One of Zion's two headline hikes needs a lottery permit and the other needs none at all. Here is the permit calendar, the flow number that closes the Narrows, and how the drive from Duck Creek changes which lottery you should be playing.
Two hikes account for most of the questions we get about Zion, and they work in opposite ways. Angels Landing is behind a lottery with a fixed calendar and a $6 entry fee. The Narrows, for the version most people do, needs no permit at all and depends instead on how much water moves through the canyon that morning.
Knowing which is which changes how you plan a Zion day from up here.
The Angels Landing lottery runs on a calendar, and the window you need may already be shut
There are two ways to get a permit for the chains section above Scout Lookout, and they are separate lotteries with separate deadlines.
The seasonal lottery opens four times a year, each one covering a three month block of hiking dates:
| Hiking dates | Applications open | Close | Results |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 1 to May 31 | Feb 13 | Feb 25 | Feb 26 |
| Jun 1 to Aug 31 | Apr 1 | Apr 20 | Apr 25 |
| Sep 1 to Nov 30 | Jul 1 | Jul 20 | Jul 25 |
| Dec 1 to Feb 28 | Oct 1 | Oct 20 | Oct 25 |
Read that table against today’s date before you do anything else. If you are booking a fall trip in August, the seasonal lottery for those dates closed on July 20 and results went out on July 25. That window is gone, and the next one to open covers December through February.
That leaves the day-before lottery, which runs every single day. It opens at 12:01 a.m. and closes at 3 p.m. Mountain Time, and results land at 4 p.m. the same day for the following day’s hike.
Both lotteries cost $6 to apply, and that application covers up to six people including whoever fills out the form. If you are drawn in the seasonal lottery there is an additional $3 per person permit fee. You can cancel a seasonal permit up to two days out and get that $3 per person back, though the application fee never comes back. A day-before permit locks in once drawn, and none of it is refundable.
Rangers can ask to see your permit anywhere on the trail at any hour. The actual checkpoint is at the Grotto, which is shuttle stop 6.
The Narrows does not need a permit, it needs a number
The version of the Narrows that people picture, wading upstream between those walls, is the bottom-up hike. Hiking upstream as far as Big Spring requires no permit at all. You ride the shuttle to Temple of Sinawava at stop 9, walk the paved mile of the Riverside Walk, and then you are in the river.
The permit only applies to the top-down route, a 16 mile through hike from Chamberlain’s Ranch down to Temple of Sinawava. That is a different day and a different level of commitment.
Flow gates the bottom-up hike. If the Virgin River goes over 150 cubic feet per second, the Narrows closes to all travel. That closure is most common in spring when snowmelt pushes the river up, but the number is the number in any season.
The other variable is the monsoon. The park describes flash floods in these canyons in plain terms, as life-threatening, and common during monsoon season. If you have been watching afternoon storms stack up over the plateau from the porch here, that same weather system is what puts water into a slot canyon two hours away.
The Narrows scales to whatever you have. An hour upstream and back is a good experience. Going all the way to Big Spring is a strenuous ten mile round trip that takes the whole day.
The drive, the tunnel, and the shuttle you cannot skip
Zion’s east entrance is 46 miles from Duck Creek, about 70 minutes, and we wrote about that route in detail in the back door to Zion.
For these two hikes, though, the east entrance is not the destination. Both trailheads are inside Zion Canyon, and during shuttle season you cannot drive your own vehicle on the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive at all. You continue through the tunnel to the visitor center, park, and ride in. The shuttle itself is free and needs no reservation or ticket, and buses come every five to ten minutes.
Between May 17 and September 12 the first shuttle leaves the visitor center at 7 a.m. and the last leaves at 7 p.m., with the final bus out of Temple of Sinawava at 8:15 p.m. The park’s own warning is worth repeating: do not plan around the last shuttle. If it is full or you miss it, you are walking nine miles.
🔴 One hard stop for larger vehicles. Since June 7, 2026, vehicles over 35 feet 9 inches long, 7 feet 10 inches wide, 11 feet 4 inches tall, or 50,000 pounds are not permitted on the highway between Canyon Junction and the east entrance. Combined rigs top out at 50 feet overall. If you towed something big up here, the east route is out and you will go around to the south entrance instead. Check your numbers before you leave the driveway, not at the gate.
Building the day so a lottery cannot ruin it
The planning mistake we see most often is treating Angels Landing as the plan and the Narrows as the backup. It is the wrong way around.
The Narrows needs no permit and is available on any day the river cooperates. Angels Landing needs a lottery you may not win. So build the day around the Narrows, drive down knowing you have a real hike either way, and treat a permit as the thing that upgrades the morning rather than the thing the trip depends on.
If the permit does not come through and the river is running high, you still have the east side of the park, which you can drive yourself, and you can be back on the mountain for dinner. If both are out, that is a Bryce sunrise run or a Cedar Breaks afternoon, and neither one requires anything from anybody.
Duck Creek sits between the two parks, which we broke down in where Duck Creek fits in a Grand Circle trip. Rooms and cabins here put you 70 minutes from the east entrance with a kitchen, a porch, and cell service good enough to refresh a lottery result. Have a look at our rooms and cabins when you are working out where to base the trip.
