Wilderness
Designated wilderness under the 1964 Wilderness Act: the Three Sisters, Mount Jefferson, Mount Washington and Eagle Cap areas in our guides, and the permit system that now manages the busiest trailheads.
What wilderness designation changes for your trip.
Wilderness is a legal designation. Under the Wilderness Act of 1964 these areas are managed to keep their wild character: no roads, no motors and no mechanized travel, bicycles included, with group-size limits set by the managing forest (USFS). In our guides that means the Three Sisters Wilderness (South Sister, Broken Top, Chush Falls), the Mount Jefferson Wilderness (Canyon Creek Meadows, Three Fingered Jack, Pamelia Lake and Hunts Cove) and the Eagle Cap Wilderness in the Wallowa Mountains, which TC's guide puts at more than 350,000 acres with over 500 miles of trail.
Since 2021 the Central Cascades Wilderness Permit has limited entry at 19 of the 79 trailheads in the Mount Jefferson, Mount Washington and Three Sisters Wilderness areas for day use, and at every trailhead for overnight trips, from June 15 to October 15. Permits come only from Recreation.gov: $1 per person for a day, $6 per group for overnight, with 40 percent of overnight permits released in April and the rest seven days before the trip (USFS, checked September 26, 2026). Outside those dates a free self-issue permit at the trailhead covers the visit.
Two of our guides are about the permit itself, and a third describes how volunteering with Friends of the Central Cascades Wilderness can put you on limited-entry trails during a work trip.
Wilderness guides
Trips, summits and the permit system, newest first.
Current access and conditions
The agencies that manage these places publish the fees, closures and conditions; each guide names the one it used.