1st Come 1st Serve Permit Question

[crazychester]

I'll be trying for a 1st come permit for a trip starting this coming Monday out of Tuolomne Meadows. I plan on getting up early Sunday to acquire said permit. My question is whether I should go all the way to the TM permit station or if I should be okay just going to the Big Oak Flat station. Staying in Groveland Saturday night so the Big Oak Flat station would obviously be preferable. Also, if anybody has a good idea just how early we need to get there that would be appreciated as well. Thanks in advance.

[gkam2]

Thanks for posting this question.

I have the same question but for Happy Isles-Valley. I was planning on getting there around 30min before?

[cjoz]

Assume by leaving out of TM you mean you're looking for a Lyell Canyon permit?

The local issuing stations have priority over the others, so if you go to Big Oak Flat you might lose out to the people waiting in line at TM for Lyell permits. Likewise, if you're looking for a Happy Isles/LYV permit, you might lose out to the people waiting in line down at the Valley permit station. Those are both pretty popular trailheads.

All that being said, you should have fairly good luck pulling a Monday permit (i.e., compared to later in the week) for Lyell. HI/LYV is probably going to be tougher. In terms of how early to get there, I've heard an hour before opening should be sufficient for TM for a Monday permit. For HI/LYV, probably 4-5 am to be safe but check out other posts here for corroboration. Of course, you never know what might happen. With the late snow melts I think there is a lot of pent up demand.

[sierranomad]

And be flexible. If you get there when cjoz suggests, you have a good chance of getting the permit you want, but walk-ins are available 24 hours in advance, so there are no guarantees when going in the day of. Don't be too disappointed if you can't get the th that you preferred. There really are no bad hikes in Yosemite.

[TigerFan]

We picked up our permit from the TM office for a Sunday hike start on Saturday, 7/17. We got to the office around 10 AM. There was no line by then. All of the permits for that day (Sat) were gone by then which wasn't surprising. But for the next day, only 3 of the trailheads were full -- Lyell, Rafferty and one other that I can't remember.

[cjoz]

Wild guess would be that the third full trailhead was either Cathedral Lakes or Sunrise Lakes.

[crazychester]

Got to the Oak Flat permit office in time to be the 1st in line on a Sunday. Thought about making the trek to Tuolomne but it was just too far a round trip. Didn't get my 1st choice (Rafferty) but had no problems securing a Young lakes permit.

[BackpackerBC]

I do believe that whatever ranger station you are at, everywhere uses the same booking computer system.

So as long as the Ranger plugs your name in for that spot at that time, it shouldn't matter exactly where you go to get your permits.

Once you are reserved for a specific location and date, it will immediately (as long as there are no technical difficulties) show up as booked at any other Ranger Station.

Good Luck!

[AlmostThere]

The computers haven't worked at all this year. They do them by hand and phone.

To get first dibs, you MUST go to the appropriate wilderness office - TM for hikes starting from Tioga Road, the valley office for any of the valley trailheads, and Wawona office for the Wawona Rd/Glacier rd trailheads. If you show up in Wawona for a Tioga Road trailhead, they will have to call TM office and you get what's left over by the time they call. This applies whether the computer is working or not.

Maybe next year they will figure out how to manage a high speed connection and the new software will work?

http://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/p ... ations.htm

Some of the permit stations are self registration as early as September. Quotas stop applying after self registration begins.