How to Get a John Muir Trail Permit
Here is the thing nobody tells you until you have already lost a lottery: there is no John Muir Trail permit. The trail runs 211 miles through land managed by four different permit systems (Yosemite, Inyo National Forest, Sierra National Forest, and Sequoia & Kings Canyon), with the separate Mt. Whitney lottery sitting at the southern end. What exists is a wilderness permit from whichever agency owns your entry point, and one rule that makes the whole thing workable: your entry agency’s permit covers the entire continuous hike. Sequoia & Kings Canyon states it plainly: its permits are “valid for continuous wilderness and backcountry travel in the Sequoia, Sierra, and Inyo National Forests and Yosemite National Park, subject to those agencies’ conditions.”
So the real question is never “how do I get a JMT permit.” It’s “which door am I entering through, and how does that door’s quota work.” This guide walks all four, plus the exit quota at each end that most people discover only after it has cost them a trip.
JMT permits, in one breath
- One permit, from your entry agency. It covers the whole thru-hike across every boundary you cross.
- Southbound classic (Happy Isles or Lyell Canyon): Yosemite’s weekly permit lotteries, 24 weeks ahead. You must book a Donohue Pass Eligible entry, or the permit will not take you out of the park southbound.
- Northbound and east-side starts (Cottonwood, Kearsarge, Bishop, Piute): Inyo National Forest. No annual lottery: 60% of each day’s quota opens six months out, 40% just two weeks out.
- West-side mid-trail starts: Sierra National Forest (Ansel Adams and John Muir wilderness entries) and Sequoia & Kings Canyon (Roads End area entries like Bubbs Creek and Copper Creek).
- Finishing over Whitney: the Whitney Portal exit rides on your originating permit. From a Yosemite start, that one permit covers it with nothing added; from an east-side start you select the Mt. Whitney exit option when you book. Either way it is not the Mt. Whitney lottery.
- Where: all of it on Recreation.gov: Yosemite #445859, Inyo #233262, Sierra #445858, Sequoia & Kings Canyon #445857, Mt. Whitney #445860.
The Donohue Pass exit quota, explained before it hurts you
Southbound is the JMT most people picture: start at Happy Isles under Half Dome, walk south. Yosemite caps how many hikers may leave the park southbound over Donohue Pass each day, and it enforces that cap through which entry you book. On Recreation.gov the trailheads are listed twice: “Happy Isles->Past LYV (Donohue Pass Eligible)” versus “Happy Isles->Little Yosemite Valley (No Donohue Pass)”, and “Lyell Canyon (Donohue Pass Eligible)” versus plain “Lyell (No Donohue Pass)”.
Book a “No Donohue Pass” entry because it had availability and the Donohue-eligible one didn’t, and you have a lovely Yosemite backpacking permit that cannot become a JMT thru-hike. The eligibility is baked into the entry itself. It cannot be added later.
The Donohue-eligible entries are also the scarcest thing in this entire system. Checking live availability while writing this guide: Happy Isles Past-LYV had zero open days in the entire next month; Lyell Canyon had two. That scarcity, and what to do about it, is most of the rest of this guide.
Door 1: the Yosemite weekly lotteries (southbound)
Yosemite runs rolling weekly lotteries, 24 weeks (about five and a half months) ahead of entry. For each week of entry dates: apply from Sunday 12:01 a.m. to Saturday 11:59 p.m., results land Monday evening, and winners must accept and pay by Thursday 11:59 p.m. You can list multiple dates and trailheads on one application, and only one application per group is allowed.
The percentages matter more than the ceremony. Sixty percent of each trailhead’s quota goes through those lotteries, which begin in November. Whatever the lottery does not allocate goes on open sale Fridays at 9 a.m. Pacific. The remaining forty percent is held back and released seven days before the entry date, at 7 a.m. Reservations stay open until three days before entry, and no quota is held for walk-ups.
Fees, verified against the permit page: a $10 non-refundable lottery application fee, plus $5 per person when you confirm a win. Reservations made outside the lottery are $10 per permit plus $5 per person.
