About this permit
A backcountry permit is required for all backcountry camping in Big Bend National Park, at $10 per night for overnight use, or $5 with a Senior or Access pass.
How you get one depends on the date, and this catches people out. Permits for Chisos Mountains backpacking campsites are available online through Recreation.gov from November 1 to April 15. From April 16 to October 31, which includes all of summer, Chisos backpacking permits can only be obtained in person at visitor centers, up to 24 hours in advance. An older park page still describes a flat 180-day online window; the April 2026 page with the seasonal split is the newer one.
The high country holds 42 designated backpacking campsites divided into 14 campsite areas, with distances varying from one to eight miles each way. Each site has one or more cleared tent spots and one or more animal-proof food storage boxes. Party size across the park may not exceed 15 people. Campers at the South Rim (SR) and East Rim (ER) sites must pack out human waste using a landfill-safe commercial toilet bag system. Ground fires and wood fires are prohibited throughout Big Bend, and in the High Chisos you use containerized fuel stoves only.
Water decides the plan. The park recommends carrying a minimum of one gallon of water per person per day in summer, slightly less in winter, and at least 2 quarts per person for half-day hikes; its South Rim Trail page puts it as one litre per person per hour of hiking. On Boot Spring it is unusually blunt: regardless of what you may have heard, Boot Spring is unreliable and usually dry. It adds that water in the Chisos may be abundant following summer rains, but for much of the year the same locations may be dry or hold stagnant water not suitable for filtering.
One correction worth making explicitly. The park's seasonal peregrine falcon closure applies to the East Rim (a portion of the East Rim Trail from the southern junction of the Boot Canyon Trail to a point just north of campsite ER-4, plus campsites ER-4 through ER-9) and runs February 1 to May 31 each year. For 2026 it is not in effect: the park states that due to a lack of evidence of nesting by peregrine falcons, the East Rim Trail and campsites will remain open for the 2026 season.
The South Rim loop itself is 12.5 miles with 1,700 feet of elevation change and a 6-to-7-hour estimate from the Chisos Basin. The November 1 to April 15 online window is a permit window, not a season.
The route
The park publishes the South Rim loop at 12.5 miles round trip with 1,700 feet of elevation change (its word, change, not gain) and 6 to 7 hours, starting near the Chisos Basin parking lot.
Camping is at 42 designated backpacking campsites divided into 14 campsite areas along the trail system in the High Chisos Mountains, with distances varying from one to eight miles each way. Each has one or more cleared tent spots and one or more animal-proof food storage boxes. Campers at the South Rim (SR) and East Rim (ER) sites must pack out human waste using a landfill-safe commercial toilet bag system.
Why it matters
The South Rim is the best walking in Texas and the campsites strung along it are the only way to see sunrise from that escarpment. It is also the trip most often underestimated: the park says outright that Boot Spring, the one water source people plan around, is unreliable and usually dry.
