In person during office hours at Sugar Pine Ranger Station (Hwy 108, Summit Ranger District -- covers Sonora Pass) or Calaveras Ranger Station (Hwy 4) / Lake Alpine Ranger Station, OR self-issue at the kiosk outside those stations when closed. Groveland Ranger Station (Hwy 120) issues by phone or in person, but ONLY 24 hours in advance (up to 3 days for holiday weekends) -- call 209-962-7825. Long-distance trips exiting toward Tuolumne Meadows or Echo Summit CANNOT use self-issue kiosks at all -- must call/visit a station in person; permits can be phoned in and mailed/emailed up to 7 days ahead.
Notes
No quota or reservation system for Emigrant, Carson-Iceberg, or Stanislaus's portion of Mokelumne. Ebbetts Pass (Hwy 4) is within Humboldt-Toiyabe NF jurisdiction, not Stanislaus, and is tagged to the toiyabe_free group. Sonora Pass is confirmed Stanislaus NF (Summit Ranger District / Sugar Pine Ranger Station).
Travel into neighbouring units
CORRECTS AND SHARPENS the Yosemite Kibbie Lake/Lake Eleanor detail: quota is exactly 25 people/day via Shingle Springs (Kibbie Lake) trailhead and 10 people/day via Lake Eleanor trailhead (Yosemite NP's own quota, administered through Stanislaus). Must call the Groveland Ranger District 1 day ahead, recommended at 8:30am (permits go quickly); for a Sunday/Monday start, call Friday (office closed Sat/Sun/holidays). Group size limited to 15 (8 if cross-country). Bear canisters ARE required and dogs are NOT allowed once you cross into Yosemite wilderness (unlike the Stanislaus side). These Yosemite-side permits are free and required year-round; the Cherry Lake Dam gate access road is open April 15 - Dec 15. All Yosemite NP wilderness regulations apply once inside the park. No separate Yosemite permit needed for a single continuous trip that starts at a Stanislaus trailhead.
Rules in force
What applies once you hold the permit. Rules marked with a scope other than "this permit" are inherited — state law or an agency-wide policy — and are stored once rather than restated per permit.
Fire
Campfires are banned above 9,000 ft and within half a mile of Emigrant Lake, whatever permit you hold. Stanislaus National Forest
Separate from the outright year-round ban in Mokelumne Wilderness next door. The statewide California Campfire Permit is still required for a stove wherever fires themselves are barred. · source
A free California Campfire Permit is required before you may have a campfire, camp stove, lantern or barbeque -- but holding one does NOT mean fires are allowed where you're going. Local restrictions override it. Two different permits exist; for everywhere this project covers, take the one for federal- and state-controlled lands, not the private-lands one. CA state law
TWO PERMIT TYPES, and the wrong one is not a valid document. CAL FIRE issues one permit for federal- and state-controlled lands, covering campfires, barbeques and portable stoves, and a separate one for private lands, which additionally requires written permission from the landowner. Both carry the same caveat that local burn restrictions may apply. Every trailhead in this project sits on federal land -- national forest, national park, BLM, or the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit -- except two on East Bay Regional Park District land (Del Valle and Stanford Ave), which is a special district fitting neither category cleanly; which permit applies there is not confirmed. The same portal also issues permits for burning debris, which is a different product and not what a backcountry traveller needs. THE PERMIT IS A PRECONDITION, NOT AN AUTHORISATION: CAL FIRE's own guidance says to check local rules, since many areas restrict or ban campfires outright, especially at elevation or in high fire danger. Where a wilderness bans fires, the permit still matters for a camp stove. YOU MUST CARRY IT: Eldorado NF states the permit has to be available for rangers and other officials to check while you are camping, so an unproduced permit is a permit you do not have. The lantern question is settled: CAL FIRE's permits FAQ omits lanterns from its enumeration, but the campfire-safety page and Eldorado NF's own FAQ both include them, so the fuller list stands on two sources against one summary. The issuing forest states it is also required in some developed campgrounds -- being in a campground is not a reliable exemption. Free, valid for a full calendar year (January 1 to December 31), and available from CAL FIRE, US Forest Service or BLM offices as well as online. The signer must be 18 or older, so a group of minors cannot self-issue. Obtain it at readyforwildfire.org/permits, which links to the portal at permit.preventwildfiresca.org. NOTE: Eldorado NF's own camping page cites 'www.preventwildfiresca.org', which does not resolve -- readyforwildfire.org is the working entry point. · 36 CFR 261.52(k); PRC 4433 · source
Bear canisters are NOT required in these Stanislaus wildernesses. Stanislaus National Forest
Stated as a non-requirement rather than left silent, because silence reads as unknown and the answer differs sharply nearby: Yosemite requires canisters, and Desolation requires a hard-sided one on pain of a $5,000 fine. Carrying one anyway is still sensible where bears are active. · source
Assigned by straight-line proximity, not by a verified approach. Permits attach to where you enter the wilderness, so a peak listed here may well be climbed from somewhere else -- and a long point-to-point route may pass peaks that list a different trailhead entirely. Treat this as a starting point, not an approach list.
Black Hawk Mountain
Keyes Peak
Provenance
Source last updated
2026-07-12
We last checked
2026-07-23
Those are different claims: a source can be current and still not have been re-checked here recently.
Verification history
Checked
Verdict
Source
2026-07-22
stanislaus_free-2026-07-22-01
new-group
Free self-issue, no quota, from web-search synthesis. Never independently re-checked against a primary source since.
First independent verification of this permit_group (previously web-search synthesis only) -- the freshest source_last_updated found in this whole dataset. CONFIRMS no quota for Emigrant/Carson-Iceberg/Mokelumne (Stanislaus portion), and campfire-permit requirement via CAL FIRE. CORRECTS the acquisition process: not simply '24/7 self-issue at Summit and Calaveras Ranger Stations' as previously stated -- it's in-person during station hours (Sugar Pine RS on Hwy 108 for the Summit RD/Sonora Pass corridor, Calaveras RS on Hwy 4 or Lake Alpine RS) with self-issue kiosks as a FALLBACK only when stations are closed; Groveland RS (Hwy 120) issues by phone/in-person but ONLY 24 hours ahead (up to 3 days for holiday weekends); long-distance trips exiting toward Tuolumne Meadows/Echo Summit CANNOT use self-issue kiosks at all. MAJOR CORRECTION, surfaced a real trailhead-tagging error: the source states outright 'Ebbetts Pass is within the boundary of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest', not Stanislaus NF as this project had it tagged -- retagged trailheads.csv to a new toiyabe_free permit_group; Sonora Pass confirmed correctly as Stanislaus NF. SHARPENS the Yosemite Kibbie Lake/Lake Eleanor interagency detail with exact figures: 25 people/day via Shingle Springs (Kibbie Lake), 10/day via Lake Eleanor (Yosemite NP's own quota); call Groveland 1 day ahead, recommended 8:30am, Friday if starting Sun/Mon (office closed Sat/Sun/holidays); bear canisters REQUIRED and dogs NOT allowed once inside Yosemite wilderness (unlike the Stanislaus side, where bear canisters are confirmed NOT required).