Forest Service suspends BWCAW permit system

REGIONAL— The U.S. Forest Service has suspended the reservations process for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness until technical glitches with the system can be repaired. Wednesday, Jan. 30, was the first day to make camping reservations in the BWCAW for the 2019 season, but many users who tried to access the national online reservation system found they could not do so.

Reservations for summer camping in the 1.1 million-acre wilderness are only available online through the national recreation reservation system at recreation.gov, so the technical glitch stymied those who were seeking to make reservations at some of the most-popular entry points to the BWCAW. Overnight permits in the wilderness are subject to quota and popular entry points tend to fill up quickly, so competition can be intense on the first day for reservations. Soon after the permit reservation process opened on Wednesday, many users found they were not able to access the system. According to the Forest Service, both the private contractor and agency staff who run and oversee the reservations system soon discovered a problem with the system’s servers, which affected the distribution of traffic to the website. While some individuals were successful in making reservations for permits many others could not access the system at all. Once the Forest Service became aware of the situation, officials made the decision to halt the sale of BWCAW permits. Forest Service staff subsequently decided to cancel those reservations that had been made successfully before the system collapse. Those individuals will be provided with refunds.

Superior National Forest staff say they have worked closely with the contractor over the past year, including time during the recent government furlough, to ensure the system was ready and provided everything necessary to assure success.

Currently, the contractor and agency staff are diagnosing the exact cause of the technical difficulties and developing a detailed strategy to reopen the permit process in the near future. As soon as possible, the Forest Service will identify a new date for BWCAW quota permits to become available for reservations, but say they will do so only after officials are confident the malfunction experienced today has been corrected.