Two honest implications. First, losing the lottery is the normal outcome for Donohue-eligible dates, not a sign you did something wrong. Second, the week-ahead 40% release means the door reopens seven days out, at a precise, known hour, for exactly the dates everyone assumed were gone in the lottery months earlier.
Door 2: Inyo National Forest (northbound and east-side)
Everything on the Sierra’s east side that is not the Whitney lottery runs through Inyo’s wilderness permit system: Cottonwood Pass and Cottonwood Lakes for a northbound start, and the lateral passes (Kearsarge, Bishop, Taboose, Sawmill, Shepherd, Piute) that section hikers use to get on and off the trail.
No annual lottery here. Sixty percent of each day’s trailhead quota opens six months ahead, daily at 7 a.m. Pacific. The remaining forty percent releases two weeks before the entry date, on the same day of the week. A calendar cell marked “NR” means the 60% sold and the 40% has not dropped yet, which trips up almost everyone the first time. Fees: $6 per reservation plus $5 per person, or $15 per person for anything entering the Whitney Zone.
That two-week drop is the most underrated door in the Sierra. A “sold out” Kearsarge or Cottonwood date is, until fourteen days before entry, only 60% sold.
Door 3: the west-side entries (Sierra NF and SEKI)
Less traveled, and quieter competition. Sierra National Forest issues permits for Ansel Adams and John Muir wilderness entries on the west slope (Bear Ridge and Bear Diversion put you on trail near the trail’s midpoint), on a six-month rolling system, $6 plus $5 per person. Sequoia & Kings Canyon covers entries like Bubbs Creek and Copper Creek out of the Roads End area: $15 per permit plus a refundable $5 per person, rolling reservations, and the same continuous-travel validity quoted above.
For a full thru-hike these are plan-B entry points. For a section hike of the JMT’s middle, they are often the easiest permit in this whole guide.
Finishing over Whitney: the exit quota nobody budgets for
The JMT’s southern terminus is Mt. Whitney’s summit, and most thru-hikers descend to Whitney Portal. Whitney has its own famous February lottery, and here is the part that confuses everyone: a JMT thru-hiker does not enter that lottery. Inyo’s permit system says it directly: “Whitney Portal has a separate exit quota. If you want to start a trip elsewhere and exit at Whitney Portal, you must select ‘Overnight Exiting Mt. Whitney’ to be included in its exit quota.”
How that plays out depends on where you started. From a Yosemite start, the park is explicit that its one permit is the whole story: “you only need one wilderness permit from Yosemite for the entire trip (you do not need a ‘Whitney stamp’ or permits from other national forests or national parks),” and Yosemite’s own exit-point list includes Mt. Whitney (Trail Crest Exit). From an Inyo or Sierra National Forest start, you make the “Overnight Exiting Mt. Whitney” selection when you book, and the trip is priced at the Whitney Zone rate of $15 per person instead of the usual $5. Either way, the exit quota is real and it sells: while writing this, it had four open days in the next month. If your itinerary ends at Whitney Portal, the exit is part of the reservation, not an errand for later.
Going the other direction (starting at Whitney Portal itself, southbound day one) is the Mt. Whitney lottery, which we cover in its own guide, including the doors that open after it: unfilled dates go on open sale April 22, and non-refundable permits still churn through group-size reductions right up to the week of entry.
The doors, ranked by how often they actually open
- Cancellations, all season, every agency. Yosemite’s own policy: “You may cancel your permit at any time and the quota will be released and made available to others. There are no refunds.” No refund, yet people cancel anyway (plans break, snow years happen, groups shrink), and the quota goes straight back online at no predictable hour.
- Inyo’s two-week 40% release. Scheduled, precise, and most people have never heard of it.
- Yosemite’s week-ahead 40% release, seven days out at 7 a.m., plus the Friday 9 a.m. sale of whatever each week’s lottery left unclaimed.
