At Mount Rainier National Park, you are required to obtain a climbing permit if you plan to travel to the summit, above high camps (or ~10,000 ft), or travel on any glaciers. This includes climbing the mountain in a single push without camping, or doing a circumnavigation where you are traveling on glaciers.
What is Single Push Climbing? Climbing to a summit in one push (or attempt) with the intent of not stopping for extended periods of time. A single push can be an excellent way to approach a climb of Mount Rainier if you are well-trained, experienced, and fit enough to do it. An example would be climbing the Disappointment Cleaver route on Mount Rainier starting and ending in Paradise parking lot within a day. There is continuing to be a trend in single-push style climbing. However, the same three rules still apply to a single push as a standard summit attempt on Mount Rainier! According to the code of federal regulations (36 CFR), to travel on glaciers or above high camps (about 10,000 feet) you need a climbing permit, you must be 18 or have written permission from a guardian, and a summit party must consist of at least two people or have a special solo permit (which requires a separate application and approval process).
What is a climbing permit? A climbing permit is the combination of paying the Annual Cost Recovery Fee and obtaining the appropriate wilderness permit for the specific dates of your trip and then picking up your permit in person at a Mount Rainier National Park Wilderness Information Center.
The Annual Climbing Cost Recovery Fee at Mount Rainier National Park helps provide for trained rangers to respond to search and rescue incidents, staff ranger stations and high camps to register climbers and provide up-to-date route conditions, and importantly, to remove human waste from the mountain and dispose of it properly. This $65 fee as of 2023 can be paid online before arriving at the park by following the link above and is good for the entire year. You will need to show your PAY.GOV tracking ID from the confirmation email to the rangers in Wilderness Information Centers in order to obtain your physical copy of your climbing permit.
The Wilderness Permit allows you and your group to camp overnight or move through a general area for a specified set of dates. Even if you are climbing in a single push and not camping, we require that you get a wilderness permit...Why? It is likely that on your climb you may use amenities by stopping at Camp Muir or Camp Schurman to use the toilet, use our premade blue bags, depositing blue bags into blue bag barrels, and interacting with Park Staff in the Wilderness Information Centers in order to get your climbing permit. Additionally, you never know when you might have an unplanned night out on the mountain if something goes wrong. The wilderness permit allows us to track on several things: overdue climbing parties; the solitude of the wilderness area by limiting the number of people on any given route; the limiting people on a route allows spacing between route adjuncts allowing everything to move more fluidly. A wilderness permit is $6 for a walk-up (up to 24 hours in advanced), or $26 for advanced registration for 2023
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| Northwest side of Mount Rainier on 6/8/23 |
Permitting Resources:
