Backcountry Camping in California: Permits, Routes, Bear Notes

The Sierra Nevada is, in essence, one enormous tilted block of granite — a Mesozoic batholith hoisted along its eastern face and slumping gently to the west — which is why a California backcountry trip out of Bishop feels structurally different from one out of Lone Pine even though the maps look similar. The east side is short, steep, brutal. The west side is long, forested, forgiving. Permits and routes both bend to that geometry, and so do the bears, and so does most of my complaint with how Sierra trips get written up online.

I will not be calling anything a hidden gem. Several of the routes below see four-figure permit requests in a single summer week; they are not hidden, they are simply gated. What follows is what I have learned, mostly the the hard way, about backcountry camping in California — the permits, a handful of routes worth the trouble, and the bear notes that the brochures undersell.

How California's permit system actually works

There is no single California wilderness permit. There is a patchwork: National Park Service units (Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Point Reyes, Channel Islands), the U.S. Forest Service wilderness areas (Inyo, Sierra, Stanislaus, Six Rivers, and Shasta-Trinity national forests, among others), a few California state parks with trail camps, and the BLM's King Range on the Lost Coast. Most — not all — of the popular permits now route through Recreation.gov, which has consolidated a system that used to involve faxing the Inyo NF office at six in the morning (I am not nostalgic about that).

The shapes that matter: advance lotteries open months ahead for the high-demand trailheads; standard advance reservations open on a rolling window (often around six months, but check before you plan); and a meaningful share of permits — anywhere from 20 to 40 percent depending on the unit — are released as walk-ups, typically a day or two before the entry date. Yosemite and the Inyo NF eastside trailheads (Bishop Pass, North Lake, Onion Valley, Cottonwood Lakes, Whitney Portal) are the hardest. Trinity Alps and most of the Tahoe-area Desolation Wilderness permits are easier, though Desolation does have a daily overnight quota and a per-night fee.

Two timing notes that are worth more than they sound. First, the permit is for your entry trailhead and entry date; once you are in, your route inside the wilderness is generally your own business (subject to camping restrictions in specific zones). Second, if your trip plans involve July, treat permits as a lottery and not as something you can simply schedule (a thing the glossy trip-planning posts consistently miss.

A working map of California's wilderness

For backcountry camping purposes I think of the state in five rough regions. The High Sierra, which is what most people mean when they say "California backpacking" — Yosemite, Ansel Adams Wilderness, John Muir Wilderness, Sequoia–Kings Canyon. The Tahoe basin and Northern Sierra, anchored by Desolation Wilderness and Emigrant Wilderness. The Klamath-Trinity country up north — Trinity Alps, Marble Mountain, Russian Wilderness — wetter, greener, lonelier. The North Coast, which for backpackers means the King Range and Sinkyone Wilderness; the latter is on land taken from the Sinkyone people in the 19th century and that history is not incidental to the route. And the coastal and island parks — Point Reyes National Seashore (Coast Miwok homeland) and Channel Islands National Park, both of which require reserved trail-camp sites rather than dispersed camping.

I bring up the prior occupants because the maps tend to flatten that history. Yosemite Valley was Ahwahneechee territory; the eastern Sierra trailheads sit at the edge of Mono Lake Paiute (Kutzadika'a) land; the southern Sierra grades into Tübatulabal country. The CCC built or improved many of the trailhead campgrounds you will be parking at — Tuolumne Meadows, Lodgepole, the Onion Valley loop — in the 1930s, on ground that had already been logged, grazed, or surveyed for water diversion to Los Angeles. None of this changes where you can pitch a tent. It changes how I read the place.

Routes I'd actually recommend

I am skeptical of "best of" lists for wilderness because the variables (snowpack, fire closures, your fitness, your tolerance for company) shift the answer every year. These five hold up across most conditions.

Rae Lakes Loop, Kings Canyon NP, from Roads End east of Fresno: roughly 41 miles, four to five nights, a clean loop that crosses Glen Pass at just over 11,900 feet. Permits via Recreation.gov; bear canisters required. North Lake to South Lake, Inyo NF out of Bishop: the classic Evolution Basin traverse, about 55 miles with a shuttle problem to solve. Lost Coast Trail, BLM King Range, southern Humboldt: a tidal route, not a mountain route — you time sections to the tide tables or you do not finish. Desolation Wilderness, Eldorado NF west of Lake Tahoe: short overnights to the Velma Lakes or Aloha Lake are how I introduce people to Sierra granite without an eight-day commitment. High Sierra Trail, Sequoia NP: Crescent Meadow to Whitney Portal, around 72 miles, the most varied geolgoical traverse in the state if you only get to do one big route in your life.

