About this permit
All overnight camping in the Mount Margaret Backcountry requires a permit, and the permit is tied to a specific campsite on a specific night. There are eight designated sites — Panhandle, Ridge, Margaret, Obscurity, Snow, Bear, Dome and Shovel — and Recreation.gov issues one permit per site per night, except at Ridge Camp, which takes two. Group size is four people, or eight at Ridge Camp.
Permits are released one month at a time on the first day of the preceding month at 7:00 a.m. Pacific: May permits on April 1, June permits on May 1, and so on through the November 1-30 release on October 1. The season runs May 1 through November 30, but the Forest Service is blunt that the area is often snowbound until late spring or early summer and that snowdrifts often remain until July.
Because each site is one party, a single cancellation is the whole opening. Print the permit within 14 days of entry — it must be printed by 10 a.m. on the day you start or it is cancelled.
The route
There are two ways in and they open at different times of year. The South Coldwater Trailhead off State Route 504 is the late-spring and summer approach; Norway Pass off Forest Road 26 is the late-summer approach and, per the Forest Service, Forest Road 99 and Forest Road 26 normally open from the end of June through November.
Once you are on the ridge system the trails are narrow and steep and can climb over 2,000 feet. The Forest Service singles out Whittier Ridge Route #214 as extremely challenging, very narrow, crossing steep cliffs, and unsuitable for inexperienced hikers or anyone uncomfortable with heights. Every other route into the camps avoids it.
The eight camps — Panhandle, Ridge, Margaret, Obscurity, Snow, Bear, Dome and Shovel — each have a raised tent pad and a composting toilet, and you must camp on the pad. Ridge Camp is the only one that takes two permits and eight people; everywhere else it is one party of four.
Why it matters
The Mount Margaret Backcountry sits in the northeast corner of the National Volcanic Monument Congress set aside in 1982 to let the 1980 eruption's aftermath run its course. Camping is capped at eight designated sites and one permit per site per night, which makes it one of the hardest small permits in Washington to land and one of the quietest places to sleep in the Cascades.
