Mount Rainier Entrance Fee 2026: Passes, Cash and Free Days
Mount Rainier entrance fee for 2026: $30 per car for 7 days, which pass to buy, paying with cash, and how 7 days lift your odds of a clear view.
The Mount Rainier entrance fee is $30 per private vehicle, and that one payment covers everyone in the car for seven consecutive days. Motorcycles pay $25, and people arriving on foot or by bike pay $15 each. No timed-entry reservation is needed in 2026, and the gates do not take cash.
Those are the numbers. The more useful question is how to get the most out of them. A $30 pass lasts a week, while the mountain hides in cloud on most days of the year. Ten years of cloud data show that the seven days are worth more than the price suggests, if you use them.
Mount Rainier Entrance Fee and Pass Prices for 2026
Mount Rainier National Park charges $30 per vehicle, $25 per motorcycle and $15 per person, all valid for seven days, according to the NPS fees page.
| Pass | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Private vehicle | $30 | One noncommercial vehicle with 15 seats or fewer, plus everyone in it, 7 consecutive days |
| Motorcycle | $25 | Up to 2 private motorcycles and 4 riders, 7 days |
| Per person (walk-in or bicycle) | $15 | One person age 16 or older, 7 days |
| Mount Rainier Annual Pass | $55 | One private vehicle, this park only, 1 year; US citizens and residents |
| America the Beautiful (US resident) | $80 | Entrance at all federal fee areas, 1 year |
| America the Beautiful (non-resident) | $250 | Same, for visitors who live outside the US |
| Senior (62+) | $20 a year or $80 for life | US citizens and permanent residents |
| Military, Access, 4th Grade, Volunteer | Free | Eligibility rules apply |
| Commercial mini-bus / motor coach | $100 / $200 | Tour companies only |
Children under 16 never need their own pass. The Washington State Discover Pass is not valid here; it covers state parks and state lands, not national parks.
Mount Rainier is not one of the 11 parks where non-US residents 16 and older pay an extra $100 nonresident fee in 2026. International visitors pay the same $30 per car as everyone else.
What the Pass Covers, and What Costs Extra
The 7-day pass covers entry through every park entrance, unlimited times, for the vehicle and its passengers. The seven days run consecutively from the day you buy it, so a pass bought on Saturday is good through the following Friday.
It does not cover anything you sleep in or climb on:
- Camping: Drive-in campground sites are $20 a night on top of the entrance fee. All three are shut right now: Cougar Rock and White River closed for the season on October 12, and Ohanapecosh is closed for all of 2026 for rehabilitation. Cougar Rock normally reopens in late May.
- Backcountry nights: A wilderness permit, including for the Wonderland Trail, costs $12 per person per night plus a $6 Recreation.gov reservation fee.
- Climbing: Anyone going onto glaciers or above Camp Muir and Camp Schurman pays the climbing cost recovery fee, $82 per person per climb in 2026. Hiking only to Camp Muir does not need it.
- Lodging and food: Paradise Inn, the National Park Inn at Longmire and the cafes are private concessions with their own prices.
Day hiking needs nothing beyond the entrance pass. Our guide to hikes in Mount Rainier National Park covers which trails are reachable this year.
Why the 7 Days Matter: Clear-Summit Odds by Pass Length
A single-day visit to Mount Rainier gets a clear view of the summit only about one day in three averaged across the year, but a full 7-day pass gives you better-than-even odds of at least one clear day in every month. That gap is the strongest argument for treating the pass as a week, not a day trip.
To measure it, we pulled hourly modeled cloud cover for the model grid cell at the summit from the Open-Meteo historical archive for 2016 through 2025. A day counts as clear if it had at least one three-hour window between 7 AM and 7 PM in which every hour had cloud cover at or below 30%. The 3-day and 7-day columns count runs of consecutive days starting on each day of the month. These are modeled clouds, not observations from the ground. That is a simpler cousin of the cloud factor in our visibility score, so treat the figures as historical odds, not a forecast.
