How John Muir Trail permits actually work

The permit is the hardest part of a John Muir Trail hike, and it is the first thing you should solve. Everything else — your dates, your resupply, your flights — depends on which permit you draw.

The important thing to understand is that quotas apply at trailheads, not on the trail itself. Once you are walking, no one limits how far you go. The competition is entirely about where and when you are allowed to start.

Southbound from Yosemite Valley

The classic hike starts at Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley and finishes on Mount Whitney. It needs a Yosemite wilderness permit for a Happy Isles trailhead, and because that is the most sought-after wilderness permit in the park, it is issued by lottery through Recreation.gov.

Applications open on a rolling basis roughly 24 weeks before your intended start date and stay open for about a week, after which the lottery runs and results go out around 21 weeks out. You rank several trailhead and date combinations on a single application. Applying for a wider range of dates and trailheads meaningfully improves your odds.

There is a second quota layered on top. Anyone continuing south out of the park over Donohue Pass counts against a separate daily exit quota of roughly 45 people. Your Yosemite permit has to be issued with Donohue Pass listed as your exit, or you are not permitted to continue onto the JMT proper. This is the number that makes the permit scarce, not the trailhead quota.

Realistic trailhead options, from hardest to easiest to draw:

• Happy Isles to Past Little Yosemite Valley — the purist start, walking the whole trail from mile zero.
• Happy Isles to Little Yosemite Valley — same start, but you must camp in the LYV backpackers’ camp on night one.
• Glacier Point to Little Yosemite Valley — rejoins the JMT below Nevada Fall, skipping the first climb.
• Sunrise Lakes — joins the trail near Sunrise High Sierra Camp.
• Lyell Canyon — starts at Tuolumne Meadows and skips the first 23 miles. Noticeably easier to draw, and still needs the Donohue exit.

Cancellations are released back to Recreation.gov continuously. Checking daily in the weeks before a trip is a genuine strategy, not a long shot.

Northbound from Whitney Portal

Starting at Whitney Portal and walking north means climbing to 14,505 feet on your first or second day with no acclimatisation, which is why fewer people do it. It also needs an Inyo National Forest permit that includes the Mount Whitney Zone, and that has its own lottery: applications typically open on 1 February and close 15 March, with results in late March.

Side-door starts

Plenty of people hike most of the trail on an easier permit by entering over one of the eastern passes — Kearsarge Pass from Onion Valley, Bishop Pass from South Lake, Piute Pass, or Taboose. These are Inyo National Forest permits, are far less contested, and let you walk the whole southern half. You do not get the full 211 miles, but you get the best of the high country.

What the permit obliges you to do

• Carry an approved bear-resistant canister. This is required in Yosemite, Inyo National Forest and Sequoia & Kings Canyon, and it is enforced.
• Camp only where your permit and local regulations allow, generally at least 100 feet from water and trails.
• Stay within the group size limit — 15 people on trail in Yosemite wilderness, and smaller in some areas.
• Start at the trailhead and on the date printed on the permit. It is not transferable to another day.

If you begin in Yosemite and reach Mount Whitney by trail, your originating permit covers the summit and the descent to Whitney Portal. You do not need a second Whitney permit. The reverse is not true: entering at Whitney Portal always requires the Whitney Zone permit.

Before you rely on any of this

Quota numbers, application windows and fees are set season by season and have changed several times in recent years. Treat the dates above as the shape of the system, not as this year’s calendar, and confirm the current rules with the Yosemite Wilderness Office and Recreation.gov before you build a trip around them.