Top Tips For Getting a Berg Lake Trail Permit

Do you want to hike the spectacular Berg Lake Trail in the Summer of 2026? BC Parks just announced that they will be releasing permits for the entire summer season at 7:00AM PST on Tuesday, December 2nd 2025.

Reservation release day can be stressful and chaotic, and permits to camp along the trail can go super quickly. If you want to be as prepared as possible, read on - these are my top tips for getting a Berg Lake Trail Permit for 2026.

#1: Get Familiar with the BC Parks Reservation System

If you haven't gotten permits through BC Parks before, the best thing you can do is head over to the Camping Reservation site and spend some time getting familiar with where everything is. If you don't do this before permit release day, you'll waste valuable time trying to navigate to the right place, while confident users are already checking out their carts full of permits.

You can find the Berg Lake Trail permits here:

The red circles are how you find the Berg Lake Trail permits. You will need to adjust the parts underlined in green (date, party size and number of tent pads) based on your needs.

Once you click search, you'll be able to view campsite availability through either:

• Map - where each campsite is located along the trail

• List - all campsites in a list

• Calendar (my preference) - campsite availability by date. This is my favourite to see if all of your sites are available in the order you want to book them for your trip, and is helpful if you need to be flexible with your dates or campsites due to availability issues on part of your trip.

You can either click on the green arrow in line with the campsite and your start date, or you can add the campsite to your stay in the drop down box at the top:

As you can see here, I'm not able to book this site until permits are released on December 2nd.

Once the permits are available to book, you'll need to click the 'Add to stay' button on the right to get it locked into your cart. Once you have your first night added to stay, you can add additional campsites for the following night in the next drop down menu that will appear, and keep going until you have all the nights needed for your trip.

Feel free to try this with other campsites that you can already currently book across the BC Parks network so you can see what happens when you click add to stay, and then go to check out your cart. You won't be charged for anything until the final page when you put in your payment information.

#2: Create a BC Parks Account

If you haven't already got one, make sure you create a BC Parks account ahead of time and ideally log in again before 7:00 AM on release day. It'll just streamline things when you've got your permits in your cart and you're ready to go.

#3: Plan Your Itinerary

The Berg Lake Trail is a 21km (42km out-and-back) trail with around 800m of elevation gain. There are also numerous day hikes to do from the Berg Lake area. I highly, highly recommend the Snowbird Pass hike if you're able to and have the time - it's easily the most stunning day hike I've ever done. Many people opt to spend a night getting up to Berg Lake, then an additional 2+ nights at Berg Lake so they can do the day hikes.

When choosing your campsites, make sure you look at the distances between each campsite and you choose sites within your abilities. Whitehorn is a popular one for the first night as it's 10km in (halfway), followed by 2+ nights at either Marmot, Berg Lake or Rearguard. You can find all the details on distances, maps and campsites on the BC Parks site.

It also doesn't hurt to have a Plan B and a Plan C for campgrounds on your itinerary. For example, if the Berg Lake campsite is fully booked but there's availability at Marmot or Rearguard, those are close enough to book instead and still be able to have an incredible trip.

This is also the case for the next tip...

#4: Choose your dates wisely (and have a Plan B and C)

You should go into the permit release knowing when you want to hike the trail (unless you can be flexible based on campsite availability). Many people can only get certain dates off work, or have other things already locked in, so only have a certain time period that works best for them. It's also good to have alternative dates you can do in case your preferred dates and campsites are already unavailable by the time you can get into the booking system. This is one of those situations where being over prepared can pay off.

Weekdays are usually more available than weekends, and especially the summer long weekends (Canada Day, BC day and Labour Day). You'll have more options if you can go mid-week, but weekend dates are definitely still possible to book if that's all you can do.

#5: Set your alarm for release day!

I love getting up early and getting logged in and having my systems ready for the 7:00 AM release day. I feel much calmer and more prepared than if I wake up just before release and have to scramble to get in. I also prefer to use a laptop rather than my phone as I can navigate it much quicker (though I will often have the system up on both to see which is moving better on the day).

#6: Glitches Happen - Don't Panic

There are usually thousands of people all trying at once to get the same permits, and it's a frequent occurrence for the website to experience technical issues when handling this many visitors. This can be glitches, the page being incredibly slow to load, site crashing or delays. The best thing you can do to be patient and keep trying.

Last year the system initially only released dates for trips within the next 3 months. The dates that I needed were at the end of August, so instead of giving up I stayed on the page and continued to refresh to see if the dates would come up. I also went over to the BC Parks Facebook page to see if anyone had commented the issue on their post about the permit release (they had), and BC Parks had communicated that they were aware of the issue and were actively working on fixing it ASAP. I stayed on the permit page, refreshing regularly until my dates became available about 20 minutes later.

It seemed that many people had given up at that point and thought they had completely missed out on permits. I continued to check the site for the next couple of hours (yes, I am a loser) and permits had quickly sold out for the dates within 3 months, but still had plenty of availability for dates beyond that.

#7: Congratulations! Or, Plan B: Cancellations, baby

If everything went to plan, congratulations! You are now the proud holder of coveted Berg Lake Trail permits. You get to spend the next 6+ months planning and getting excited for the backpacking trip of a lifetime.

If you weren't able to get the dates or campsites you were hoping for, you still have options. Cancellations happen, and often. As the permits are released so far in advance of the actual trip dates, many people book them before life gets in the way closer to the trip and they unfortunately have to cancel. I've been able to get new permits or change my existing permits often as I always have the BC Parks permit site as a tab on my phone (did I mention I'm a loser?).

There are also sites such as Schnerp or CampNab where you can set up alerts for the campsites and dates you want, and they will send you either emails or texts alerting you to any new availability.

Disclaimer

While I would love to be able to promise the above will work on every highly anticipated permit release, there's also an element of luck, tech playing ball, etc etc. These are just some of the tried and tested methods I use that give the best chance of success.

I'll have my fingers crossed for you all for a successful permit release day! Let me know in the comments how you get on, or if you have any questions.