’Tis The Season For River Permit Parties

Photo by Lindsay DeFrates

The days are short, and the mornings cold and crisp. Sometimes mist rises from the surface of the river as it winds its way west, and snow deposits are accumulating in its high-country bank. 

In sheds and garages across Colorado, rafting gear has been patched, rolled and packed away for weeks in favor of winter toys. For many avid boaters, January holds a special place in the calendar: permit season. 

That’s right, while winter grips the world outside, river runners are plotting summer launch dates and choosing favorite camps with a few of their closest friends. Then, they toss their names into the virtual hat, along with tens of thousands of others, and wait to find out if they will win a chance to spend a few days on some of the most stunning stretches of rivers in the West.

The odds are not in their favor.

River stretches such as Desolation Canyon and Lodore on the Green River, Westwater on the Colorado and the Four Rivers up in Idaho, are so adored by boaters that permit systems have been in place for decades. Permit caps limiting the number of launches allowed each day are set by land-managers such as the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management based on how human traffic would impact the fragile, riparian ecosystem in these pristine, remote canyons. Then, lotteries are held every winter to assign those coveted permits as fairly as possible.

Interest in these rivers has grown exponentially over the last few years, and what used to be unlikely has now become next to impossible. In 2021, for example, applicants for the Middle Fork of the Salmon River lottery had just a .983% chance of success when over 22,000 people applied for just 205 launch permits. 

Andy Horn, who has been rafting on the Colorado River since the early 1990’s said, “I’ve come to consider permit applications as a merely time to blindly donate to the managing agencies, or at least the government’s contractor that manages the permit systems these days, out of habit because the success rates obtaining permits seem to have dropped down into the infinitesimal range.”

To increase their odds, boaters often form “permit parties,” in which all members of the group apply for the same dates on the same rivers. Then, if one person wins, the whole group gets to go. Permit season for the most popular river stretches across the country begins in December and often ends in mid or late February, so most of these parties are held sometime in January.

It sounds a bit unfair when one looks at the number, but it is very important to remember that the places we love are being protected by those restrictions. Try to imagine 2,000 people a day floating through Westwater Canyon or launching from the Gates of Lodore, and the need for a permit system becomes crystal clear.

To apply for a river permit lottery, all you will need is an account on recreation.gov, a solid understanding of the put-in, take-out and overnight campsites available for that stretch, and a registration fee for each applicant. Keep in mind that the registration fee is not refunded even if you lose and does not go to the river or land management organization, but rather is a transaction fee collected by the website and returned to the corporation, Booz Allen Hamilton, which holds a national contract to offer the service.

The permit process for every river stretch is a little different and not all are lotteries. Many permits must be picked up 60 days in advance of the desired launch date, but the competition for those is just as stiff.

So, gather some friends, make some plans and play the river lottery this winter. You’ll be in good company with hundreds of thousands of others and might just win the chance to float the trip of a lifetime.

Originally published in the Winter 2021-22 issue of Spoke+Blossom.