On this page, you can find various statistics relating to the Half Dome permit lotteries to help you make an informed decision when you apply for the lotteries. While the statistics give you a sense of which days have lower or higher odds, they don't necessarily predict success rate this year. The chart to the right shows the distribution of the preseason Half Dome permit lottery requests by day of the week. The set of bar graphs below show how many permits have been requested for each date during the last Half Dome season. This graph shows actual number of permits requested for each day (225 permits are available each day). This graph shows the worst-case scenario for each day because each application will have only one of its permit dates filled (applications can have up to seven different dates requested). Preseason Lottery Requests per Day (2023)
Daily Lottery Success Rate per Day (2023)
Other StatisticsSeasonMay 19 through October 11, 2022 (early start due to less snow) Preseason Lottery (2023)Applications: 35,289 (37,702 in 2022) Note: Application success rate was calculated based off entire application (all choices). Weekday & weekend success rate was calculated based on all individual choices in every application. Daily Lottery (2023)Applications: 29,292 (27,215 in 2021) Yearly Summaries
¹ Starting in 2014, significantly more day use permits were available due to changes in the preseason lottery cancellation policy. ² The Ferguson Fire closed the cables for almost 2 weeks, cancelling many daily lotteries. Further, smoke impacts before and after the closure discouraged visitation. ³ Daily quota was reduced for COVID-19 considerations, reducing the success rate substantially. Still reading? Maybe you're interested the technical details of how Recreation.gov lotteries work. |
Last updated: June 26, 2024