Grand Canyon Canceled Permits Announced for 2007/08

In an announcement e-mailed only to registered applicants, Grand Canyon National Park has announced a lottery for canceled non-commercial river permits for the rest of 2007 and 2008.

The first trip in the lottery is December 11, 2007. The remaining December 2007 dates are the 16th, 25th, and 26th.

The 2008 lottery dates are all for standard size groups (1 to 16 people) and are in the late fall, winter and early spring:

• January 2008: 1st, 2nd, 14th, 15th, 17th, 21st, and 24th
• February 2008: 2nd, 9th, 23rd, 29th
• March 2008: 8th, 26th
• November 2008: 6th
• December 2008: 12th, 14th, 17th, 22nd, and 26th

In order to participate in this lottery, the Park requires you to set up a user profile at https://npspermits.us.

In order to attempt to lure river runners to take these winter trips, the National Park Service will open any unclaimed dates in this week’s lottery to a first come first served phone in, beginning December 10. Limitations to callers still include the one-trip-a-year rule, applicants must be over 18, and must be registered with an online profile at https://npspermits.us .

The open dates, if there are any, will be posted on the NPS website at https://npspermits.us and on the recorded phone message at the River Permits office at 800-959-9164 or 928-638-7843 beginning December 8.

Unfortunately, currently, the web page at https://npspermits.us cited by the National Park Service still displays information for the October 19 Lottery. Users must scroll down to the bottom of the page and either log in or create a new profile to log in.

River runners who have not set up a profile with the Park, or do not have internet connections have no way of knowing of this lottery, so tell your river running friends!

River Runners for Wilderness (www.rrfw.org) continues to offer free lottery assistance through email and a phone hotline for the complicated sign-up and lottery application process.

The RRFW Riverwire telephone assistance Help-line is available at (928) 856-9065, throughout this lottery on a first-come first-serve basis.

Lottery applicants can refer to the RRFW online lottery tutorial, available for download as an Adobe PDF file of 9.5MB by clicking on the “Lottery Primer” link at: http://www.rrfw.org/lottery.php.

Additionally, lottery information is available at the free Rafting Grand Canyon Wiki.

Discussion of the Grand Canyon lottery and winning strategies may be found at The Rafting Grand Canyon Yahoo group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Rafting_Grand_Canyon/.

River Runner for Wilderness offers these services at no charge, supported entirely through your generous donations at: http://www.rrfw.org/store.php.

The Grand Canyon River Permits Office also offers help at 1-800-959-9164 or by email at grca_riv@nps.gov.

This announcement comes courtesy of - RIVERWIRE - free service to the community of river lovers from River Runners for Wilderness. To join RIVERWIRE, send an e-mail address to riverwire@rrfw.org a.