It's safe to say that backcountry camping remains incredibly popular at Mount Rainier National Park.

Over the course of two weeks, the park received nearly 5,900 reservation requests for wilderness camping and climbing permits, including overnight trips on the 93-mile Wonderland Trail, which circles Mount Rainier.

The number of requests is far more than the park can handle, officials said in a press release Wednesday, and fewer than half will be granted. Of the more than 2,500 people who signed up to complete the Wonderland Trail this year, only 450 will be issued permits to do so.

The number of permits granted is based on "established carrying capacity" in wilderness areas, officials said, and doesn't change annually.

Even if your request is denied, that doesn't mean you're out of luck. The park holds about 30 percent of available backcountry permits for walk-up hikers, who can get them on a first-come, first-served basis up to a day before the start of their hike. The permits are available at the ranger stations at Longmire, White River and Carbon River.

The peak season for backcountry camping is July and August on Mount Rainier, when more than half of the year's campers usually come through. Savvy campers should consider going in September, when the weather just begins to turn, but far fewer people will be competing for walk-up permits.

The 5,900 requests in 2017 is more than double the previous number, about 2,700 in 2015 - up from 2,000 in 2015 and 1,400 in 2014. The park didn't issue any advance permits in 2016, due to a software glitch that crashed the reservation system. This year is the park's first using a new online system.

The numbers correlate to the park's overall increase in attendance, part of a larger trend for national parks across the Pacific Northwest. More than 1.3 million people visited Mount Rainier in 2016, the most since 2000, according to National Park Service data. That number included more than 57,000 backcountry campers, the most in the park since 2004.

--Jamie Hale | jhale@oregonian.com | @HaleJamesB