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New $175 Permit + $300K Insurance: Rim-to-Rim and Extended Day Hike/Run

Q & A e-mail

Who is required to obtain a permit: Any organized, non-commercial, group conducting rim-to-rim and extended day hiking and running, including rim-to-river-to-rim, and rim-to-rim-to-rim that are operating in the inner canyon. The inner canyon is defined as the area below the Tonto Platform (Tipoff and Indian Garden) from the South Rim and below Manzanita Resthouse (Pumphouse Residence) from the North Rim.

Groups including, non-profits, schools, church groups, scouts, clubs, and other similar organizations will be required to obtain an SUP for their activity. Any group, regardless of size, which has advertised to the general public, required individuals to sign up prior to participation, or that has an organizer who has been compensated for their services (including subsidized participation in the activity), are required to operate under an SUP.

Just finished an R2R with a group of 35 (28 hikers). Chumley asked on my triplog: With the t-shirts and group of 35, did you have to get a permit? I'm curious about that process since it's a relatively new implementation. Any hassles from rangers along the way?

I decided to post my response here:

Only 28 hiked (the others were drivers and non-hiking family members/friends). And yes, we got a permit b/c we are generally the rule-following type (though I'm still a little irked about it). Another gal in our group secured the permit, so I'm not certain of how bureaucratic the process was. I'm pretty sure NPS is just happy to issue a permit to (and collect the cash from) anyone who will voluntarily comply, since that's really all they can hope for. I am 100% sure that, absent our t-shirts, there would have been no more basis to stop and question us, as there would have been for anyone else. Even with the shirts, I got zero questions from any rangers, though we passed several. We don't hike en masse--everyone hikes at his/her own pace. At any given time, the biggest "group" hiking together was probably no more than 5. As mentioned in my triplog, the vast majority of my R2R experience was a two-person hike with my 12-year-old daughter. We had folks who finished in under 5.5 hours, and some who finished in 14.5 hours. Some took the side-trip to Ribbon Falls; others didn't. Actually, we got more questions last year, when the permit requirement was first put in place, but didn't even apply to our group.

Honestly, I'm pretty confident that our group of 28 left a lot LESS impact on the canyon than any random selection of 28 other hikers on the trail that day. We caused zero congestion problems, and as far as I can tell, we didn't otherwise "interfere with visitor use" (whatever that means).

I don't like the permit system. I think it only captures inherent "rule followers" like our group (who are generally the same folks that are highly respectful of the canyon to begin with), while the non-rule-following source of most of the problems either: (a) aren't subject to the permit system (i.e., groups of less than 12), or (b) simply ignore the permit system, keep their $175, and continue to trash the canyon.

ddgrunning wrote:I decided to post my response here

I know it's been a topic of discussion that many are interested in. Thanks for sharing your experience!

Bump ...

Other than simply driving up to the canyon together, the "large groups" I've seen on the corridor trails are often, in reality, several sub-groups of 2-3 people, hiking the canyon no differently than dozens (hundreds?) of other groups of 2-3 people who are hiking on a given day without a permit. That has certainly been the case in my once-a-year R2R trips with some family and friends. Some of our "sub-groups" hike across in 7 hours (or less); others in 12 hours (or more)--at times 10 miles apart from each other. Of the 26.5 miles I hiked on our most recent "group" trip, 25 of them were with a single other person. If we had chosen not to wear shirts that identified a connection between us, no one would have any idea we were a "large group," and we could have just skipped getting a permit at all. As it stands, the extended day hike permit is, fundamentally, one of voluntary compliance.

BTW, there was another large group hiking the opposite direction (also in smaller groups of 2-4 hikers), wearing matching shirts and no sign of any permit (each person on the permit is "required" to wear an NPS-issued wristband). Not sure if they ever got checked or questioned ...