| Month | 1-day visit | Any clear day within 3 days | Any clear day within 7 days | Cost per clear day, one-day visits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 21% | 36% | 55% | $141 |
| February | 20% | 46% | 78% | $149 |
| March | 23% | 45% | 65% | $133 |
| April | 26% | 48% | 71% | $115 |
| May | 34% | 64% | 86% | $88 |
| June | 42% | 66% | 87% | $71 |
| July | 72% | 91% | 98% | $42 |
| August | 68% | 92% | 97% | $44 |
| September | 50% | 77% | 95% | $60 |
| October | 37% | 58% | 74% | $82 |
| November | 22% | 40% | 65% | $136 |
| December | 22% | 43% | 66% | $137 |
The last column is the $30 fee divided by the one-day odds. It shows what a clear view effectively costs if you buy a fresh pass for each one-day trip.
Three things stand out.
July and August barely need the extra days. A single visit already has roughly a 70% chance, so the pass is cheap insurance.
September is the month where the full week pays off most. One day gives you a coin flip. Seven days give you 95%, nearly matching midsummer, with far fewer cars at Paradise.
October through April is where a week turns a long shot into a likely view. In November a single trip clears only about one time in five, but any clear day within a week happens about two times in three.
The practical move is simple. Keep your receipt. If you drive up and the summit is buried, the pass still works for the rest of the week. Check the live Mt. Rainier visibility forecast each evening and go back on the day it shows the mountain out. If you live in the Seattle area, that is often a second trip within the same seven days at no extra cost. Visitors staying in Ashford or Packwood can simply wait inside the window.
Annual Pass or America the Beautiful: The Break-Even Math
The $55 Mount Rainier Annual Pass pays for itself on the second visit, as long as the two visits fall more than seven days apart. Two separate $30 passes would cost $60.
The $80 America the Beautiful pass needs a little more use. Rainier twice plus Olympic National Park once costs $90 in separate passes, because Olympic also charges $30 per vehicle. It is also accepted at many Forest Service day-use sites in Washington that otherwise charge for a Northwest Forest Pass, such as Methow Valley trailheads in the Okanogan-Wenatchee. If you hike in the Cascades on weekends, it is usually the better buy.
| You plan to... | Cheapest option |
|---|---|
| Visit once, any length up to 7 days | $30 vehicle pass |
| Visit Rainier twice or more in a year, no other federal sites | $55 Rainier Annual Pass |
| Visit Rainier and other national parks or Forest Service trailheads | $80 America the Beautiful |
| Visit from abroad and see only Rainier and Olympic | Two $30 passes ($60), not the $250 pass |
| Turn 62 or older (US citizen or resident) | $20 annual or $80 lifetime Senior Pass |
For international visitors the $250 pass only breaks even at about nine separate $30 entries. It makes sense for a long road trip through the surcharge parks, not for a Washington visit.
How to Pay: Cashless Gates, Cash in Ashford and After-Hours Arrivals
Mount Rainier's entrance stations take only credit cards, debit cards and contactless payment such as Apple Pay. The park went fully cashless on May 26, 2023.
You have three ways around the gate line:
- Buy a digital pass in advance. Recreation.gov sells the single-vehicle pass as a digital voucher, available about three weeks before your visit. Download it to your phone before you leave, since cell service in the park is patchy.
- Pay cash at a partner business. If you only have cash, the $30 vehicle pass is sold at Ashford Creek Pottery, Ashford Valley Grocery, Ashford General Store and Whittaker Mountaineering on the Nisqually route, at the Packwood Visitor Center on the SR 123 route, and at the Wilkeson Historical District near the (currently closed) Carbon River entrance.
- Bring your annual or America the Beautiful pass with a photo ID. A digital copy of a prepaid pass is accepted.
Arriving before dawn for sunrise photos is common, and the stations are usually staffed only during daylight hours. The NPS says to pay at the next staffed entrance if you come in while a booth is empty. In practice, a pass bought in advance makes this a non-issue.
