We loved this story in the San Jose Mercury News about a computer whiz who is also a backpacker, and needed to figure out a way to get his permit for the John Muir Trail. So what did he do?

Yep, he designed a bot! The full story is here:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/04/22/heres-how-to-get-a-reservation-to-hike-the-john-muir-trail/

Or, if you are talented in this direction, here is a link to his code:

The source code for hackjohn is available at https://github.com/dhimmel/hackjohn under the permissive MIT License. To learn more, go to https://busy.org/@dhimmel/introducing-the-hackjohn-bot-for-southbound-john-muir-trail-permits.

To learn more about the John Muir Trail, or to submit an application to the National Park Service’s lottery, go to https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/jmtfaq.htm.