About this permit
Lyell Canyon (Donohue Pass eligible) is the Tuolumne Meadows wilderness permit that lets you walk south out of Yosemite on the John Muir Trail. NPS caps Donohue exits at 45 hikers per day and allocates 30 of them here, twice the Happy Isles to Past LYV share.
The daily quota of 30 splits the usual way: 18 through the weekly lottery 24 weeks out, 12 released seven days in advance at 7 am Pacific. No permits are set aside for walk-ups.
The trail itself is the gentlest entry to the high country in the park: 11.4 miles round trip with 300 feet of gain up the canyon, on ground the John Muir and Pacific Crest Trails share. NPS rates permit demand "Very High" anyway, because everyone hiking the JMT southbound wants one of these 30 spots.
The route
The trailhead is marked by a John Muir Trail sign south of the Dog Lake parking area, and it starts near the Tuolumne Lodge parking lot. A short way in you cross a bridge over the Dana Fork of the Tuolumne, then reach the Lyell Fork and the pair of bridges known as Twin Bridges, three miles round trip and, in the park's words, mostly flat.
Beyond that the John Muir Trail and Pacific Crest Trail run together up the open grassy floor of Lyell Canyon, with views of the Kuna Crest and Mount Lyell. NPS gives the canyon as 11.4 miles round trip with 300 feet of gain, which is why it reads as a walk rather than a climb. Yosemite's four-trail-mile rule from Tuolumne Meadows still applies, so the first legal camp is a way up the canyon.
Then it climbs. Donohue Pass sits at 11,056 feet on the park's southern boundary and is the highest point of the Pacific Crest Trail inside Yosemite. Cross it on a Donohue Pass eligible permit and one Yosemite permit carries you the rest of the John Muir Trail, with no Whitney stamp and no permits from the forests and parks south of here. Turn left at Ireland Creek instead and you can loop out over Ireland and Evelyn Lakes and back down Rafferty Creek, 22.2 miles with 2,150 feet of gain.
Why it matters
Yosemite limits hikers exiting the park over Donohue Pass to 45 per day. Lyell Canyon holds 30 of them (double the Happy Isles allocation), which makes this the highest-capacity way onto the southbound John Muir Trail anywhere in the park. It also skips the 22 hardest in-park miles and 5,900 feet of climbing that Happy Isles hikers do before they get here.
The feeling
Two bridges over the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne, then miles of open grass with the river running beside you and the Kuna Crest on your left. It is the least dramatic start to a famous trail imaginable, and that is the appeal: you walk into the wilderness at 8,600 feet without earning it, and the canyon takes hours to give way to the climb toward Donohue.
