The Wave, Arizona: The Permit Lottery and the Unmarked Route from Wire Pass
Only 64 people a day are allowed to hike to The Wave, and there's no trail. How the two permit lotteries work, the unmarked route from Wire Pass in Utah to the striped bowl in Arizona, the drive, and the heat.
Only 64 people a day are allowed to hike to The Wave, and there is no trail to it. You park at Wire Pass in Utah, walk out across sand and bare sandstone, and finish in Arizona at a bowl of striped rock in Coyote Buttes North. Getting there means winning a lottery first.
How the permit works
The Bureau of Land Management allows up to 64 people or 16 groups a day into Coyote Buttes North, whichever comes first. The permits are split between two lotteries:
- The advance lottery gives out 48 spots a day. You apply on Recreation.gov four months before the date you want.
- The daily lottery gives out the other 16. You apply on your phone two days before your hike, between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., and you have to be inside a geofenced area near the permit zone to enter. It replaced the old in-person walk-in lottery in March 2022.
Groups can have up to six people. Everyone needs to be on the permit, babies included. Commercial guides enter the same lotteries as everyone else.
Demand is the reason it's this hard. When the BLM raised the daily limit from 20 to 64 in 2021, the Associated Press reported 215,500 permit requests through November 2020, with less than 4% of applicants approved. The BLM hasn't published odds for the current system.
The route, in order
Wire Pass. The trailhead is on House Rock Valley Road in Kane County, Utah. The first stretch heads down the sandy wash below the parking lot.
Out of the wash. About half a mile in, the route climbs out of the wash and crosses open sand and brush.
The slickrock. After that you're mostly on bare sandstone, and the route is unmarked. Recreation.gov says there are no trails in the permit area. Permit holders get a route description with a map, a photo guide, and GPS coordinates, and match the landmarks as they go.
Into Arizona. Near the end you cross the state line. One more climb takes you up into The Wave, a bowl of striped sandstone below Top Rock.
What you're looking at
The Wave is cut into Navajo Sandstone, which formed from wind-blown sand dunes in a huge ancient desert, roughly 190 million years ago. The thin stripes are the old dune layers. The colors come mostly from iron oxide minerals deposited in the rock. A geological study of Coyote Buttes describes the smooth bowl as mostly scoured out by wind, along a fracture that water widened.
The BLM says it limits visits with the permit system to protect the fragile rock and the area's wilderness character.
How far it is
On the OpenStreetMap line we used for the video, it's 2.7 miles from the Wire Pass Trailhead to The Wave. The Wave sits about 320 feet higher than the trailhead. The BLM describes the suggested route as a strenuous 6.4-mile round trip. Plan on the same distance back out over the same unmarked ground.
Getting there
From Kanab, Utah, drive 37 miles east on US 89. From Page, Arizona, drive 36 miles west. Turn south onto House Rock Valley Road and drive about 8.3 miles to the Wire Pass Trailhead. The BLM says the road is unpaved and minimally maintained. A high-clearance two-wheel-drive vehicle usually makes it, you may need four-wheel drive when the road is wet, and in the rainy season and winter it can become impassable for everything.
The short version
- Permit: up to 64 people a day. 48 through an online lottery four months ahead, 16 through a geofenced phone lottery two days ahead.
- Start: the Wire Pass Trailhead, House Rock Valley Road, Utah.
- Route: down the wash, out across the sand, then unmarked slickrock into Arizona.
- Distance: 2.7 miles one way by our measurement. The BLM's figure is 6.4 miles round trip.
- Danger: no shade and no water. Summer heat has killed hikers here.
Before you go
Looking for more? Browse Arizona trails on Outdoors.
More hikes you need a permit for
Image credits
Lead image: The Wave, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, by Bob Wick, Bureau of Land Management, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
