Making Plans For Summer Far In Advance

[JWreno]

A lot of us still have full time jobs. My wife usually has to get leave requests in about 8-10 weeks in advance. Popular trailhead quotas also require early planning. The stuff that is hard to plan on is 6 months in advance is potential snowpack and wildfire smoke. Our last two summer trips were upended by heavy smoke. We went to eastern Nevada to escape the smoke.

This year I am considering planning a couple of shorter trips. One would be earlier to avoid the wildfire smoke. The 2nd would be in September to avoid the crowds. My thought would be it would be less likely to have both trips be washed out do to circumstances beyond our control.

I am curious how other hedge their planning bets when making summer trips plans far in advance. My concern with the early trip is a potential dangerous stream crossing or two. I am hoping that the 2nd week in July would be late enough to cross most water. I am considering a northern Yosemite trip that would involve crossing Return creek.

[balzaccom]

You have identified some of the variables that come into play: snowy passes, high water crossings, mosquitoes, permit availability, etc.

Before I retired I would pick a few dates in the summer and decide that we were going hiking then, Sometimes we hit ferocious bugs. We've turned back instead of crossing creeks. We tiptoed over very snowy passes. We've bailed out early because of nasty weather. And sometimes we've ended up taking a different hike because of permits or fires or something else.

So what? It's all part of the show. Pick a date. Go hiking. I guarantee you won't regret time you spend in the mountains!

[Wandering Daisy]

I never get reserved permits. That way I can stay flexible.

When I was working, I seldom needed to schedule far in advance- usually just told them it would be 2-3 weeks in summer, sort of July-Aug, and then set the dates a month in advance. Because I was not 100% sure I could get a first-come permit I always had a Plan B and Plan C with already packaged map sets for each. My husband is a CPA (own business) so summer was always his slack season anyway. He again got busy mid-Sept to Mid-Oct. Now that we are both retired, we can go anytime, and most often start mid-week so first come permits are easy to get. We also now avoid holidays.

In the past, for 1-2 people, getting first come permits have not been a problem. I think there was only one trip I did not get what I wanted. We do have to be prepared to immediately go in the day we get the permit, in case that is available instead of the next day. I usually plan a short first day anyway. I also have never been that interested in really popular trails. Also, for some of my destinations, there are often 2-3 other ways to get there from different trailheads.

[Lumbergh21]

I'm somewhere between you and WD. I make the plans far in advance based on optimizing my vacation days and getting the time off period. But, I don't always get the trailhead that I want on the day that I want it, so I go with plan B or C for my reserved permit, and hope to get Plan A as a walk-up. In 2018, the Lion fire pretty much eliminated my original plan that I had a reserved permit for, but I showed upp in Mammoth with Plans A through E, and ended up being able to change to Plan C, I think it was. :-) Even though it wasn't exactly what I had wanted, it turned out good, and it got me up on the Mammoth Crest, which was awesome.

[Scouter9]

Being a scout leader, I am a plan ahead kind of guy. we get our permits six months in advance and are able to plan, except for wacky weather, bugs, and of course last year the smoke.

walk-in permits are not an option with my numbers, so the planning ahead is part of the game, as is the adjustments on the ground based on conditions at the time we arrived. All part of the game.

[Lumbergh21]

Being a scout leader, I am a plan ahead kind of guy. we get our permits six months in advance and are able to plan, except for wacky weather, bugs, and of course last year the smoke.

walk-in permits are not an option with my numbers, so the planning ahead is part of the game, as is the adjustments on the ground based on conditions at the time we arrived. All part of the game.

Unfortunately, not everyone is like that. I had a stack of possible hikes with every planned camp site ready to give to the ranger. Of course, I rarely end up camping at any of my planned sites except for maybe the first and last ones.

[paul]

I have to plan my dates well in advance, so my approach is to set the when and to be flexible on the where.

[c9h13no3]

I have to plan my dates well in advance, so my approach is to set the when and to be flexible on the where.

This exactly. I have to be on call ~half the weekends for my job. So I pick a time, but stay flexible on where.

I will reserve once in a while, but that's usually because I'm bringing friends or family.

[maverick]

Usually have several locations I would like to visit or revisit for photography, but for me everything hinges on the weather.
If a location/locations would be best done in early June, but the forecast has no thunderstorms, or at least some cloud activity, then I keep pushing back the trips until they are no longer feasible, and then replace them with trips slated for that particular time period.
Unfortunately no clouds, no Sierra for me, except for in the Fall where the blue and gold are a perfect match, Meetup's, or searches..

[giantbrookie]

I usually don't try to reserve wilderness permits well in advance owing to the possibility of changing conditions, but I will do it if it is trailhead whose quota is readily filled (and I can cancel this if conditions dictate that I should go for the day-before walk up--see below). If one has sufficient days off a good strategy is to add one day on the front end of a trip so that one can do the day-before walk-up permit which almost always works. This gives you a lot of on-the-fly flexibility up and down the range. I tend to have a large range of options I can adjust to depending on conditions from N to S and E to W in the range for any given time window. It is true that any given year I have a no.1 choice but the alternatives are always very nice---the High Sierra has so much to offer.