Permit Lottery for Colorado River

“This system ensures that the majority of permit holders will have no recent experience on the river” notes Tom Martin, co-director of River Runners for Wilderness. “One’s increase in chances should be based on one’s failure in previous lotteries, not on one’s absence from the river” says Martin. “Hunting permits work this way. If you apply for but don’t win a hunting permit this year, you get more chances next year. You don’t get more chances for not trying to hunt.”

A total of 213 river trips will be available through this lottery for calendar year 2008. Forty one of these are for small size (1 to 8 person) trips and the rest are for standard size (1 to 16 person) trips.

A calendar showing the available lottery dates is at http://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/upload/2008_launch_calendar.pdf

This calendar also shows permits already assigned in 2008 to individuals from the prior river permit access system, the Waiting List, which still has over 4,000 pending permit applications.

In order to assist self guided river runners looking to try their luck in the Grand Canyon Lottery, River Runners for Wilderness has published an online Grand Canyon Lottery Information Primer.

This step-by-step tutorial features web page images captured from the Grand Canyon National Park website during last year’s lottery with text explanations to help you navigate the entire process.

The Primer covers the two step registration and lottery process, group size, fees, and Potential Alternate Trip Leader information.