coordination with travel partners

My current job allows me the convenience to work remote, which allows for me to stay out in the west for a month without burning all of my vacation days. I was able to test this out in 2020 while we podded with our friends in the Adirondacks. However Meg didn’t have as much freedom with her job switching more in person. Neither did my naturalist friends Brenna and Bradley. Brenna and Bradley flew in with me and we would travel together for over a week. 

Meg would fly in during the last couple of weeks I had out west. In between I was on my own, or as luck would have it, I would meet up with Richard from the Backcountry Post forum. Since I was out there for more than a month and I could just work during the weekdays, it was pretty easy for me to meet up for an adventure.

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backpacking plans

More and more, my trips have all been pretty last minute. Thus, I relay plenty of first come first serve permits or national forest hikes where permits are typically not required.

Yellowstone National Park

When you think about Yellowstone and how popular it is, the easy assumption is that permits are hard to come by. However the opposite is the case since most of the crowd stay in the front country at the popular spots or day hikes.

backpacking permits (NPS – including complete up to date information) are needed to camp in the Yellowstone backcountry and the reservations are for specific designated campsites with no disperse camping allowed due to Grizzly activity. Each site has a bear hang or a bear box to allow easy food storage. Only one group may occupy on campsite per night with limit of 4 to 12 people, so you’ll have solitude for sure. A map of the campsites is available here. 

There are several stages of campsite reservations, but for most will be concerned with the peak season. Specifically early access lottery entry and Peak season general on-sale date (see below from recreation.org). The major change for 2022 is that general reservation is now on the for mentioned recreation.org and can be made 3 days ahead of time. 

For my last minute planning and a very strong point of the backcountry permitting system of our national parks are the walk-up permits. In Yellowstone, a certain number of permits are held for walk-up, indicated by a “W” or a number in the availability field. Walk-up permits can be claimed in person 2 days ahead of time at the Central Backcountry Office. In 2021, the offices were closed due to COVID, but I was able to call in my walk-up permit reservation. For my trip, I was able to book most of the campsites I wanted that were accessible. Other than a few highly restricted sites for bear management (such as the ones on Mirror Plateau) or very popular spots (such as Dunanda Falls). It was pretty easy to string together the campsites that I was interested in both for my multiday backpacking adventure or an overnighter to a campsite closer to the road to save a night in the hotel.

At the time of writing, the permit fee are as follows:

Early Access Lottery Application Fee: $10 non-refundable. The application fee is charged for all applications to the Early Access Lottery regardless of success.

Recreation Fee: $5 per person, per night plus a $10 reservation fee. The recreation fee and the reservation fee is charged year-round for permits secured through Recreation.gov or in-person at a backcountry office. The $10 reservation fee is charged for all permits except those acquired during the Early Access Lottery.

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Bridger-Teton National Forest & Shoshone National Forest

For my other backpacking adventures on the trip, I ended up in the Wind River Range and the Gros Ventre range. The national forests that cover these areas does not need permits for wilderness backpacking in the backcountry (Forest Services USDA: Shoshone National Forest, Bridger-Teton National Forest). Please follow LEAVE NO TRACE principles when camping here.

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flights

My flights for this trip was pretty simple for the trip as I flew from the D.C area to Denver via Southwest Airlines. Southwest is my preferred continental US airline since I typically have the companion pass (Frequent Miler guide), which they extended an additional year due to COVID. For this trip, I switch my companion to give Bradley & Brenna a free ticket outbound before switching it back to Meg for our return from Denver. 

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transportation

I would be spending over a month all together out west, so a rental car was necessary for this trip. With car rentals, it was well worth it to book ahead of time since you can always cancel the reservation and rebook. This is essentially how autoslash.com works as they will track the rental price for you.

I was fortunate to book my car early before everyone else also decided to head out for the hot vax summer trip. I even decided to spend a little extra for a minivan, which I planned to spend a few nights boondocking. The total cost for 38 days was USD$1302.78. Unfortunately, the rental car shortage coming out of the pandemic supply chain shortage meant the minivan wasn’t available for me when I arrived. My choices ended up being a mini SUV or pickup truck. For the purpose of gas efficiency, I went with the mini SUV.

