other food carrier—bears know what to look for. To a bear, a car with food in it is just an oversized can waiting to be opened. Some trailheads have bear boxes. Leave any food and toiletries you’re not taking into the backcountry in these bear boxes rather than in your car.
The Regulations: Call, write to, or get on the website of the agency in charge of the area you plan to visit in order to learn the latest regulations, especially those concerning bears and food storage. For each trailhead in this book, you’ll find the agency’s name, physical address, phone number, and web address (if there is one) under Information and Permits.
Wilderness and Campfire Permits
In most places, everyone who travels overnight into a national park or national forest wilderness is required to carry a wilderness permit from the agency administering the starting trailhead. If your trip extends through more than one national forest or through both a national forest and a national park, get your permit from the forest or park where your trip starts.
A wilderness permit is issued for a single trip with a specific start date, for specific entry and exit points, and for a specified amount of time. Your permit is inflexible as to the trailhead entry point and start date. A separate permit is required for each trip. Group sizes and numbers of stock are usually restricted.
The permit system has a couple functions: The agencies responsible for the backcountry learn how many people and head of stock are using each trailhead, so they can make better decisions to prevent overuse of these areas. By giving out information with the permit on how to camp safely, avoid impact on the wilderness, and properly deal with bears, the agencies also educate wilderness users.
During the summer months, forest rangers patrol many backcountry trails, and they may ask to see your wilderness permit. If you do not have one, you may be fined and expelled from the backcountry.
There are two ways to get a permit: in person (on demand) and by advance reservation. Whether you plan to apply for your wilderness permit in advance or at the time of your trip in person, we strongly suggest you telephone the administering agency or check its website first. Rules, regulations, and procedures for issuing permits change fairly often. Further, weather, runoff conditions, and forest fires sometimes close trails in the backcountry; you can learn about this, too, in your telephone call or web research. Within each trailhead chapter, we identify the agency in charge and how to get in touch with them for more information.
HELPFUL WEBSITE
SierraNevadaWild.gov (http://sierranevadawild.gov/) is a user-friendly government source for backcountry trip planning in Sierra Nevada national parks, forests, and public lands. You’ll find a wealth of wilderness information here—some via links—for all established Sierra Nevada wilderness areas, though not for proposed wilderness additions and wilderness study areas.
On-Demand Permits
You can go in person for a permit to an agency location near your entry point the day before or on the day you plan to begin your trip. The national forests and the national parks maintain a number of conveniently located facilities to serve you. Because of the severe cutbacks in funding, however, the agencies don’t know from year to year which locations will be open during the summer season. Use the information provided in each trailhead section to find the visitor center, ranger station, or satellite most convenient for you.
Reserving Permits in Advance
You can also reserve a permit by mail (and sometimes by email, fax, or phone) up to six months in advance of your trip. Use the information provided in each trailhead section to discover how and when to apply.
If you apply for a permit reservation in advance:
Know whether a fee applies; if so, include payment in the appropriate form. By mail: Include a money order or check for that amount made payable to the US Department of Agriculture—Forest Service for Forest Service wilderness areas and to the National Park Service for Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, or use a credit card. By fax or phone: Use a credit card. When using a credit card, supply the card type, number, and expiration date. Applications lacking the required fee will not be processed.
If applying by mail or fax, enclose or fax a completed wilderness permit application form, one for each trip, or write a letter containing the same information. If applying by phone, be ready to supply the same information. Some agencies’ websites have permit-application forms you can print out or download. If not, here is the information you need to supply: name, address, daytime phone, number of people in the party, method of travel (ski, snowshoe, foot, horse, etc.), number of stock (if applicable), start and end dates, entry and exit trailheads, principal destination, alternate dates and/or trailheads. You may also be asked for an itinerary.
Be sure to provide a second and even a third choice of trailhead and/or entry date, in case your first choice is not available.
If the agency will not mail your permit, find out where you should pick it up.
Quotas
For most trailheads, the agencies have set limits or quotas on the number of people who can enter a trailhead per day. Quotas are in effect mainly in the summer months; the time when they are in effect is called the quota period. Where quotas apply, only a limited number of advance reservations are accepted. The remainder of the quota is set aside for in-person applications, up to 24 hours in advance of your entry, on a first-come, first served basis.
If you plan to begin your trip from one of these trailheads, especially on the weekend, you would be wise to reserve your permit in advance. A reservation for a permit is not the same as the permit itself. Only a few agencies mail you the actual permit; most require that you pick up the permit near the trailhead entry. The purpose of the reservation is to guarantee you’ll get a permit for that trailhead on the day you wish. Where no quotas apply, the only reason to reserve your permit by mail is to allow you to pick it up during off hours.
Maps and Profiles
Today’s Sierra traveler is confronted by a bewildering array of maps, and it doesn’t take much experience to learn that no single map fulfills all needs. There are topographic maps, base maps (US Forest Service), shaded relief maps (National Park Service), artistically drawn representational maps (California Department of Fish and Game), aerial-photograph maps, geologic maps, three-dimensional relief maps, soil-vegetation maps, and compact discs containing five levels of topographic maps already pieced together for you as well as software for drawing routes. Each map has different information to impart, and it’s a good idea to use several of these maps in your planning.
For trip-planning purposes, the trailheads in this book include their own gray-scale map or maps, which show all trips and are based on the United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps or USDA Forest Service wilderness maps. (More information about these maps.)
A useful map series for planning is the USDA Forest Service topographic series for most individual wilderness areas. The scale of most maps of this series is 1:63,360 (1 inch = 1 mile), which is very close to that of the former USGS 15’ series (1:62,500), and each conveniently covers the entire wilderness area on one map. However, you may find these maps a bit bulky for the trail.
Most backpackers prefer to use a topographic (topo) map with finer detail than the above overview/planning maps. Hikers typically prefer the USGS 7.5’ series, where the elevation is usually shown in 40-foot contour intervals (although some 7.5’ topos show 80-foot contour intervals