Where You Pay This Fall and Winter
From late October 2026 until spring, the Nisqually Entrance in the southwest corner is effectively the only way to drive into the fee area. The status below is from the NPS road status page as of October 9, 2026.
| Entrance or road | Status in October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Nisqually Entrance to Longmire and Paradise | Open; Longmire to Paradise can close at any time for weather, and SR 706 outside the park closes overnight from 9 PM October 16 to 6 AM October 17 |
| Stevens Canyon Road (southeast) | Scheduled to close October 26 |
| White River Road | Scheduled to close October 26 |
| Sunrise Road | Closed to vehicles until further notice because of the Grand Park 2 and Wonderland Complex fires |
| Carbon River and Mowich Lake (northwest) | No public access; the Fairfax Bridge on SR 165 is closed to vehicles, bikes and pedestrians |
From November 1 to May 1, every vehicle in the park must carry tire chains, including four-wheel-drive cars. Winter visits also hit the clear-sky odds hardest, which is why the 7-day window is most valuable then. Check the Mt. Rainier weather guide for what winter at Paradise actually looks like, and our Paradise visitor guide for the snow-season routine.
Fee-Free Days and Reservations
Two fee-free days remain in 2026: October 27 (Theodore Roosevelt's birthday) and November 11 (Veterans Day). In 2026 the free days apply to US citizens and residents only.
Free entry does not mean a free view, though. In the 2016 to 2025 data, October 27 had a clear summit window in 3 of 10 years, and November 11 also had one in 3 of 10. If the forecast for a free day is gray, paying $30 for a clear day later in the week is the better deal.
No reservation is needed in 2026. The park dropped timed entry for 2026 after a two-year pilot. In 2024 timed entry covered both the Paradise and Sunrise corridors, with a $2 fee per vehicle reservation on top of the entrance pass; in 2025 it covered Sunrise only. No decision for 2027 has been announced, and the policy has changed every year recently. Check the fees page in early spring before a summer 2027 trip.
How the Fee Has Changed
The vehicle fee has doubled since 2015. It was $10 after 1996 and $15 from about 2006 until May 22, 2015, when it rose to $20, per the NPS announcement. It went to $25 on May 27, 2016, and to $30 in 2018 as part of a nationwide $5 increase that began in many parks on June 1, 2018, and replaced a proposal for much larger fees at 17 busy parks. The 2018 change also raised the Rainier annual pass to $55.
| Year | Vehicle fee | Annual pass |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | $15 | $30 |
| 2015 | $20 | $40 |
| 2016 | $25 | $50 |
| 2018 to 2026 | $30 | $55 |
The $30 rate has held since 2018.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have to pay to enter Mount Rainier National Park?
Yes, unless you hold a valid pass or arrive on a fee-free day (in 2026 those are free for US citizens and residents only). Everyone 16 and older needs to be covered, either by a vehicle pass, a per-person pass or an interagency pass.
Can you pay cash at Mount Rainier?
Not at the entrance stations or campgrounds. Cash works only at the partner shops in Ashford, Packwood and Wilkeson, and only for the $30 vehicle pass.
Does the Mount Rainier pass work at all entrances?
Yes. One pass covers every entrance for its full validity, so you can enter at Nisqually on Monday and Stevens Canyon on Wednesday without paying again, as long as both roads are open.
Do you need a reservation for Mount Rainier in 2026?
No. Timed entry reservations are not required anywhere in the park in 2026, so the entrance pass is all you need for a day visit. Camping, backcountry nights and climbing still carry their own fees and permits.
How long is the Mount Rainier entrance pass good for?
Seven consecutive days, starting on the day you buy it. The $30 vehicle pass, the $25 motorcycle pass and the $15 per-person pass all run for the same seven days, with unlimited re-entry.
Is a Mount Rainier day trip from Seattle worth the fee?
On a clear day, easily. The drive to Paradise takes about two and a half hours each way, as our Seattle to Mt. Rainier distance guide explains, so check the summit forecast before you leave. If you only want to look at the mountain, it costs nothing from these Seattle viewpoints on days when it is out.
Before You Pay
Buy the $30 pass, then plan around the mountain instead of the calendar. Pick the day with the best forecast from the live Rainier visibility tracker, cross-check the park webcams, and keep the receipt in case the first attempt clouds over. For the bigger picture of seasons, closures and where to stay, see our Mount Rainier National Park guide.
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