Zion National Park Reservation System

[clenn]

I'm planning a trip in May that includes two days in Zion, with the night spent at a wilderness site. We settled on a nice site in the West Rim area, and since their reservation website for May went online at 10AM MT today, we were sitting at our computers at that minute, ready to make our reservation.

The website was running a little slow, which was unsurprising, but eventually we got to the page where we could make our reservation. It was still available, and we filled out all of the information. We clicked on the "submit application" link, and the website crashed. When it reloaded, I had to fill out the form again. Then it crashed again. Sometimes it wouldn't reload, and I had to go all the way back to the beginning of the reservation process (choosing a site and date). I went through this about a dozen times over the next 30 minutes, before finally the site had been taken by someone else. I tried it again with our backup site, and encountered the same problem until it, too, was taken. By then our third choice was taken as well.

Obviously I'm very frustrated. I called and left a polite but annoyed voicemail asking them what options they have and if they have any plans to address website problems. Have any of you encountered these kind of problems?

I don't think I'll be able to get a walk-up permit for the other West Rim sites, which are available on a walk-up basis only. They're released one day early, and we'll be driving from Yellowstone to Zion on that day, so I'm quite sure that by the time I get there the sites will be taken, and I'm hesitant to leave Yellowstone a day early (or drive overnight, since I'm sure we'll be exhausted). Do any of you have any thoughts on my chances of getting a West Rim site at this point?

Alternatively, are there other exciting backpacking trips in Zion you'd recommend? We're looking for a two day trip with one night in the backcountry. We know we can always do a campground and day hikes but we were really looking forward to a little bit of the Zion wilderness.

Thanks in advance!

[toedtoes]

Re: Zion National Park Reservation System

Topping this so folks can provide some assistance.

[clenn]

Re: Zion National Park Reservation System

Thanks! I think we're just going to try to do the West Rim as a long day hike. We considered trying to extend our Zion stay by another day so we had a chance to get a walk-up p**** but that would throw our reservations for later in the vacation into chaos.

Note to self for future trips: schedule things in the order we plan to do them so we can more easily make adjustments.

At this point every wilderness campsite in Zion is full for the month of May, so perhaps my question has shifted to "what else should we see in Zion" (if we do West Rim in a day, we have one other full day open for day-hikes, plus one morning before we leave for Vegas).

I'm also still interested to know if others have had such negative experiences with Zion's reservation system. They didn't return my phone call, and my girlfriend's e-mail about the issue received a cut-and-paste "Sorry for the inconvenience" reply.