Sno-Park permit in Washington, $25 a day or $50 a season

A Washington Sno-Park permit costs $25 for one day or $50 for the season when bought from State Parks or its online store, and $3 more, $28 or $53, from a retail vendor, as of October 2026. Permits are sold from November 1 to April 30, and a third permit, the $70 special groomed trail sticker, is needed only with a seasonal permit at eight heavily groomed lots. Three Sno-Parks sit on Highway 410 east of Enumclaw, Silver Springs, Sun Top and the Road 70 snowmobile zone above Greenwater, and all three take the plain permit. No Discover Pass, Northwest Forest Pass or national park pass stands in for it.

The Sno-Park above Greenwater is not a fixed point on the map. State Parks' plowing contract for the Highway 410 lots, put out to bid in October 2025, describes the Road 70 zone as two lots, one 4.5 miles up the forest road and one 10 miles up, and tells the contractor to "plow and remove snow based upon snow conditions moving up and down the access road". When the snow line drops, the plowed lot drops with it. The same document shows what State Parks budgeted to plow the three lots in the winter of 2024 to 2025: $40,988 by this site's addition of its three allotments, or roughly 820 season permits.

How much does a Sno-Park permit cost in Washington?

Twenty-five dollars for a day and $50 for the season from State Parks, by its Sno-Park permit page, with a $3 handling fee at retail counters. The one-day permit is good until midnight on the date written on it and is honored at every Sno-Park in the state, the groomed ones included. The seasonal permit is a windshield decal and cannot move between vehicles. Neither price is written into law: RCW 79A.05.230 has the State Parks and Recreation Commission set the fee after consulting its Winter Recreation Advisory Committee, so the page above is the one to recheck on November 1.

The store's archived 2025-26 page said a temporary permit prints at purchase and the permanent one comes by mail within 20 days. On October 13, 2026, it listed only boat moorage and Natural Investment permits, sales not having opened. State Parks' vendor list names one shop on this highway, Wapiti Outdoors at 58414 SR 410 East, filed under Enumclaw on the list and placed in Greenwater by Visit Rainier, a regional tourism site; the page heads that list as sellers of the non-motorized permits, one-day, seasonal and special groomed trail, and keeps a shorter list of snowmobile permit vendors on which the shop does not appear.

When is the permit required? State Parks states its own season four ways. The permit page sells permits from November 1 through April 30; the Discover Pass page and the statute that defines the permit say November 1 through March 31; the rule that creates the seasonal permit, WAC 352-32-270, makes it valid December 1 through April 30; a State Parks explainer published March 11, 2025 says December 1 to April 1. The vendor page gives the rule that governs on the ground: "Permits are required when Sno-Park signs are posted."

Which Sno-Parks need the $70 sticker, and does a Discover Pass work?

Eight lots need the special groomed trail permit: Cabin Creek, Chiwawa, Crystal Springs, Hyak, Lake Easton, Lake Wenatchee, Mount Spokane and Nason Ridge. The sticker goes with a seasonal permit and buys more frequent plowing, grooming and toilet service at those lots, in State Parks' description; a one-day permit needs no sticker anywhere. Four of the eight lie along Interstate 90 from Snoqualmie Pass east, between 55 and 75 road miles from Enumclaw by a routing engine's estimate.

A Discover Pass does not work at a Sno-Park, State Parks says, and under RCW 79A.80.060, amended in 2019, the reverse is also settled: a vehicle with a valid Sno-Park permit needs no Discover Pass at a designated Sno-Park from November 1 through March 31, which matters at Lake Easton, where the Sno-Park sits inside a state park. The Forest Service's passes page for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, updated August 6, 2026, says winter parking at its Sno-Parks requires the state permit and that "Money from these permits pays for plowing access roads and grooming trails." This site's park-by-park guide to which pass you need near Enumclaw covers the other passes.

1. Silver Springs Campground Sno-Park, off Crystal Mountain Boulevard

This is the lot Mount Rainier National Park sends winter visitors to. Its State Parks page puts it 30 miles east of Enumclaw: left onto Crystal Mountain Boulevard, then right after 50 yards. It is non-motorized, 2,700 feet up and ungroomed, with restrooms and 15 spaces. The agency's plowing contract describes the same lot at 19 miles east of Enumclaw with 20 vehicle spaces. A routing engine makes the junction about 33 road miles from downtown Enumclaw, which backs the page on distance; on spaces the two documents simply disagree. Its plowing allotment for 2024 to 2025 was $8,163.

The highway beyond the boulevard closes for the winter at the park's north boundary (when Chinook Pass closes has the dates), and the park's winter recreation page, updated May 7, 2026, tells visitors to park at the Silver Springs Campground Sno-Park and not at the gate: "All vehicles must have the State SNO-park pass or be subject to a fine." Crystal Mountain's lots a few miles up the boulevard are a separate system that has required reservations on weekends and holidays, covered in the guide to when Crystal Mountain opens.

2. Sun Top Sno-Park, 24.8 miles east of Enumclaw

The quiet one. Both State Parks documents give the same directions, Highway 410 to Forest Road 73 and then 1.4 miles south, and the same count of 20 spaces. Non-motorized, 2,250 feet, ungroomed, restrooms. At 2,250 feet the lot is low for Cascade snow, and the plowing contract does not begin until December 1, ends by March 31, and sends a plow only after four to six inches have settled on the lot. Its 2024 to 2025 allotment was $6,400, the smallest of the three. The land manager is the Forest Service's Snoqualmie Ranger District, (360) 825-6585, and the page lists the Pierce County Sheriff's Office for enforcement.