- The Whitney April 22 release of unfilled lottery dates, for trips built around a Portal start.
Watching four permit systems for one spot on one date is exactly the kind of tedium software should do instead of you. BDH watches the specific entry point and dates you actually need, across whichever of these agencies issues them, and emails or texts you the moment quota reappears. That is the entire product: we never book anything, we make sure you are the first to know there is something to book.
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The mistakes that cost people the trail
- Booking a “No Donohue Pass” entry for a southbound thru-hike. The most expensive checkbox in the Sierra. Eligibility lives in the entry itself and cannot be added afterward.
- Treating “NR” on Inyo’s calendar as sold out. It means the two-week 40% has not dropped yet. The date may be about to reopen.
- Forgetting the Whitney exit selection. Exiting at Whitney Portal requires the “Overnight Exiting Mt. Whitney” option on your originating permit, subject to its own exit quota.
- Applying to the Whitney lottery for a thru-hike that starts in Yosemite. Wrong system entirely; the exit quota above is the mechanism.
- Giving up after the Yosemite lottery. Forty percent of the quota was never in the lottery. It shows up seven days before entry, at 7 a.m.
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Official sources (bookmark these)
- Yosemite wilderness permits on Recreation.gov. The lottery, the Friday sale, and the week-ahead release all live here.
- NPS: Yosemite wilderness permit overview. The park’s own explanation of the system.
- NPS: John Muir Trail from Yosemite. The park’s JMT page: mileage, Donohue context, and the one-permit rule from the horse’s mouth.
- Inyo National Forest wilderness permits on Recreation.gov. East-side entries, the Whitney Zone fee, and the Trail Crest exit selection.
- Inyo NF wilderness page. Trailhead and quota context from the forest itself.
- Sierra National Forest permits on Recreation.gov and Sequoia & Kings Canyon permits on Recreation.gov. The west-side doors.
- Mt. Whitney on Recreation.gov. The separate lottery, for Portal starts.
Why trust this guide
BigDirtyHikes monitors Sierra permit availability continuously: all four wilderness systems on this page, division by division, straight from Recreation.gov’s own data. Every mechanism above (the Donohue-eligible entries, the 60/40 splits, the exit quota, the fees) was verified against the live permit systems on August 11, 2026, and this page gets corrected when the agencies change the rules. If we ever disagree with an agency page, the agency is right and we fix it.
Frequently asked questions
Is there one permit for the whole John Muir Trail? Yes and no. There is no permit called a JMT permit, but the wilderness permit from your entry agency is valid for the entire continuous hike across all four jurisdictions. You need exactly one permit; which agency issues it depends on where you start.
What is the Donohue Pass exit quota? Yosemite’s daily cap on hikers leaving the park southbound over Donohue Pass. It is enforced through your entry choice: only entries marked “Donohue Pass Eligible” (Happy Isles past Little Yosemite Valley, or Lyell Canyon) allow the crossing, and those entries are the scarcest in the system.
Do I need to win the Mt. Whitney lottery to finish the JMT? No. The Whitney Portal exit is part of your originating permit. Yosemite says a continuous JMT hike needs only its one permit, with no “Whitney stamp” from any other agency. Hikers starting on Inyo or Sierra National Forest land select the “Overnight Exiting Mt. Whitney” option when booking, which carries the $15 per person Whitney Zone rate. The February lottery is for trips that start on the Whitney Trail.
How far ahead should I plan? Yosemite’s lotteries open 24 weeks before entry; Inyo releases 60% of quota six months out. But both systems hold back 40%: Yosemite’s releases seven days before entry, Inyo’s two weeks before. Late planners have a real, scheduled second chance.
What does a JMT permit cost? It depends on the issuing agency. Yosemite: $10 plus $5 per person. Inyo and Sierra: $6 plus $5 per person, or $15 per person for the Whitney Zone. Sequoia & Kings Canyon: $15 plus a refundable $5 per person. There is no charge for crossing agency boundaries mid-hike.