[Awclist] [Fwd: RRFW Riverwire - Grand Canyon Lottery Help Line Closes Monday]

[Thomas Robey]

RRFW Riverwire – Grand Canyon Lottery Help Line Closes Monday

May 26, 2007

The RRFW Grand Canyon Lottery telephone assistance Help-line is 
available at (928) 856-9065, through noon May 28, 2007, on a first-come 
first-serve basis.

This help line has been set up to assist lottery candidates in 
navigating the myriad web pages required to be profiled, submit an 
application and pay the required fee. You may also email: 
tommartin at rrfw.org

Grand Canyon National Park will accept lottery applications for calendar 
year 2008 self guided Colorado River permits, through 12:00 noon 
(Arizona time) on May 28, 2007.

River Runners for Wilderness has also published an online Grand Canyon 
Lottery Information Primer. This step-by-step tutorial features web page 
images captured from the Grand Canyon National Park website during this 
month’s lottery with text explanations to help you navigate the entire 
process.

The Primer covers the two step registration and lottery process, group 
size, fees, and Potential Alternate Trip Leader information.

The Primer is available for download as an Adobe PDF file of 9.5MB at:

http://www.rrfw.org/lottery.php by clicking on the link _Lottery Primer_.

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

The lottery drawing will take place on May 31^st . The lottery is a new 
permit distribution system which only applies to the rafting public who 
does not use park river concessionaires. In contrast, open spots are 
available with river concessionaires for the 2008 river season, at 
prices of up to $450 per night.

Lottery applications will be accepted through the website 
_https://npspermits.us <https://npspermits.us/>_ and all lottery 
applicants will need to have set up a user profile before applying for 
the lottery at https://npspermits.us/grandcanyon/river/createUser.cfm.

Applications for the lottery cost $25, and must be paid online when the 
application is submitted. Applicants who win a permit through the 
lottery will immediately be charged an additional $400 trip deposit.

This deposit is non-refundable even if the permit is cancelled 
immediately after the lottery. The trip deposit will be applied towards 
the final $100 per person cost of the permit. The Grand Canyon river 
permit and lottery charges are, by far, the highest do-it-yourself river 
running fees in the country.

A total of 213 river trips will be available through this lottery for 
calendar year 2008. Forty one of these are for small size (1 to 8 
person) trips and the rest are for standard size (1 to 16 person) trips.

As of 9:00PM Mountain Standard Time, May 25, 2007, there were 1,711 
permit applications submitted.

A calendar showing the available lottery dates is at

http://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/upload/2008_launch_calendar.pdf

This calendar also shows permits already assigned in 2008 to individuals 
from the prior river permit access system, the Waiting List, which still 
has over 4,000 pending permit applications.

The lottery is part of the contested 2006 Colorado River Management 
Plan. The new plan, presently in litigation, offers do-it-yourself river 
runners an increased opportunity to get permits, but nearly all of the 
new trips are during the winter months. The new plan also mandates cuts 
in self guided trip lengths throughout the year, and imposes a one-trip 
per year policy on all river runners.

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