3. The Road 70 Sno-Park zone above Greenwater, Twenty Five Mile Creek to Pyramid Creek

The big one, and the only motorized one on this side of the mountain: 112 miles of snowmobile trail and 110 spaces by the Pyramid Creek page, reached from Highway 410 a mile east of Greenwater by 9.4 miles of Forest Road 70. The contract splits the zone into two lots, Lower Twenty Five Mile Creek at 4.5 miles, with about 10 vehicle spaces and trailer parking along the road, and Pyramid Creek Main 5.5 miles beyond it. Moving the plowed lot between them rests on snow and ice, on the grooming council with snowmobiler input, and on the land manager. The zone's allotment, $26,425, was more than the other two lots combined.

Unlike the two lots above, this one is groomed: a motorized grooming season from December 12 to March 31 run by R&R Grooming, with reports posted on the page through March 4, 2026. The grooming brings no $70 sticker; the zone takes the plain permit. A snowmobile itself needs a $50 annual registration through the Department of Licensing, valid October 1 through September 30, and State Parks says the fee includes one Sno-Park permit and one decal, with the permit going on the towing vehicle's windshield; the statute behind that, RCW 79A.05.230, charges a registered snowmobile owner nothing for an annual permit. The Forest Service map board at the Pyramid Creek lot, photographed in June 2023, sends riders to the Enumclaw Ranger Station, 450 Roosevelt Avenue East, for maps.

4. The groomed lots on I-90: Hyak, Crystal Springs, Cabin Creek and Lake Easton

All four take the sticker with a seasonal permit and honor the $25 day permit without it. Hyak, at exit 54, has 150 spaces, 7 miles of non-motorized trail, a groomed sledding hill, hours of 8 a.m. to dusk, no overnight parking, no dogs on groomed trails, and a note that traction tires are advised, a term the studded tire guide explains; it is about 57 road miles from Enumclaw. Crystal Springs, the lot in the photograph at the top, is 8 miles east of the summit at exit 62 and a mile of Forest Road 54, with 150 spaces and 51 miles of trail shared by skiers, snowshoers, dog teams and snowmobiles; its page gives a Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday schedule for the Erling Stordahl trails, while the 2025-26 grooming calendar it links put the trail to Hyak on the morning schedule six days a week. Cabin Creek, exit 63, has 200 spaces, the road and lower trails groomed daily and Amabilis on Saturdays, on 21 to 25 miles of trail, its page giving both figures. Lake Easton, exit 70, sits in the state park's day-use area with 30 spaces, a snowplay area, 3 miles of ski trail and 15 of snowmobile trail, about 73 miles from Enumclaw. Grooming at all four ran December 1 to March 31 in 2025-26 by their pages, and the Hyak and Crystal Springs pages add that it can be suspended during an I-90 pass closure or high avalanche danger.

What is the fine for parking at a Sno-Park without a permit?

A $48 base penalty, plus the statutory assessments the court adds to every infraction. RCW 46.61.585, a 1975 law, forbids parking in an area signed as a winter recreational parking area unless the vehicle displays the permit, and RCW 46.61.587 makes a violation a civil infraction. The display rule, WAC 352-32-260, wants the permit near the lower left corner, inside the windshield; the wrong spot is the same ticket. State law caps an infraction penalty at $500 and leaves the schedule to the Supreme Court, whose rule IRLJ 6.2, amended through July 27, 2025, lists the Sno-Park permit infraction at $48, "not including statutory assessments". In 2013 the same line read $42.

Where the money goes: a 1975 law and a $40,988 plowing budget

The program is required to pay for itself. RCW 79A.05.225 says it must be "self-supported solely through permit fees, gifts, grants, donations, and other revenues", and the permit fees go into a winter recreational program account that may be spent only on non-snowmobile winter recreation; snowmobile money comes from registrations and a gas tax refund. State Parks' program page puts 32 percent of the non-motorized revenue into trail grooming and 27 percent into snow removal and sanitation. The statutes date the original act to 1975, more than fifty years ago; the plowing contract's boilerplate calls the program 40 years old. The Central Cascades Winter Recreation Council, a volunteer site, credits members of the Mountaineers with taking the idea to the Legislature: plowed lots paid for by the people who use them.

How big the system is depends on which State Parks document you read: 120-plus sites on the permit page, 126 on its Sno-Park search, 136 in the contract, which also counts more than 3,000 miles of trail. The Greenwater contract, as put out to bid, would run five winters, December 1, 2025 to April 30, 2030, and asks for plowing between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m. on two hours' notice. The three allotments for 2024 to 2025, $6,400, $26,425 and $8,163, add to $40,988.

Before you leave Enumclaw

Buy the permit before you leave; the online store issues a temporary permit at purchase, and the vendor list shows no seller at the Highway 410 lots. On November 1 check the permit page for the season's prices. Check the lot's State Parks page for grooming and closure notes, WSDOT's Crystal to Greenwater report for the highway and any chain requirement, which the Enumclaw to Crystal Mountain drive guide explains, and the Northwest Avalanche Center forecast the State Parks pages link to. Do not count on snow at 2,250 feet on a given date. Put the permit inside the windshield at the lower left, and do not park at the national park gate. If December takes you up the same highway for a tree, the Christmas tree permit guide covers that permit; a Sno-Park permit is needed only if you park in a signed Sno-Park.