Paria Canyon Permit System is Lame and Needs to be Changed!

[spinesnaper]

I was just looking at the online permit process for Paria Canyon. Am I missing something? This process does not have a mechanism to recover permits that were reserved but later the hiker decided not to use them. For each day, all of the permits are available via a lottery 4 months before. None of the permits are held for walk up. Further there is no mechanism in place to systematically recover permits from hikers whose plans have changed. For example for the Mt Whitney zone, the National Forest Service has a lottery process for these very popular permits. Their rules are a bit complicated but bottom line, you need to call and confirm before that you are in fact going to be using the permit and it must be picked up by 1 pm the day before for day permits and by 10 AM the day of the hike for overnight trips. Arrangements can be made by calling in advance for night box pick up. This allows unused permits to be claimed by other hikers at the last minute who will actually use the permit. In my experience it is one thing to apply for a permit and another thing altogether to actually use it. Does any one have any experience with this or see it this way?

This is an issue that needs advocacy!

Ken