About this permit
This is the Yosemite wilderness permit that starts the John Muir Trail at its northern terminus and is valid all the way out of the park. NPS issues Donohue Pass eligible permits for up to 45 people per day: 15 from this trailhead and 30 from Lyell Canyon.
The daily quota here is 15 people, split the standard Yosemite way: 9 through the weekly lottery 24 weeks out, 6 released seven days in advance at 7 am Pacific. No permits are held for walk-ups.
Two restrictions come with it. Your first night cannot be in Little Yosemite Valley, so plan to walk past the campground. And if you are hiking the JMT as one continuous trip, this single permit covers the whole thing. NPS is explicit that you need no Whitney stamp and no permits from other national forests or parks.
The route
The in-park leg runs 22 miles from Happy Isles to Tuolumne Meadows with 5,900 feet of gain. From the trailhead the John Muir Trail climbs past Vernal and Nevada Falls (the Mist Trail is the shorter, steeper alternative for the same stretch) and levels into Little Yosemite Valley at about four miles.
This is where this permit differs from every other Happy Isles permit. NPS states that for the Happy Isles to Past LYV trailhead "the first night's camp can not be in Little Yosemite Valley." You keep walking, past the Half Dome and Sunrise Creek junction, and camp beyond. Yosemite's four-trail-mile rule from Yosemite Valley is satisfied long before that, but the LYV restriction is specific to this permit.
Above LYV the trail climbs under the south face of Half Dome, through Sunrise Meadow, past Cathedral Peak and drops into Tuolumne Meadows. From there it is up Lyell Canyon and over Donohue Pass at 11,056 feet, the highest point on the PCT inside Yosemite and the park's southern boundary. Cross it and you are on Inyo National Forest with one permit still covering the whole trip: no Whitney stamp, no separate permits from other forests or parks.
Why it matters
Yosemite caps the number of hikers leaving the park over Donohue Pass at 45 a day. Fifteen of those 45 belong to this trailhead; the other 30 go to Lyell Canyon. That exit quota, in place since 2015, is the single tightest constraint on hiking the JMT northbound-to-southbound, and this permit is the classic version of it: the one that starts at Happy Isles at 4,035 feet and ends 211 miles later on the summit of Mount Whitney.
The feeling
The first four miles are the busiest trail in the park and you walk them with three weeks of food on your back, past two waterfalls, in a crowd of day hikers in trainers. Then you pass Little Yosemite Valley, where this permit forbids you to stop, and the crowd is simply gone. By evening you are camped somewhere above Moraine Dome with the south face of Half Dome over your shoulder and the whole Sierra ahead.
