One Day-Use Pass to Rule Them All

I confess: As a teenager, I occasionally avoided paying campsite fees by leaving early in the morning before the rangers could stop by to demand payment. Hey, I was 16 years old and making $1.80 per hour at a restaurant, and $3 a night seemed like a lot of dough. (on the other hand, I was more than willing to pay $1.99 for a 12 pack of Lucky Lager beer in 11-ounce bottles. Don’t ask how I got them.) Okay, I cheated. I apologize.

Since then I’ve been a good citizen and paid fees for campgrounds, picnic areas, trail heads, and other sites. I see them as user fees: While parks are generally supported by our tax dollars, it seems fair for users to chip in for trail maintenance, bathroom cleaning and supplies, garbage services, and so on. 

At $5 per vehicle, a day pass at the US Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Wildwood Recreation Site seems reasonable, since the park has picnic areas, trails, a sports field, restrooms with flush toilets, group shelters, and other amenities. (The fee is $10 for vans with more than 10 people, $20 for buses with 20 or more visitors).

At Barlow Wayside County Park, which I wrote about last month, the county charges $5/day, since it’s a “limited service” park — no drinking water, no picnic tables, no flush toilets. I think parking at Barlow should be free, since the vault toilet there was installed and is maintained by the BLM, and volunteers do most of the maintenance. But okay, a $5 user fee isn’t unreasonable. The county charges $9/day at “full service” parks such as Eagle Fern County Park, with a lovely picnic area, trails, and restrooms with flush toilets, and more in an old-growth forest along Eagle Creek. Wildwood is a “full service” park, too. An annual pass for Wildwood costs $30/year. 

I grumble about having to pay day-use fees, but making the payments sometimes has me seeing red. You can buy a day pass for Barlow Wayside online, except from the parking lot, where there is weak, if any, cell service. So much for spontaneity. An annual county parks pass costs $60/year. 

At Eagle Fern and Wildwood, visitors can pay with credit cards online or at kiosks near the parking areas, or directly to park staff, when they are present at the entrance stations. Like many other parks, visitors have the option of paying with cash or checks by placing the payment in the provided envelopes and depositing them in the “iron ranger” fee collection boxes. 

What about the Northwest Forest Pass? A one-day pass costs $5 and is valid only at day-use sites in Oregon and Washington that are operated by the Forest Service. However, concessionaires are not required to accept the day pass at sites they manage on behalf of the Forest Service. I learned this the hard way: When Lara and I visited the Trillium Lake day-use area last summer, we were surprised to find that employees of the concessionaire, Alaska Recreational Management (ARM), had set up an impromptu entrance station where they accepted only $10 in cash or the Annual Northwest Forest Pass ($30) — no other permits qualified. Not the one-day Northwest Forest Pass or even my America the Beautiful national parks and federal recreational lands pass. Even if we’d had cell service, ARM does not accept electronic payments.

Between us, Lara and I managed to come up with $10 in cash. We even found a parking spot. On the way home, we passed a line of dozens of cars at the entrance station. I reckon few drivers found places to park.

ARM manages most of the recreation sites in the Mt. Hood National Forest, except in the Clackamas River corridor.

It’s also $10/day for day-use at Little Crater Lake, where this summer I chatted with an ARM employee about visitors’ reaction to the fee and permit limitation. She told me that — no surprise — many visitors don’t like having to pay the fee and some try to evade it. Most are polite, some are rude.

I wonder how much of the money ARM collects goes to paying employees to collect the fees.

For what it’s worth, the America the Beautiful and other interagency passes are valid at Wildwood, but the Northwest Forest Pass is not accepted — it’s Forest Service only. Neither pass is accepted at state or county parks. 

Confused about which passes are valid where? Me, too. I’d like to see the agencies get together and create one pass that is valid at all sites, period, including those operated by concessionaires. One pass to rule them all! 

A final note: If you can buy an annual America the Beautiful pass for $20 or, if you’re 62 or older, a senior lifetime pass for an $80 charge. The entrance fee at Crater Lake National Park is $15 to $30, depending on the season, but it’s free if you have an annual or lifetime America the Beautiful pass. Such a pass also will get you a 50-percent discount on most campsites on federal lands, even those operated by concessionaires, including ARM. 

So ARM gives you a discount with the America the Beautiful on camping at Trillium Lake, but they don’t accept the pass for the day-use area. Odd.

Have a question about park fees? Want to know the best way to avoid them? Let me know. Email: SWilent@gmail.com.