date and you must then start on that day.  The other 2 trails you can just show up when you'd like and start hiking, not so with the PCT.  The Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA), which is an amazing steward of the trail, manages these permits and it's set up that 50 permits per day for the months of March, April and May if you are traveling South to North (Mexico to Canada), which is the traditional thru hiking path.  The PCTA releases these 50 permits on two different waves.  The first happens in October in which 35 are released and then the other 15 are released in January.  How the process works is you go to their website before 10:30am the day of the release; sit on the website and at 10:30 the site will randomly place you in line and assign you a number.  This is random, you could be lucky #1 or you could be lucky #10,000.  When your number comes up, you are entered into the site to pick a date to start.  The problem is that there is a high demand for these permits and if you get a higher number in line, by the time you get into pick a permit day there's a good chance that every day could be full.  The other problem is that a lot of people are wanting to start in late April or early May for purposes of getting to the Sierra's when the snow level has melted out for safe travel.  Because of the high demand for that window, the PCTA, to preserve the trail and the foot print has instituted this permit system.  For better or worse, this is the process that we all have to work under.

January Permit Day Extravaganza

For me, it couldn't have worked out any better!!  During the first permit release in October I was able to get a March 18th start date.  This would have been "ok" but I was concerned about getting to the Sierra's too soon and having a lot of snow to deal with.  I'm experienced in snow travel and feel confident in my skills and ability to be in the Sierra's early but I wanted to have a better experience than trying to navigate the snow problems that the Sierra's can cause.  So with the second release date this week I went to my friends house and we used multiple devices to try and give me the best shot at getting a place in line for me to switch.  Even with all the devices the best number I got was 4605.  So I waited for an hour watching the facebook group page post pictures that dates were all filling up.  I figured I'd just wait and see what was available, perhaps someone would switch out of an April date and I could move my start date at the very least a couple weeks later.

When I finally got into the site to modify my date from March 18 some how, some way April 5th was open and I snagged it right away.  I then just kept refreshing the page over and over again.  Then all of a sudden April 23 opened up and I jumped on it... I GOT IT!!  I was hoping to change my start date from March 18th to some time between April 20-May 1, and I was able to get a permit in that window.  I literally jumped for joy!!  For me, this permit process worked out.  I know for others it did not.  As my grandmother would say, my silver spoon paid off.