Grand Canyon

Lees Ferry to Diamond Creek · Class III–V · AZ

Lottery

—no reading

No reading

Snapshot from Oct 22, 2026. Live reading loading.

Runnable range 6,000 to 30,000 cfs. This is a draft estimate that paddlers have not reviewed yet.

Season: Year-round, with most private trips in spring and fall
Character: A 226-mile trip of 12 to 25 days, with a mix of big rapids like Crystal and Lava Falls and calm stretches.
Watch for: Very remote, with long evacuation times. Rapids change with flow and with debris flows from side canyons.
Gauge: USGS 09380000
Colorado River at Lees Ferry
No reading in the Oct 22, 2026 snapshot.
Dam-controlled. Glen Canyon Dam sets the flows, which fluctuate daily and are published by the Bureau of Reclamation.
Permit: LotteryOpens Feb 2, in 91 days.
February lottery for next year, run by the NPS. Weighted, so odds improve with each unsuccessful try.
Apply on the NPS site Official page
Fees and rules
Fees are listed in the NPS permit process pages.
Weighted lottery on the NPS site, not Recreation.gov. Applicants must be 18 or older. Trips must be self-guided, and technical whitewater experience is mandatory. Each person may take no more than one recreational river trip per year, commercial or noncommercial.
Source: NPS news release for the 2027 lottery. Dates for the next lottery are not announced yet; the window shown is last year’s.
Snowpack: No snowpack basin is linked to this run. Flows here are mostly set by dam releases, so snowpack is a poor guide.

Trip reports

Wavetrain is an early build. Flow readings are USGS provisional data and may be revised. Runnable ranges and run details are drafts for paddlers to review. Permit dates and rules come from the agency pages linked on each permit and can change. Snowpack figures come from NRCS SNOTEL stations, are provisional, and are grouped into basins by watershed, so they may differ from official NRCS basin reports. Nothing here replaces scouting, local knowledge or a conversation with a nearby outfitter.