As many of you have seen, the park has implemented a new online permit system for climbing reservations as well as ‘walk-up’ permits. It has been functioning well by enabling a streamlined reservation process. However, we have identified a glitch in the new system that causes the number of available sites at Camp Muir and Camp Schurman to be less than what is available. We have alerted the developers and they are working a fix. In the meantime, the developers have posted an alert on the page describing the glitch.
Here is the issue. Despite what the site may seem to indicate, every night-before and throughout the next day, there is room for thirty climbers at Camp Muir and twelve climbers at Camp Schurman just via “walk-up” (day-of) permits for that day. Here’s an example from a screenshot of recreation.gov:
Note that the green-circled “W” indicates that there are still walk-up permits available. Show up to the ranger station in-person up to a day before your intended start and you can be issued a permit.
The yellow-circled “3” indicates there are only three “reservable” sites left to get a permit in advance – but that walk-up (30 Muir/12 Schurman) permits are still available.
The red-circled “0” indicates that there are no reservable permits available but doesn’t reflect the amount of walk-up permits still free (30 Muir/12 Schurman).
Unfortunately, there’s no great way of showing the current availability of walk-up permits, so it’s a bit of a gamble to show up and expect to secure one – but the odds are in your favor! On one of our busiest weekends (Fourth of July) there was still plenty of walk-up space available. While we can’t guarantee that a walk-up permit will be available, it’d be a surprise if we couldn’t work it out – especially for smaller teams with flexible itineraries.
The site administrators have been made aware of this issue and the confusion it’s causing and are working to rectify it. Currently, they’ve put an alert on the site to let climbers know about the issue:
In the meantime, don’t let the site’s numbers discourage you from attempting to get a walk-up permit!
Here is the link to the Mount Rainier National Park Wilderness and Climbing Permits system:
