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Pro tip: the JMT permit stats surprised me more than any gear shakedown ever has
I was poking around the recreation.gov permit page for the John Muir Trail and found out only about 2,600 people finish the whole thing each summer. Getting a Happy Isles start date out of Yosemite is way harder than I figured, something like 35 people apply for every one spot on the popular July dates. I always assumed the crowds were because tons of people were thru hiking it, but it sounds like most of the traffic is section hikers doing bits of the trail. Anyone here actually scored a Donohue Pass exit permit on their first try, or did it take multiple seasons?
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grayw3214d ago
Doesn't this whole thing just mirror how everything works now, where the few spots at the top get swarmed while the rest of it sits wide open? Same deal with camping reservations, concert tickets, dinner spots, you name it. The headline number is never the real story, it's the bottleneck that everybody trips over. Most folks on the JMT aren't even finishing the thing, they're just out for a few days and grabbing whatever permit they can get. Took me two summers to land a Donohue exit, and honestly the section hikers were the ones who made the trip fun anyway.
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laura_knight5414d ago
Two summers just for a Donohue exit? That's wild to me, since that's not even one of the famous spots people fight over. Feels like the permit system punishes the folks doing shorter trips way more than the thru hikers, which is backwards. Kind of proves your point that the bottleneck is the real story, not the big number everyone quotes.
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