Mt. Saint Helens Permits

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

Are they hard to get this year?

 

What's the penalty for climbing without one?

[fheimerd]

I don't think you need one till either april or may. I've been up there tqice and we havn't needed one.

[RogerJ]

"Permits" are free until 4-1. Then they are $22.00 unitl 11-1.

 

I was looking and you purchase them online. I was looking at Mother's Day which tends to fill quickly and it was still open.

 

St Helen's Permit Purchasing

 

-r

Edited March 27, 2007 by RogerJ

[pindude]

Clarification and correction.

 

I don't think you need one till either april or may. I've been up there tqice and we havn't needed one.

Not true, you're supposed to have a permit--see below.

 

"Permits" are free until 4-1. Then they are $22.00 unitl 11-1.

 

I was looking and you purchase them online. I was looking at Mother's Day which tends to fill quickly and it was still open.

 

St Helen's Permit Purchasing -r

According to your link, an org that call themselves the Mt. St. Helens Institute:

 

- Permits are required year-round for folks going 4800'+

- Permits are free Nov 1-Mar 31, but cost $22 Apr 1-Oct 31

- "Climbing use is unrestricted" Nov. 1-May 14

- "Climbing use is restricted to 100 daily permit holders" May 15-Oct 31

 

A clarification: Yes, every climber (going above 4800') is supposed to have a permit, that, according to the website, must be registered for and picked up at Jack's between Nov 1-Mar 31. Between Apr 1-Oct 31, the permit must be purchased online in advance then picked up at Jack's during their business hours.

 

A correction: Mother's Day 2007 is on May 13, Sunday, so that date will not "fill," and as many climbers/skiers/boarders/cross-dressers that want to, can be on the mountain above 4800'.

 

K's second question still stands: What's the penalty for no permit?

 

 

 

 

Edited March 27, 2007 by pindude

[robert]

K's second question still stands: What's the penalty for no permit?

 

I couldn't find the current penalty, but the one time I was stopped by a ranger and climbing without a permit the fine was going to be hundereds of dollars. Sorry I can't remember the exact amount, but the $22 permit is probably the smart way to go. Especially if you are going before 5/15.

 

Robert

[KaskadskyjKozak]

K's second question still stands: What's the penalty for no permit?

 

I couldn't find the current penalty, but the one time I was stopped by a ranger and climbing without a permit the fine was going to be hundereds of dollars. Sorry I can't remember the exact amount, but the $22 permit is probably the smart way to go. Especially if you are going before 5/15.

 

Robert

 

What pisses me off about the whole system is that it doesn't appear to be transferrable. YOu buy a permit for a given day and if the weather is bad, you are S.O.L. The alternative of driving (for me 4-5 hours) and maybe not getting a permit sucks too.

 

Also, why the absolute limit of 100? I'd be willing to do a different route (other than Worm Flows) if need be but that doesn't seem to be an option.

[kevbone]

K's second question still stands: What's the penalty for no permit?

 

I couldn't find the current penalty, but the one time I was stopped by a ranger and climbing without a permit the fine was going to be hundereds of dollars. Sorry I can't remember the exact amount, but the $22 permit is probably the smart way to go. Especially if you are going before 5/15.

 

Robert

 

What pisses me off about the whole system is that it doesn't appear to be transferrable. YOu buy a permit for a given day and if the weather is bad, you are S.O.L. The alternative of driving (for me 4-5 hours) and maybe not getting a permit sucks too.

 

Also, why the absolute limit of 100? I'd be willing to do a different route (other than Worm Flows) if need be but that doesn't seem to be an option.

 

Dude...dont tell anyone....just go do it.

[erinnb]

I recently bought 6 tickets to hike Mt. St. Helens in June, I inadvertently choose the wrong date by one day. I am having NO sucess in getting someone to help me change my tickets -- I realized my mistake within minutes of my booking, however it seems to be unfixable, and our group cannot hike the day the tickets are for related to work schedules.

 

Has anyone else had experience with this, or know about selling purchased tickets to other people, or have any advice, other than paying attention in the first place

Edited April 6, 2007 by erinnb

[Weekend_Climberz]

Has anyone else had experience with this, or know about selling purchased tickets to other people, or have any advice, other than paying attention in the first place

 

Bandit climb, or start a thread in the 'Yard Sale' forum. This is the problem with any permit system. They assume that the individuals using them will do so from 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday. If the Ranger Station isn't open at 1am when I'm driving past, they'll never know I was up there. Give me a ticket and I'll say my friend borrowed my car that weekend and he lives in Canada.

[louclimber231]

I have been looking at the climbing permits as well and i dont like the way it is set up either. Way to much big brother involved. I understand filling out some paperwork to let people know you are on the mountain but picking them up at Jack's buying them online and the 100 person quota needs to be inproved. I agree with setting the mountain up the way the rest are no 100 max if she is active close it like they did a few years ago but either shit or get off the pot.

