Plan the Wonderland Trail camp by camp, with real odds per camp.

The Wonderland Trail is one permit (Mount Rainier wilderness camping), but that permit reserves a specific camp for every night of a roughly 93-mile loop, and the camps sell out unevenly. Pick a start trailhead (or let the builder pick), a direction, your date window, party size, and pace: the Trip Builder lays out night-by-night camp itineraries with daily mileage and elevation, scores each camp with the demand data Permit Ranger collects, and can watch every camp in your circuit in one click.

How the Trip Builder decides

The loop graph behind the builder is hand-curated: the five drive-to entry points (Longmire, Mowich Lake, Sunrise, White River, and Fryingpan Creek) and the trailside camps between them, each mapped to its exact reservation division on recreation.gov. For your pace, the builder spaces camps as evenly as the terrain allows in your chosen direction, then rates the whole circuit by its most competitive camp, because one sold-out night sinks the itinerary.

Parties of six or more automatically plan around group sites (up to twelve people), skipping the few camps that have none.

The rules people get wrong

A Wonderland permit is not an entry-date reservation. It is a fixed itinerary: one named camp per night, each needing availability on its exact date.

The whole late-May through mid-October season goes on sale at once in late April (2026: April 25) at 7:00 AM Pacific. Before that, a February-to-early-March early-access lottery hands out the first picks, so by the general on-sale many prime circuits are already gone.

Roughly 600 full circuits can be reserved in advance each season, and about 300 more are held back for walk-up permits at ranger stations up to one day ahead. Flexible hikers really do get on the trail this way.

Cancellations reopen individual camp-nights all summer, which is exactly what watching every camp in your sequence is for.

Which entry point gives the best odds

Starting at White River or Sunrise puts the famously competitive eastside camps (Summerland and Indian Bar) on your first nights; starting at Longmire or Mowich Lake pushes them to the middle of the trip, where dates shift by a day or two of pace. Because the builder scores each night's actual camp, changing the start point or direction genuinely changes the odds, and the ranked list makes the best combination obvious instead of a guess.

Frequently asked questions

Does the Trip Builder book my Wonderland permit?

No. Permit Ranger never books or holds inventory. The builder lays out itineraries whose camps are watchable; when a camp-night opens you get an alert with a direct recreation.gov booking link.

Can it plan the Northern Loop or a partial Wonderland?

Not yet. The builder is scoped to the classic full loop from the five drive-to entry points. Section hikes and the Northern Loop or Spray Park variants are on the wish list.

Where do the feasibility ratings come from?

From Permit Ranger's own demand data: how quickly each camp's quota actually fills across the season. Camps we are still collecting data for are labeled as such.