About Wilderness Permit Alerts
- Page revised
Wilderness Permit Alerts is a small reference on five quota permits: how each is issued, where returned space goes, and how to catch it.
Who publishes it
OpenCampsite publishes this site. OpenCampsite is a notification service for campground and permit openings in the United States and Canada. It sends an alert when a check finds space matching the dates you set. It does not book, hold or buy anything, and it does not submit lottery applications.
Links from these pages to OpenCampsite go to the page where that permit can be watched. They are there because an alert is the practical next step for four of the five permits. The fifth, the Half Dome day hike, cannot be watched, and its page says so.
This site is not run by, endorsed by or affiliated with the National Park Service, the Forest Service or Recreation.gov. Those agencies issue every permit described here.
What is covered
- Yosemite wilderness permits
- Half Dome cable-route permits
- Enchantments overnight permits
- Mount Whitney day-use and overnight permits
- Desolation Wilderness overnight permits
Other permits are left out on purpose. A page appears here only when the rules have been read on the agency's own site and the return of cancelled space has been worked out.
How facts are checked
Each permit page lists its agency sources and the date they were read. Dates, quotas and fees are copied from those pages, not from memory or from other guides.
Three habits apply:
- If the agency page does not state a fact, this site leaves it out.
- If the agency page does not name a season year, the permit page says that and tells you to confirm.
- Anything that is inference, such as when cancellations are most likely, is labeled as inference.
Rules change every season. The agency page is always the authority. Where this site and an agency page disagree, the agency page is right and this site is out of date.
What is not here
No trail conditions, snow reports, closures or route advice. No testimonials. No ranking of which permit is hardest to get.
Corrections
Found a date or fee that has changed? Write to hey@opencampsite.com with the page and the agency link. Corrections are made on the page and the check date is updated.
Other sites from the same publisher
- campsiteavailability.com
- campgroundavailability.com
- campsiteavailable.com
- groupcampsites.com
- groupcampgrounds.com
- bestcampsitealert.com