Im done ranting, I have a question about shoes for the climb up st helens. I know you dont need the koflach degre boots but I also what to know what you guys prefer when climbing the mountain. I am planning to climb in august and from what I have heard the snow will be gone hence no need for the degre boots.

thanks

[Chad_A]

It will be a scree climb by that time, obviously, and something leather with some ankle support will do, I'm sure. Include some shorty, lightweight gaiters to keep the kitty litter our of your boots.

[ashw_justin]

Huge thumbs down for the new Mt. St. Helens permit system. With no alternative and no competition, the feds are asking climbers to pay an extra 47% directly into the hands of active.com, ("partnered with ESPN") for the opportunity to legally climb in public federal lands. $7 may not seem like a huge deal, but what else in regard to recreation on public land are the feds willing to put into the pockets of private companies? If the feds are going to forgo the work of vending permits, then apparently they should be getting $7 less per permit.

 

And what does that $7 "service charge" get you? From the sound of it, absolutely no service whatsoever. What a scam.

[Macson]

I agree that the new system sucks. I climbed it last Sunday, and for what it's worth a waitress at Jack's told me the fine for climbing without a permit is $1,000. I don't know how accurate she was, and I didn't see any rangers on the mountain on Sunday. In fact, out of the three times I've climbed it I only saw a ranger the first time, Mothers Day 2003.

[hydroman]

I agree that the new system sucks. I've already been burned by it once this year. You are forced to buy permits a min of 2 days in advance (thur for a sat summit) and the way the weather changes around here you can be out of luck quick. Forecast went from sunny to crappy the day before my trip but there is no was to get my money back. You are simply out the $22, no refunds, no transfers. Conversly if the weather suddenly changes for the better you can't get a permit last minute. LAME.

[Gary_Yngve]

This is LAME LAME LAME.

[Hendershot]

I was up there last month. $22 bucks for the permit. You have to register online before your intended trip. Then show up at Jack's restaraunt the day of your climb to pick up your permit. Never saw anyone checking for permits the whole weekend.

[shortstow]

I will stick with the 1 Oct - 1 April time while it is free. I went twice in Oct last year 06, and it was great. Had 4" or so of snow at the Biv, but no one else on the mountain other than the 3 of us climbing. I like going at the last minute on climbs, not having to plan it out, even though it is only 2 days out.

[ashw_justin]

The Man will assure you that it is not free before April, by giving you a fat ticket for not having a sno-park pass. But at least with that permit you are actually paying for something (plowing of the roads).

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

Well I coughed up the $22 in the end and went. Got a beautiful weather window Sat morning, and clouds rolled in when I was almost all the way down. I never saw a ranger or anyone checking for permits. The permit system sucks ass - just gov't fleecing us because the CAN.

 

[ashw_justin]

No see that's just it: the government gets $15 for a permit and this would be totally normal, except that it exclusively and noncompetitively oursources permit sales to Active.com (a ticketmaster clone), which then fleeces you with a 47% middleman fee for simply running your credit card. The government is guilty of shirking its duty to provide a service (i.e. selling and managing permits) that should be paid for by the climbing fees it is charging. I call that fraud. Not to mention that a private company should have no place as a middleman, collecting and marking up fees for access to public lands. That is government-subsidized scalping.

[mc_tree]

This is not as much a middleman's fee as a just a disguised high fee. The Mt. St. Helens Institute which charges the $7 has as its address the identical address as the volcanic monument. These two fees go in the same pocket. I don't know how much active.com gets of the $7, but suspect the Mt. St. Helens Institute gets a good chunk. The Mt. St. Helens Institute provides nothing useful for climber.

 

Write your Senator and Congressman. I have. I think it is pointless to write to the Monument. They don't care. The volcanic monument would be better if it were abolished. Get rid of the climbing ranger and save lots of money.

[mc_tree]

To: shortstow: A is supposed to be paid in October. Kudos to you for not feeding this organization any money even if you were not perfectly legal.

[ashw_justin]

If the money's going directly back into Mt. St. Helens then I might have less of a problem with it. I'm not in favor of completely deregulating St. Helens. The 100/day limit is probably for the best, and you need a ranger to enforce that.

 

Bottom line for me is that the $7 service charge is ridiculous. If most of it's going to MSHI or MSHNVM, they should just be up front and charge a little more for a permit. If all of that's going to active.com, then that is completely unacceptable. They need to drop active.com. Internet vending is not rocket science anymore--they do not need to make us pay for a private middleman to do this for them.

[mc_tree]

A business owner in Cougar told me that the Monument was told that the maximum fee they could charge was $21. This double entity was a way to get out of that. Business owners in Cougar would mostly welcome the opportunity to sell permits, but they have been somewhat excluded from the process. There is certainly no reason to have an exclusive on-line permit purchase system when there is no quota limitation.

 

Compare the cost to drive into Mt. Rainier with a car-full of skiers with a car full of skiers for Mt. St. Helens.

 

The reservation system is badly managed and so is much of the Monument's activities. Who decided to put two visitor centers within 5 miles of each other? There is a heavy-handedness with the Monument's dealing with the publc compared to other federal agencies. The trail around Coldwater Lake is litered with signs threating a $100 fine for going off the trail.