About Bearpath

Bearpath helps you turn published permit availability into a realistic night-by-night backpacking itinerary.

Choose your dates and party size, explore camps, build your trip, then use Bearpath’s permit booking guide to finish the reservation on Recreation.gov. Bearpath currently covers Olympic National Park.

How Bearpath works

Check published availability

Bearpath periodically checks Recreation.gov for Olympic wilderness permit availability and shows the most recently retrieved information it can reliably interpret.
Build your itinerary

Explore camps and trails, choose your overnight stops, and see whether the published availability works across the whole trip and for your selected party size.
Reserve on Recreation.gov

Bearpath helps you plan. Recreation.gov handles the reservation. Bearpath does not reserve campsites, hold inventory, sell permits, or guarantee that availability will still be there when you book.

Each of the campsites Bearpath lists also has its own page of standing facts — what kind of site it is, how it is booked, and, where Recreation.gov’s booking grid named one, the Starting Area it sits under. They are gathered on the Olympic National Park campsite index.

Understanding availability

Available: Available means Bearpath has affirmative published information supporting availability for that date.
Full: Full means Recreation.gov has published a usable group quota with no remaining group quota.
Unknown: Unknown means Bearpath does not have enough reliable published information to call the date Available or Full. Unknown does not mean Full.
Not enough people quota / below group minimum: Not enough people quota means the campsite is still published as Available, but the published people quota is smaller than your selected party. A smaller party may still fit. The same dot marks a designated group site when your selected party is smaller than the site’s published minimum party. The site is still published as Available, and a larger party may still book it.
Walk-up / In Station WIC only: Walk-up / In Station and WIC only indicate different permit channels rather than ordinary online availability.

Recreation.gov publishes permit inventory on its own schedule, so Bearpath may not show every future month year-round. Dates appear as usable availability coverage only after Bearpath has confirmed published data it can reliably interpret.

How fresh is the availability?

Bearpath checks Recreation.gov on a scheduled basis. The planner shows when the availability for the selected month was most recently retrieved.

Availability can change at any time after that check, including through new reservations and cancellations. Bearpath does not hold inventory, and the final availability shown by Recreation.gov when you reserve is what matters.

Where the data comes from

Bearpath combines public information from two primary sources:

National Park Service data provides campsite and trail geography used for map context.
Recreation.gov’s Olympic National Park Wilderness Permit provides permit structure, campsite identifiers, booking information, and published permit availability.

Bearpath combines those sources for planning; it does not operate a separate permit inventory system.

About the map

The Bearpath map is for trip planning and orientation, not wilderness navigation.

Some camps remain searchable without a map marker when their source coordinates are not reliable enough to plot confidently. Campsite positions should not be treated as survey-grade locations, and the trail lines do not tell you whether a trail is currently open, safe, snow-free, or otherwise suitable for travel.

Beach route lines on the wilderness coast are approximate routes for planning, not GPS tracks, and they do not show where or when tides allow passage.

Use an appropriate current map and navigation tools in the backcountry.

Check official information before you go

Conditions and rules can change independently of Bearpath. Before your trip, check official National Park Service and Recreation.gov information for current trail and road closures, weather, snow, fire or smoke, river crossings, campsite restrictions, food-storage requirements, permit rules, emergency information, and other conditions relevant to your trip.

On the wilderness coast, NPS warns that parts of the route can be walked only at lower tides, and that some headlands cannot be passed on the beach at any tide. Bearpath does not check tides for your dates; check tide predictions for your dates and carry a tide chart.

Bearpath is planning software. It does not provide current wilderness conditions, emergency information, or an assessment of whether a trip is suitable for you.

Official resources

Independent planning tool

Bearpath is an independent planning tool. It is not operated by, affiliated with, or endorsed by the National Park Service, Recreation.gov, or the U.S. government.

Privacy

Bearpath does not have user accounts or payment processing. Your itinerary, selected date, and party size are saved in your browser so the planner can restore them between visits.

Bearpath uses Cloudflare Web Analytics for aggregate traffic and site-performance measurement. Cloudflare describes Web Analytics as privacy-focused and says it does not collect or use visitors’ personal data.

Contact

Found a problem with Bearpath’s data or a security issue? Please contact Bearpath at hello@bearpathplanner.com.

Bearpath is an independent planning tool, not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Park Service or Recreation.gov. Always confirm availability and current conditions with the official sources before you go.