6 minute read
Life Elevated: UTAH
A Trip of Luck & Lottery
By Carly Meyers
Amy Smith
Joy Lutz
Coyote Buttes National Park in Utah is a small part of the 112,500acre Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cli s Wilderness and has some of the most visually striking geologic sandstone formations in the world. The most well-known area of the park is referred to as ‘The Wave’ due to its striking, wavelike rock formations. To preserve the wilderness and limit damage to the fragile area, the Bureau of Land Management limits visitation to Coyote Buttes through a lottery system to obtain permits. Without a permit, you cannot enter the park.
There are two lottery systems to obtain a visitation permit: the daily lottery and the advanced lottery. If applying to the advanced lottery system, applications are submitted four months out from the hike date. You can apply from anywhere in the world and from any device on the recreation.gov website. Whatever comes rst, 48 people or 12 groups containing up to 6, are allocated for each day.
The daily lottery system works a bit di erently. Applications must be submitted two days before the hiking date and can only be submitted from a mobile device on the recreation.gov website. The applications are geofenced, so if you’re more than a 3-hour drive from the park, it won’t allow you to apply for a daily permit. Whatever comes rst, 16 people or 4 groups containing up to 6, are allocated for each day.
When Lake City’s Amy Smith rst saw pictures of The Wave, she made it her goal to one day visit the park with her best friend, Joy Lutz. After months of continually not winning the advanced lottery system for a permit, one day she nally won. Amy and Joy had won permits for April, so they bought ights from Jacksonville to Las Vegas and waited for their day to come. The day they were set to y out, terrible weather in Jacksonville delayed and later canceled their ights to Las Vegas. When you win a permit, it’s for the day assigned. You cannot change the date, and if you’re not there on that day, you’ve lost your opportunity. Knowing the women couldn’t make it in time on the rst ights out the next morning, they were forced to forfeit their permits and cancel the trip. Amy was devastated.
As seeing and hiking The Wave was very important to Amy, she had hired a photographer to document their once in a lifetime trip. The photographer, Shelly Wayne, was also a tour guide, and over time, befriended Amy and Joy and grew close. Living near the park, she promised to continue applying to the daily lottery system in hopes that Amy and Joy could one day join her. On a Wednesday night in July at 10 p.m., Amy received a call she never expected: Shelly won permits through the daily lottery system for attendance to the park on Friday morning. Amy and Joy not only both have families, but they also run their own businesses. Amongst the busyness of their lives, the women decided they had to take advantage of the opportunity and ew to Las Vegas Thursday morning. After a two-hour drive, Joy, Amy and Shelly entered Coyote Buttes National Park Friday morning with their visitation permits.
“I like how spontaneous this was,” Joy said. “We didn’t have time to think if we should or shouldn’t go—we just went. I am a planner. I need to know what’s coming up and what’s on the list, but being spontaneous every now and then elevates life.”
The Coyote Buttes permit area is within a backcountry, undeveloped wilderness area and does not contain any developed trails or facilities. Permit-holders are given a route description, which includes a route map, photo guide and GPS coordinates along the suggested route to The Wave. Be warned that the hike is not for beginners. The hike to The Wave is a physically demanding 6.4-mile round-trip hike. Permit-holders should be in good physical condition and be comfortable navigating undeveloped areas.
There was a downside to the timing of their visit: it was July. Though a dry heat, the women experienced temperatures well over 100 degrees, but they came prepared. They both carried two gallons of water and many protein-nutrient snacks. Dehydration is a huge issue in the park. The dry heat makes it harder for hikers to notice they’re becoming dehydrated. The heat is so intense that there are checkpoints where rangers provide water or medical service to y hikers to the nearest hospital to seek medical attention. Amy and Joy came prepared and spent over nine hours hiking the park that day.
Since it was such a last-minute trip, the women were in and out. They spent Saturday driving back to Las Vegas, stopping for landmarks and hikes along the way. They even took a dip in a manmade lake they found on the drive, and later that night got to experience the Las Vegas nightlife at the Michael Jackson One show by Cirque du Soleil. The women ew back home at 3 a.m. Sunday morning to make it back to their families by Sunday afternoon. For those one day wanting to hike The Wave, Joy suggests not only being active cardio-wise on treadmill inclines to gain endurance, but to get outside, too! “If this is something you aspire to do, start small,” Joy said. “Start local, like O’Leno” or Big Shoals, and then elevate the hikes you do, such as to the Little Grand Canyon (Providence Canyon) in Southern Georgia!”
Joy noted that one of the best parts of their trip was getting to see dinosaur tracks that their tour guide pointed out. She also noted that from their experience, hiring a tour guide is a necessity. “You can do it without a tour guide, but I absolutely would not,” Joy said. “They know the special spots to take you to see…but AllTrails (a hiking map app) showed us a di erent trail than our tour guide showed us, and we would have never noticed them without her pointing them out and explaining it to us.”
Re ecting on the trip, Joy said one of the best parts was that, above all, she got to do it with her best friend, Amy. “Take the time to cultivate the relationship with your girlfriends, even in all the busyness,” Joy said. “The comradery and support that I’m able to have from great friendships is irreplicable.”
“Take the trip. Life is short. You don’t know what’s up ahead, so if you have the ability to, take the trip. Don’t think about it, just go! I will remember this trip for the rest of my life. And the irony is, I couldn’t have planned it any
better!” ■
