Arizona Wave one of toughest permits to snag
Whether you try online in advance or show up for the walk-in lottery, chances of getting a permit to see Arizona's Wave are small. But now's the time to get serious about trying.
Is the Wave another “do as I say, not as I do?”
OK, so I jumped through the hoops and landed a permit to visit the Wave, one of the most sought after limited visitor sites on any U.S. managed national lands, according to Adventure Journal.
So I’m walking cross country, having started in Utah and entered Arizona, and find myself next to four other hikers. My permit is proudly fluttering in the wind, tied to the outside of my pack.
But where is theirs? Four packs, no permit.
Curious, I strike up a conversation. “Sure was difficult getting a permit, wasn’t it?” I asked.
One of them responded. “We’re from the BLM. We don’t need a permit. We’re showing our new district ranger the Wave.”
OK, makes sense. If they had tried entering the lottery to get a permit, the new head ranger could have done two years in the Kanab, Utah, office and left to take a promotion at Yaquina Head, Oregon, without ever having seen the Wave.
The number of daily permits to visit the Wave (formally called Coyote Buttes North) has been increased, but the difficulty in getting them feels about the same (3 percent a few years back, about 7,000 visitors from 200,000-plus applicants).
The BLM, under prodding from the Trump administration, increased daily visits from 20 to 64 as of January 2021. (Would be interesting to see if this spawned more applicants, too.)
Access to the Wave is midway between Page, Arizona, and Kanab, Utah. The trail starts in Utah but crosses into Arizona before reaching the Wave. The same Wire Pass trailhead is used to enter Buckskin Gulch, one of the world’s longest slot canyons with 300-foot tall sides. A permit is not required for Buckskin Gulch; most visitors walk a few miles and return the same way (read about Buckskin Gulch).
Consider this to be a reminder now to apply in November for online lottery permits to visit the Wave in March (recreation.gov); then in December for April and in January for May. That covers the prime spring visitation season, though the Wave is busy all year, with 48 individual hikers allowed daily via the online lottery.
The coming days of midwinter offer the best chance of getting a permit in person via the walk-in lottery, otherwise you will be joining a morning crowd of perhaps 300 hoping to snag one of 16 daily in-person permits for a spring visit. Of course, if you try for a winter permit you could run into a rare blizzard.
Read about the BLM's Wave permit process, a description of visiting the Wave and tips for winning the Arizona Wave lottery. The process is very complicated to describe, but fairly easy to do. Visitor limits help prevent overuse in this part of the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area.
Five deaths have occurred in recent years for Wave visitors, mostly attributed to summer heat. It takes a moderate 3.5-mile hike to reach the Wave, but there is no developed trail. Permits come with maps. Experienced desert hikers should have no problem, though heat and rare but powerful storms are a concern.
I entered the Wave online lottery once but didn’t get a permit. I often wonder how this lottery skirts Utah’s anti-gambling laws, since hundreds of people send in money, the BLM/reservation agent keeps all the money and gives prizes (permits) to a few winners. Sounds like Las Vegas to me.
I eventually got an in-person walk-in lottery permit on my second day of trying, May 10, 2017, a rare day of raw spring weather with snow squalls. I was competing against about 50 others, so I was lucky. The BLM staffer said the most consecutive days someone entered the daily lottery before getting a permit was 37.
The Wave is swirls of time frozen in richly colored sandstone. The Southwest slickrock country has other similar settings, but you won’t be able to brag as much about going to those because the permit process, if there is one, is easier to conquer.