U.S. Forest Service officials who oversee the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) are once again pleading with visitors not to stockpile and hoard entry permits as the annual feeding frenzy for those reservations is set to go live next week.
“Please reserve only what you need,” said Joy Liptak VanDrie, a Forest Service spokeswoman. “We’re showing a high percentage of cancellations and no-shows.”
On average, 150,000 to 160,000 people visit the Boundary Waters each year. This year’s bookings begin on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at 9 a.m. That’s when tens of thousands of people in Minnesota and across the country will be on their computers to snag reservations for the season that runs May 1 to Sept. 30.
Permits for BWCAW canoe travel never sell out, but most permits for high-demand entry points and popular vacation dates get snapped up quickly — in some cases within 15 minutes of the opening bell. All reservations are made online via recreation.gov, or by calling 1-877-444-6777, on a first-come, first-served basis.
“It’s a race is what it is,” said Steve Nelson, an owner and guide at Ely-based outfitter Spirit of the Wilderness. “We’re all anxious to see how it goes.”
Nelson and Willy Vosburgh, owner of Vosburgh’s Custom Cabin Rentals on the edge of the BWCAW, said the reservation system gets bombarded early by people who reserve more permits than they can use. In theory, they’re building options for themselves. But many of those buyers don’t cancel permits they won’t use, or cancel them too late for others to know they’re available, they said. It takes about 24 hours for a canceled permit to show up for resale in the reservation system.
“We ask people not to reserve more permits than they actually will use,” Nelson said. “If you are not going to use a permit, cancel it sooner than later to give someone else a chance.”
VanDrie said BWCAW permit cancellations have more than doubled in the past six years. Last year, more than 11,000 permits were canceled, an all-time high. She said 58% of those canceled reservations were made during the late-January onset of booking. The total number of permits drawn last year was around 26,000, VanDrie said. The number of visitors wasn’t yet available. Historically, the average group size has been four or five people. Nine group members is the maximum allowed per permit.
