It’s river permit season, all you freeloading dirtbags.
Ensure your chance to keep getting invited on river trips by actually applying for, and hopefully pulling, a permit for yourself! And this summer will be a better time than ever to escape the crowds and COVID doldrums by heading into a canyon.
But you have to act quickly. Now’s time to start thinking about multi-day trips for the upcoming season, with many deadlines coming up on Jan. 31. Many of these rivers require you to fill out a lottery application on Rec.gov.
One item of note this year: it might be a tad harder to get a permit than years past. Once COVID hit, many 2020 lottery winners were given the option to defer their permit launch date to 2021 if their travel and/or trip plans were impacted due to concerns regarding COVID-19. Due to these deferments, certain launch dates, or even all spaces on a given launch date, may not be available for allocation through the 2021 lottery on various rivers.
Still, it never hurts to apply. And to make matters easier, PaddlingLife partner American Whitewater has compiled a permit database providing the information and links to agency sites with detailed instructions and applications you can download. Click HERE
Click here for Paddling Life partner CKS’s Top Tips for River Permits: