14ers.com

Early, I know, but I'm starting to think about next summer's plans. I'm getting close to 58 but I have both Maroons and Pyramid left. I have read what I can about the Maroon Bells area but I'm kind of confused and I was hoping to get some tips.

- I would prefer to hike in and camp to make the summit day shorter, but I'm not seeing good options for camp sites. Looks like you can't camp at Crater Lake and the only camping is at the Welcome Center or further back up the road. Is that correct?

- for day trips, you get a parking permit, drive past the Entrance Station before 8 AM, get to Maroon Lake, park, then hike from there. You can drive out any time after that. Is that correct?

- How hard is it to get a parking permit? Do I need to book it in like January or do they not get filled up that early? Can I wait to summer to reserve my parking permit? Do weekends get all booked early but weekdays have more openings?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

1. Not correct. You can camp in numbered sites only at Crater Lake (I believe there are like 15ish). You'll need backpacking permits to camp here. Additionally there are 3 car campgrounds near the welcome center (Silver Bell, Silver Bar, Silver Queen). A mix of reservation and first come first served. Maybe around 40 sites total between the 3 campgrounds.

2. Parking permits have and "end" time, which you have to be out by. It depends on the product you select, some are midnight, 5pm, ect. This is very clear on parking reservation page.

3. If you have a specific summer weekend in mind, very. There is some amount of turnover, and last year at least they held back a small number of permits for release 3 days (maybe 2?) before the reservation day. I've got February floating around in my mind for when they release, but I might be wrong on that. The parking page will get updated with that release date when its closer. Weekdays will have less demand of course, but depending on what parking product you want, they may be hard to come by still (for example an "evening" permit will do you no good for hiking 14ers)

Definitely move on getting the permits early. They book up quite fast and every year there are people on the forums looking to pick up permits at certain dates. You can get lucky and find some free ones, but I would plan in advance

If you are doing a multi-day trip to hit the peaks on separate days I would recommend camping, but if you are going to do them separately I don't know how much help camping would be. Crater lake is only a mile or two in from the parking and there isn't very much vertical, so you won't actually save that much energy. I personally valued sleeping on a real mattress and just day-tripping after a better nights sleep.

You will need an overnight wilderness permit to camp at Crater Lake. Permits for the period April 1 - July 31 become available on February 15 at 8 am Mountain time. Permits for the period August 1 - Nov 30 become available on June 15. You obtain those permits at recreation.gov.

Parking permits become available on March 5 on the website aspenchamber.org.

I documented my experience in 2023 with the Maroon Lake/Crater Lake logistics in horrendous detail in a series of TRs - see below. These might be helpful. Good luck!

https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/triprepo ... trip=22290

My experience may not be typical but both times that I wanted a parking permit last summer I jumped on the Aspen chamber website at 8am 3 days before my trip and had no trouble getting midnight to midnight permits. They released a small block of permits each day for 3 days out and, while the permits you could reserve months ahead had long since been gobbled up, the ones for 3 days out were readily available.