Only days after finishing a 2007 Follow-up Lottery that had over 250 applications for ten self guided river permits launching later this year, Grand Canyon National Park has started a Follow Up Lottery for 2008. Of the 31 self-guided permits offered for the calendar year 2008, twenty five are in the winter months of January and February and also December.
This lottery began Friday, June15, 2008, and will only take applications for five days, closing at noon on June 20th.
The trips offered include two launch dates which are for half size groups (1 to 8 people) on July 5, 2008 and August 6, 2008. The remaining 29 trips are for standard size groups (1 to 16 people) and include January 6th, 9th, 11th, 13th, 16th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 24th, 25th, 26th, 30th, February 4th, 12th, 20th, 21st, March 2008: 11th, 12th, 27th,October 23rd, and December 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 24th, 26th, 27th,30th, 31st. All of these launch dates are in 2008.
Interested individuals must have set up a profile with Grand Canyon National Park to be able to apply for the lottery.
River Runners for Wilderness (http://www.rrfw.org/) continues to offer free lottery assistance through email and a phone hotline for the complicated 25 page sign-up and lottery application process.
The RRFW 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: https://rrfw.org/lotteryguide/.
Additionally, lottery information is available at the free Rafting Grand Canyon WIKI at:https://rrfw.org/RaftingGrandCanyon/Main_Page.
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: https://rrfw.org/catalog.
The Grand Canyon River Permits Office also offers help at 1-800-959-9164 or by email at grca_riv@nps.gov.
The NPS has made little effort to inform the river running community about these lotteries. Individuals who have set up a profile on the NPS web site are e-mailed directly by the NPS shortly before the beginning of each lottery. Grand Canyon National Park does not issue lottery press releases or otherwise notify the broader river running community. Since river runners who have not set up a profile have no way of knowing of an impending lottery, River Runners for Wilderness encourages all interested boaters to set up a profile in order to be on the Park's email list.