For finding roadside parking and disperse camping spots on the road, I used the apps iOverlander and FreeRoam. As with backpacking, please follow LEAVE NO TRACE principles (NPS).

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housing

Over the course of my 40 day trip, I stayed 12 nights in my tent, 7 nights at an Airbnb, 2 nights boondocked in a car, and 19 nights in hotels. This included 10 nights using choice points including purchasing extra points, 4 nights at Vacasa properties (airbnb like apartments) using Wyndham points, 2 50k certificates at Marriott hotels, 1 stay at a Holiday Inn with IHG points,  and 6 paid hotel nights.

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camping and boondocking

Camping and boondocking were the cheapest options, especially in the national forests where it is free. Please practice LEAVE NO TRACE principles (NPS) if you do. As mentioned above iOverlander and FreeRoam are useful apps to have for spots even outside of the national forest. You may even see a wolf run by when you get up in the middle of the night to pee in Jackson’s Albertson’s Parking Lot.

While in Yellowstone National Park, boondocking is not allowed. However there is plenty of frontcountry campgrounds you can make reservations (NPS). Fees range from USD$20 to USD$83 for RV park, see the NPS page for more details. In a pinch, you can even find a backcountry spot close to the road to reserve last minute and hike in for the night (see above for Yellowstone backcountry camping information).

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hotel sweet spots

I had hoped to utilized a minivan for more boondocking, but the rental car issue (mentioned above). However was able to take advantage of couple hotel point sweet spots to stay at hotels for cheap, the Choice Hotels and Wyndham Hotels. A big benefit of staying in the hotel was that it was much easier to work remote when I didn’t have to hunt down coffee shops with reliable internet. Zooming remotely from an coffee shop can be problematic with background noise.

With Choice Hotels, I’ve found tourist or remote area having decent redemptions (see Nerdwallet summary) and personally used their points to save in places like the Canadian Rockies during peak tourist season. I’ve found Choice hotel points worth picking up if it is around half a cent per points such as during U.S. Travel Association Daily Getaway (Frequent Miler analysis). Since my trip, both Citi Thankyou Points (2:1; Frequent Miler analysis) and Capital One miles (1:1, Frequent Miler analysis) are transferable to Choice Points though Citi has the much better rate. 

For this trip, I found a hotel in Pinedale, WY (The Lodge) that just converted into a Quality Inn & Suite (Choice, tripadvisor). It was a basic hotel and the guys (Sean and Kevin) was busy updating it, cleaning the rooms, and working the front desk. As with all placed during the time, they were understaffed and in the process of trying to hire people. From a working remote perspective, the internet was good during the work day. With all this, the cost per night was only 8000 Choice points (Frequent Miler Reasonable Redemption Value: USD$54.4, USD$0.0068 per point), which is now up to 16000 (USD$108.8 equivalent). I didn’t have much Choice Points when I began, but was able to buy them at roughly USD$0.0076 per point with their 30% bonus make my stay per night USD$60.92 per night.

At the end of my trip, I even bought a bit more points at about a cent each to stay at The Ridgeline Hotel (Choice Hotels, tripadvisor) in Gardiner, MT because the point price was far lower than the paid price (see Frequent Miler’s writeup on Choice’s Ascend Collection).

Using Wyndham points, I was able to book airbnb like 1 bedroom places for 13.5k Wyndham points per night through Vacasa (Frequent Miler analysis). Wyndham charges the cost of 15k per night per bedroom for a place roughly under USD$325-350 (I receive a 10% discount with my Barclays Wyndham Business Card – Frequent Miler analysis). I have also found that 2 night is typically required for a stay. I was able to book 2 nights on 2 occasions at the Shoshone Condominium Hotel in Big Sky, MT (Vacasa, tripadvisor). Our “1 bedroom” could have accommodated 7 people and the place had a full kitchen, laundry facilities, and a nice pool. The view from our penthouse balcony was decent too. 

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