None of these are obscure. The Rae Lakes loop in particular gets serious foot traffic in July and August, and if you are reading this as someone newer to backpacking I would steer you toward Desolation or the Trinity Alps for a first trip — fewer altitude problems, easier permits, similar payoff. For trip-planning detail at the segment level the user-trip reports on AllTrails California are useful, with the usual caveat that mileage and difficulty ratings there should be treated as suggestions, not facts.

Bear notes: the part most posts get wrong

California has two bear stories. The grizzly is on the flag and not on the landscape; the last confirmed California grizzly was killed in the 1920s. What you will encounter is the American black bear (Ursus americanus), and in the Sierra in particular you are dealing with a subpopulation that has been food-conditioned for the better part of a century — the Curry Company picnic-table era left a legacy that the agencies are still working off.

Counter-balanced food hangs do not work in the Sierra. They have not worked for a long time. Sierra black bears figured out the PCT-hang in the 1990s and they have only gotten better at it since; what works is a hard-sided canister approved by the Sierra Interagency Black Bear Group (SIBBG), which is required in much of Yosemite, Sequoia–Kings Canyon, the John Muir Wilderness, and Inyo NF zones. Ursacks are accepted in some areas and not in others; do not assume, read the specific wilderness's regulations. At established backcountry sites in Yosemite and SEKI you will often find steel bear boxes — use them, but bring your canister anyway because they are not at every site.

The practical habits matter more than the gear. Cook and eat at least 100 feet downwind of where you intend to sleep; store everything with a scent (toothpaste, sunscreen, lip balm, the trash from lunch) in the canister at night and any time you leave camp; and do not, under any condition, try to scare a bear off your food by getting close. A Sierra black bear that has decided your canister is a problem to be solved will sit on it for hours and roll it down a slope; this is annoying and survivable. A bear that has been rewarded with your dinner becomes a bear that will be killed later, which is the actual stakes of sloppy food storage.

Gotchas worth knowing before you book

• Trailhead quotas are not route quotas. If your preferred entry is full, look for an adjacent trailhead that reaches the same basin in a day — this is how most veteran Sierra trippers actually get in.
• Fire closures move fast. Check the relevant forest's alerts page within 48 hours of your trip; a permit does not override a closure.
• Whitney is its own thing. Mt. Whitney has a separate lottery (via Recreation.gov) on top of any wilderness permit, and it sells out in minutes.
• Campfires are restricted by elevation in most Sierra wilderness — typically above 9,600 to 10,000 feet, but the specific limit varies by unit. Carry a stove regardless.
• The Lost Coast requires tide tables. Two sections are impassable at higher tides. The BLM publishes the tables; print them, do not rely on signal.
• Channel Islands and Point Reyes are reservation-only sites, not dispersed camping. You will be at a numbered spot.
• Altitude. If you live at sea level and your route crosses 11,000 feet on day one, you are going to feel it. Build a night at elevation into the front of the trip.
• Water is not where the old guidebooks say it is anymore. Late-summer creeks dry years earlier than they used to; verify recent trip reports.

Shoulder season, and why I almost always go then

I am a shoulder-season camper by preference and by argument. Late June in a heavy snow year is still winter above 10,000 feet; July and August are crowded and increasingly smoke-prone; September into early October, in most years, gives you cold nights, low bug pressure, thinning crowds, and the cleanest light of the year on Sierra granite. The trade is that storms arrive faster and the days shorten quickly. For the High Sierra I will take that trade every time.

Coastal trips invert the calendar. Point Reyes and the Lost Coast are at their best in spring, before the summer fog settles in for its long siege, and again in October once the fog lifts. Channel Islands is a winter and spring destination — windy, often wet, mostly empty. The Sierra is not the only place to backpack in California, a sentence I find myself writing more often as the summer fire season lengthens.

Gear notes, briefly

I will not lecture you on packs. What I will say is that California backcountry forces three specific choices: a canister that fits your food and your pack (test this before you drive five hours), a shelter that handles both Sierra wind and coastal moisture if you do both kinds of trips, and a stove you can actually trust in cold mornings at 10,000 feet. Our broader notes on gear cover the categories; the specifics on a tent, sleeping bag, and stove are where most first-timers' trips actually succeed or fail. For trail-by-trail planning, our trail write-ups and the hiking notes go deeper than I can here, and the parks index sorts the units by season.

Honest take

If I had one California backcountry trip to plan for a friend who had never done one, I would pick a three-night loop in Desolation Wilderness in mid-September: easy permit, real granite, swimmable lakes, and a short enough route that you can afford to slow down. If I had two weeks and a flexible schedule, I would apply for the North Lake–South Lake permit, accept whatever date came back, and shape the rest of the trip around it. Plan early, expect to lose the first lottery, keep a backup wilderness on the calendar, and read the specific unit's regulations the week before you go — not the year before. The agencies update them. The blog posts mostly do not. For current unit-level rules start at nps.gov and the relevant forest's page on Recreation.gov, and trust those over anything (including this) that is more than a season old.