How to Get the Most Competitive Wilderness Permits

Yosemite National Park, CA

Climb the iconic cables on Yosemite's most famous landmark. NPS puts the preseason lottery at 22%.

Grand Canyon NP, AZ

Cross the Grand Canyon from North Rim to South Rim through two billion years of geology.

Zion National Park, UT

Wade 16 miles through the Virgin River in America's most famous slot canyon.

Glacier National Park, MT

Explore the Crown of the Continent with grizzlies, glaciers, and pristine alpine lakes.

Zion National Park, UT

Zion's famous chain-assisted summit. The friendliest big-name lottery in the park system, near 50%.

Grand Canyon, NPS

One permit, two rims: 23.5 miles that drop 5,761 feet to the Colorado River and then climb 4,380 feet back out the far side.

Vermilion Cliffs, AZ/UT

Otherworldly sandstone formations at Coyote Buttes North. Only 64 people per day allowed.

Alpine Lakes Wilderness, WA

Turquoise alpine lakes, golden larches, and granite peaks. The Forest Service puts the lottery under 10%.

Havasupai Reservation, AZ

Turquoise waterfalls in a hidden Grand Canyon tributary. Reservations sell out in seconds.

King Range National Conservation Area, CA

California's last true wilderness coastline. Tide-dependent hiking through the remote King Range.

Enchantments, USFS

Twenty-four people a day enter the Core Enchantment Zone - the high lake basin between Aasgard Pass and Upper Snow Lake, and the hardest overnight permit in Washington to draw.

Enchantments, USFS

Twenty-four people a day are allowed into the Core Enchantment Zone. Sixteen of those places come from one February lottery, and the other eight from a daily lottery you have to be standing inside the geofence to enter.

Sierra Nevada, CA

211 miles from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney. Only 45 people a day can exit over Donohue Pass.

Mount Rainier NP, WA

93 miles circling Mount Rainier through alpine meadows and glacial valleys.

Idaho Rivers, WSR

Float 104 miles through the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, past hot springs, pictographs and the third deepest rock-walled canyon in North America.

Colorado Rivers, WSR

Row the Colorado from river mile 0 at Lees Ferry through the deepest gorge in North America on a permit most people wait years to draw.

Montana Rivers, WSR

Float 59 miles of limestone canyon that you can only reach by boat, on one of 9 launches a day drawn by a Montana state lottery.

Yosemite, CA

One Yosemite permit covers the whole 211-mile John Muir Trail - and only two trailheads in the park can issue it.

Inyo National Forest, CA

Climb the highest peak in the Lower 48 (14,505 ft). One lottery a year, and 100 day-use spots a day.

Shasta-Trinity National Forest, CA

California's most prominent volcano. A self-issue summit pass, not a lottery - the challenge is the climb.

Denali, MTN

Denali is the highest peak in North America at 20,310 feet, and the permit is a special use permit rather than a lottery — there is no cap on how many climbers the mountain takes. What there is, is a 60-day wall. NPS requires climbers attempting Mount McKinley or Mount Foraker to register at least 60 days before their start date, and the point of that window is direct contact: mountaineering rangers answer questions, suggest routes matched to a climber's experience, and share first-hand conditions before anyone arrives in Talkeetna. Registration for the 2026 season opened January 1, 2026 and is two steps. First, each climber pays the mountaineering special use fee at Pay.gov: $450, or $350 for climbers aged 24 or younger as of the start date. Second, each climber emails a signed Application for Special Use Permit to the Talkeetna ranger office. Registration is not complete until both are in for every team member. There are two exceptions to the 60-day rule: climbers who have physically been on Mount McKinley or Mount Foraker since 1995 can request a seven-day exception, and an expedition leader may add one new member up to 30 days before the start date. Everyone then attends an in-person orientation at the Walter Harper Talkeetna Ranger Station — including teams starting on the north side of the range — checking in together with government photo ID. Four orientation slots run each day in 2026 and they are assigned first-come, first-served. On top of the special use fee, each climber pays the $15 Denali park entrance fee unless they hold an Interagency or Denali Annual pass. The numbers are published. In 2024, 974 individuals made 1,049 attempts on Denali and 523 reached the summit, a 49.9% summit rate. Across the whole NPS record from 1903 to 2024 the figure is 26,358 summits on 50,867 attempts, or 51.8%. The West Buttress carried 972 of the 1,049 attempts in 2024, and NPS says over 90% of climbers take it.

Mt. Rainier, MTN

Mount Rainier is a 14,410-foot active volcano and the most heavily glaciated peak in the contiguous United States. NPS says reaching the summit by any route takes a vertical gain of more than 9,000 feet over ten or more miles, and that technical glacier-travel rope skills are required. There are over twenty climbing routes reached from four main trailheads — Paradise, Westside Road, White River and Mowich Lake — though SR165 to Carbon River and Mowich Lake is currently closed with no alternate route. The permitting is layered, and which layers apply depends on when you go. Federal regulation requires a permit to be on a glacier or above roughly 10,000 feet, requires climbers to be 18 or have a guardian's permission, and prohibits soloing without specific authorization. From September 15 to May 21 you self-register: pay $82 per person at Pay.gov before you arrive, then fill out a card at the kiosk at the Paradise Old Station, and in winter that card also serves as your wilderness permit. From May 22 to September 30 there is no self-registration — you register in person at a wilderness information station, and the park holds roughly half of capacity at each camp and zone for walk-ups available 24 hours before the climb. On top of climbing registration, the high-use season from May 1 to September 15 requires a wilderness permit at $12 per person per night, even if you are not camping and are climbing in a single push, because the park manages use along the whole route. Roughly two thirds of summer permits are reservable in advance on Recreation.gov and the remaining third are walk-up. An optional early-access lottery exists because demand for the Wonderland Trail and high-use climbing routes exceeds capacity: in 2026 it opened February 10, closed March 3, notified applicants March 14, and gave winners staggered booking windows from March 21 before general on-sale on April 25. About success rates: NPS does not publish one any more. Its annual climbing statistics stop reporting the number of climbers who summited after 2018, the last figure being 5,135 successful out of 10,762 climbers, or 47.7%. No current NPS page gives a per-route success rate.

Mt. Whitney Mountaineer's, MTN

Take the highest summit in the contiguous United States by the line USFS says has no hiking trail at all — up the North Fork, over the Ebersbacher Ledges, and into a couloir the trail hikers never see.

SEKI, CA

Climb the highest peak in the contiguous United States (14,505 ft). The main Whitney Trail is highly competitive.