New Grand Canyon Lottery Info

River Runners for Wilderness has recently discovered some additional information about the new Grand Canyon National Park Lottery for non-commercial Colorado River rafting trips, set to begin October 1, 2006.

“With the new lottery just three weeks away, we assumed that Grand Canyon National Park would take the last few months to aggressively outreach to river runners about how the new lottery works” observed Tom Martin, River Runners for Wilderness Co-director.

According to Martin, this new web link includes critical information as who can apply, what the lottery will cost to enter, information about the on-line application and how to establish an on-line “profile”, restrictions to the lottery, and how the cancellation lottery will work.

“Given the complexity of the new lottery and the lack of information from the agency about how this new lottery will work, we find the recent lack of educational outreach simply shocking. The Park Service’s goal should be to see that more non-commercial river runners succeed in obtaining a permit, not less,” he continued.

The new information appeared very briefly on the Grand Canyon National Park web site on August 30th. The information was removed from the Grand Canyon National Park web site and is now only available in the Park Service archives. You can see the information at http://www.nps.gov/archive/grca/river/LFNCfaqs.htm#one.