theheap, no permission needed dude, you turn up, pay a National Park entrance fee (the park is a lot bigger than the town of Bodie), and off you go.
People on this board do explores week in, week out which are logistically waaaaaay more challenging than this - the only difficulty in getting there is its sheer remoteness - it's more than 40 miles drive from the nearest domestic airport in Mammoth, and more than 140 miles from the nearest international airport in Sacramento. In fact, it's 13 miles from the nearest proper road! We had planned to go from Yosemite National Park to Lake Tahoe as part of a Cali road trip, so this was a 'must do' detour for us. If you were going just to see this place it would be a heck of a pilgrimage though
