How The Wave lottery works: advance draw, daily draw and geofence

Two lotteries, one permit

The BLM page for Coyote Buttes North says a permit is required, that permits are non-refundable and non-transferable, and that the area is day use only. There is no developed trail: the suggested route is a strenuous 6.4-mile round trip in wilderness, and the BLM leaves safety to the visitor. The BLM’s FAQ caps entry at 64 people and/or 16 groups per day, whichever comes first. Recreation.gov splits that between the two draws: 48 people and/or 12 groups through the advance lottery, and 16 people and/or 4 groups through the daily lottery.

Neither the BLM nor Recreation.gov publishes odds. The pages we read give no success rate, no number of applicants and no statistics, so any percentage quoted elsewhere is not an agency figure. What the agencies do publish is capacity, and that is the only honest basis for comparing the two draws.

The advance lottery: four months ahead

You can apply at any time during a calendar month, and the application is for a permit in the calendar month four months later. The lottery runs on the 1st of the following month at 9:00 a.m., and applicants are emailed the result straight afterwards. For example, an application entered during June is for a hike in October and is drawn on 1 July.

Winners must log in, confirm the permit, complete the remaining details and pay by the 15th of that month, or the permit is forfeited. The fees are $6.00 per application, charged when you apply and non-refundable, plus $7.00 per person or dog if you are awarded a permit. Everyone in the party has to be on the permit, infants included.

Each person may submit only one application per lottery; duplicates are disqualified. A group is limited to 6 people, and joining a separate permit to get past 6 is prohibited. Alternates must be named in the application, need a Recreation.gov account and must accept the email invitation within 3 days; they cannot apply for the lottery themselves. A hired guide does not count toward the group size or the daily limit on a non-commercial permit, with one guide per party.

The daily lottery: a phone, a geofence and a 6 a.m.–6 p.m. window

The daily lottery replaced the in-person walk-in draw. According to the BLM’s FAQ, the walk-in lottery moved to a mobile system on 15 March 2022, with intentionally set geographic boundaries. You apply two days before the hike, between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. (Utah and Navajo Nation time), from a mobile device with location services on, while you are inside the geofence. Desktops and laptops do not work. Recreation.gov puts the zone at about 3,272 square miles, roughly following Highways 389 and 89 from Kanab, Utah, to Page, Arizona.

The BLM’s Daily Lottery brochure, a PDF dated February 2022, sets out the rest of the timeline: winners are notified at 7:15 p.m. the same day, must log back in to claim and pay by 8 a.m. the next day, then collect the permit in person and attend the safety briefing at 8:30 a.m. the day before the hike. You only have to be inside the geofence when you submit; accepting and paying can be done from anywhere with cell service. Those clock times come from the 2022 brochure and were not repeated on the Recreation.gov listing we read, so confirm them there.

The fees match the advance lottery: $6.00 per application, non-refundable, and $7.00 per person or dog if selected. Missing any deadline (submitting, accepting or picking up) voids the permit. The dates, applicant name and group size cannot be changed: to change them you cancel and apply again with a new $6.00 fee. If the primary permit holder is not present on the permit date, the permit is invalid.

Which draw should you aim for?

With no published odds, the choice comes down to what you control. The advance lottery holds three times as many places as the daily one (48 people against 16), you can enter it from home, and it gives you months to arrange the drive and lodging; the price is that you commit to a date four months out and cannot reschedule. The daily lottery suits a flexible trip: you must be inside the zone and you plan only two days ahead, and a missed draw does not tie you to a date.

Do not build a trip around winning. Fees are non-refundable, permits cannot be rescheduled for any reason, and a cancelled permit does not go back into the pool. If you do not get one, the guide “Sold out of The Wave? Five backups without the lottery” lists nearby hikes that do not use this draw.