Wilderness Permit Statistics

Wilderness Permit Lottery Statistics


On this page, you can find various statistics relating to the wilderness permit lotteries to help you make an informed decision when you apply for the lotteries. While the statistics give you a sense of which lotteries and trailheads have lower or higher odds, they don't necessarily predict success rate this year.

 
Bar Graph showing the number of applications for each Wilderness Permit Lottery in 2022 and 2023. Generally, for each year, the number of requests form a bell cover for requests
 

Overall Wilderness Permit Lottery Summary

Overall yearly summary for all wilderness permit lotteries in a given year
 
Bar graph showing the number of applications (successful, unsuccessful & total) for each year, and a line graph showing the success rate, for 2022 through 2025. Overall the number of applications and success rate changed little from year to year.
 

Wilderness Lottery Requested Trailheads

This chart shows the total number of requests for each trailhead in the wilderness permit lottery. Each request for a trailhead is counted. For instance, for 1 application with 7 choices for 7 different trailheads would be listed 7 times in this chart. You can see that the most requested trailhead has more individual requests than the total requests for each year. Note, in 2022 the Glacier Point Road was closed for construction, so those trailheads were not available in 2022.
 
Bar graph showing the number of applications for each trailhead applied for in the wilderness permit lotteries. Bars for each individual year. There are a few very requested trailheads, after which the number of requests quickly declines.
 

Awarded Preference

Chart showing which choice of a succesful lottery application was choosen.
 
Bar chart showing which choice of a successful application was chosen, from 1 to 7. The 1st was by far the most common, with over 50%, 2nd was under 20% and the rest progressively lower.

Last updated: May 13, 2025

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