A path protection method that includes: establishing a point to multi-point (P2MP) tree spanning from a head node to a plurality of tail nodes, the P2MP tree providing a label switched path (LSP) from the head node to a particular tail node; identifying a first and a second pluralities of source-to-leaf (S2L) sub-LSPs for the LSP included within the P2MP tree, each corresponding pair of S2L sub-LSP in the first and second pluralities are path diverse; setting a first flag in a RSVP path message to designate the second plurality of S2L sub-LSPs as protecting respective S2L sub-LSPs in the first plurality at a baseline level of protection; setting a second flag to designate a subset of S2L sub-LSPs in the second plurality as protecting respective S2L sub-LSPs in the first plurality at an elevated level of protection; and transmitting the RSVP path message.