November 2023: How hard is it to get a Kalalau Camping Permit?

A lot of people say that it’s hard to get a camping permit for the Kalalau Trail. But is that true? Can we elaborate with more concrete data?

In this article we’ll show the stats for November 2023, break down those numbers into bite-sized pieces, and try to answer this and other questions you might have.

Summary

Let's start with a quick summary for the anxious readers out there. Feel free to deep dive into more information throughout this article:

  • 24% availability of spots recorded
  • We recommend you book your permit at least 50 days in advance
  • 905 cancellations of permits were found
  • If you are looking to buy a camping permit, check out our services for booking and monitoring to help you out

Breaking down the numbers

24% availability of spots for the Kalalau Trail

This is the most simple unit of measurement we can present. It simply counts the total number of spots available versus occupied for the Kalalu camping site. The way it works is:

  • There are a total of 60 spots available per day for the Kalalau camping site
  • The booking time window is limited to 90 days
  • Given the numbers above, the camping capacity is 60 x 90, therefore 5,400 spots
  • If we calculate 24% x 5,400, we'll get the average number of spots available

There you go. Now you should be able to understand this initial measuring number. However, we won't stop here, there is much more to present in the following sections.

Availability per number of hikers and days

At this point, we are going deeper into the statistics and it will get a bit more complicated, but we hope we can entertain you. For this metric, we are measuring the number of days which we could observe availability of permits given specific conditions. The camping permits are available for purchase at most 90 days from today (you cannot buy a permit 91 days in advance). This is a moving window of 90 days from the current day in the Hawaiian Standard Timezone (HST or GMT-10).

That being said, when we are looking at November 2023 stats we are in fact checking camping permit availability from 2023-11-01 to 2024-02-28. The latter date comes from the last day of November + 90 days.

Here’s what we are talking about:

  • Always looking at a 90-day windows for each day of November:
    • From 2023-11-01 to 2024-01-30 (90 days)
    • From 2023-11-02 to 2024-01-31 (90 days)
    • And so on, until…
    • From 2023-11-30 to 2024-02-28 (90 days)

We hope this clarifies how the date cycles work. Now, let's talk about the metric days available (which is different from "spots available", presented above): it was recorded an average of 46% of days available, so 46% multiplied by 90 days gives us 41 days of availability (rounding down the number). Given the current numbers, our recommendation is to book your permit at least 50 days in advance so you don't risk missing out on any available permits.

But wait, you might say “won’t these availability numbers change if I’m a solo hiker looking for a single night of camping, versus a group of 3 hikers looking for 4 nights?”

Good point :), and the answer is YES.

However, in order to simplify the daily availability stats and show a single understandable number, we chose the scenario of 2 hikers wanting to book 2 nights of camping at Kalalau. Don't worry if you are not understanding yet. We'll explain it in greater detail in the next section.

Breaking down availability per hiker vs nights of camping

Let’s take a look at the numbers below. As we can see, we have two variables:

  • The number of nights (consecutive nights)
  • The number of hikers

When we combine both variables and options available for each, we get the table below:

Availability of days to book

Number of nights

1

2

3

4

5

Number of hikers

1

51%

48%

47%

45%

44%

2

48%

46%

44%

44%

43%

3

46%

45%

44%

44%

42%

4

46%

44%

43%

43%

42%

 

We can clearly observe how availability changes as we select more hikers and/or more nights. We should also emphasize that we are looking at consecutive nights only since you can’t break your camping permit into multiple permits.

Please note that availability of spots and availability of days are different metrics. Availability of spots (the first metric we presented in this article) is simply looking at total number of spots available versus occupied. Availability of days is much more comprehensive given we are looking at availability from the perspective of number of consecutive days and hikers. It's surely a more interesting number to evaluate since it's closer to the reality of folks searching for a camping permit.

At this point, it should be clear to you where the 46% is coming from. We can also calculate the recommended amount of days that you should book in advance in order to secure the camping permit for Kalalau Trail and here’s the other table:

 

Days in advance required to book you spot

Number of nights

1

2

3

4

5

Number of hikers

1

44

47

48

50

51

2

48

50

51

51

52

3

49

50

51

51

52

4

50

51

52

52

53



Even though it’s not hard to get a camping permit, it’s recommended to plan ahead of time so you can have the option of choosing the dates that better suit you and your group.

Kalalau camping permit cancellations

Another way to buy a permit is when someone cancels their plans and their permit is returned. This can happen any time of the day and night, so we track them to better understand how and when it's happening. During the month of November, we were able to find 905 cancellations. You can use these cancellations to your favor. We offer a monitoring service which will notify you as soon as a cancellation is detected and matches your selected dates.

Keep in mind that we don't count abandoned carts as real cancellations, otherwise these numbers would be much higher. If a customer adds a permit to their cart but doesn't complete the payment process, eHawaii returns that spot to the availability table after 30 minutes or so.

Is it easy to get the Kalalau camping permit this month?

Yes! It’s winter time, and during this time of the year Kaua’i gets hammered with high surf and rain, making it much harder to hike the Kalalau Trail. Many times the State Park gets closed due to floods and risky weather. At the end, fewer people are looking into hiking an already dangerous trail in worse conditions.

So there is a seasonality component to the Kalalau camping permit. Summer months tend to get very competitive. Permits sell out in a couple of minutes.

We hope this article was helpful. See you next month with another stats evaluation.

Mahalo!

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