Understanding the Enchantments Lottery in 2025

Introduction

I've been applying for the Enchantments Lottery for a few years and was curious how I could improve my chances so I started looking at the Enchantments Lottery Results on the US Forest Service website.

Then, a year or two ago, I thought it would be interesting to start sharing some of the findings I had when analyzing the published results data because I felt the advice and analysis I was reading online was misguided.

After writing a few articles looking at data from 2020-2023 I felt I had a good grasp of where applicants could improve their chances, how they could make decisions about their application entries, and ultimately feel like they gave the lottery their best shot.

Most of the valuable information gleaned from analyzing the Enchantments results data revolves around the mechanics and process of the lottery. Specifically, how the quotas, zones, and different lotteries work together depending on the circumstance.

To understand how to improve your chances when applying for the Enchantments Lottery a person must understand how the lottery works, how applications are structured, and how decisions by the Forest Service affect lottery application odds.

This article breaks down how the Enchantments Lottery works and uses historical data and the most recent 2024 results data to build an understanding of the Enchantments Lottery and where applicants can pick their spots to improve their odds of winning.

How the Enchantments Lottery Works

Short Version

An applicant gets three picks combining a zone, date, and group size.
Applicants can only apply once
The lottery assigns the application a random number in the processing queue
The lottery evaluates each of the three options in an application
If a permit is available, the application is awarded the permit for the specific entry
Applications are awarded only one permit
Winning applicants must accept their awarded permits before a certain date (April 1) or the permit is released back to the permit inventory and made available to the public on April 1.

Long Version

Applicants fill out and apply after the lottery opens (February 15) and before the closing date (March 1). Each application consists of three entries in order of preference.

An individual entry comprises a zone, date, and group size. The preference is determined by order in the application. For example, an application might look like:

Zone: Core Enchantment Zone, Start Date: 2024-08-07, Group Size: 5
Zone: Colchuck Zone, Start Date: 2024-07-28, Group Size: 3
Zone: Stuart Zone, Start Date: 2024-09-01, Group Size: 2

An applicant can only apply once. Furthermore, an applicant can't even be the alternate trip leader on a different application. People can either apply themselves or be an alternate on a different person's application, not both.

During the lottery process, each application is assigned a processing sequence value. The processing sequence value determines the order in which the lottery evaluates the application. The lower the number the better.

When the lottery evaluates an application it tries to determine if any permits are available for each of the provided trip start dates in the zones specified for each entry. The entries are evaluated independently based on preference. If a permit is available the application is awarded a permit for the entry.

If no permits are available for any of the entries the application is unsuccessful. Conversely, if an application is successful, the applicant must accept the awarded permit before April 1. Any unclaimed permits are released to the public on April 1.

If an applicant is unsuccessful in the advanced lottery they may still obtain a permit when the unclaimed inventory is released to the public on April 1, or they can try their luck in the geofenced Daily Walk-Up Lottery.

Zone Quotas

The lottery doesn't evaluate all zones the same. Each zone has daily quota restrictions, and the Core Enchantment Zone quota is determined by PEOPLE, not by GROUP. As of 2025, the daily quotas are below:

Core Enchantment Zone: 24 people per day*
Colchuck Zone: 3 groups per day
Stuart Zone: 4 groups per day
Snow Zone: 5 groups per day
Eightmile / Caroline Zone: 3 groups per day

Unfortunately, these quotas are confusing because the permit inventory is broken up into two lotteries:

Advanced Lottery
Daily-Walk Up Lottery

And the Daily-Walk Up Lottery doesn't happen every day.

Daily Walk-Up Lottery

The forest service runs a daily walk-up lottery during the permit season (May 15-Oct. 31):

"[...] only one permit per zone is issued for the Colchuck, Stuart, Snow Lakes, and Eightmile/Caroline zones and 8 people allotted for the Core Enchantment Zone [...]"

Consequently, the availability of the advanced lottery is dependent on the daily lottery because the Forest Service reserves a portion of the permits for the daily walk-up lottery. This is a big deal because more permits are allocated depending on the day of the week in the advanced lottery. Examine the below breakdowns to see how the Daily Walk-Up Lottery affects the inventory of the advanced lottery.

Permit Quotas in Advanced Lottery on Days WITH a Daily Walk-Up Lottery:

Core Enchantment Zone: 16 people
Colchuck Zone: 2 groups
Stuart Zone: 3 groups
Snow Zone: 4 groups
Eightmile / Caroline Zone: 2 groups

Permits Quotas in Advanced Lottery on Days WITHOUT Walk-Up Lottery

Core Enchantment Zone: 24 people
Colchuck Zone: 3 groups
Stuart Zone: 4 groups
Snow Zone: 5 groups
Eightmile / Caroline Zone: 3 groups

Starting in 2024 and continuing in 2025, all Daily Walk-Up permits for Sunday and Monday are allocated through the advanced lottery because no Daily Walk-Up Lottery is held on Saturdays or Sundays.

2023 Recap

Analyzing the 2023 data, I discussed:

How the lottery works, and how I tested it
Why not applying for the Core Enchantment Zone is a bad idea
What makes Sunday the best day to apply
Which group size does the best in the Core Enchantment Zone

Also, building on the 2023 analysis, I published an article on statistics-based strategies for winning the Enchantments Lottery. Both articles would be a good place to start, providing context for the analysis of the 2024 Enchantments Lottery results.

I'll touch on similar themes to the 2023 analysis and provide more insights using the published 2024 Enchantments Lottery results.

2024 Enchantments Lottery Analysis

For the 2024 analysis, I wanted to look at the:

Increases in applications from the previous year
Probabilities of winning a permit by zone
Penalties for each additional application entry for the Core Enchantment Zone
Heatmaps for application entries by zone, day of the week, and month
Changes in awarded permit levels by day from the previous year
The probability of winning a permit for Labor Day Weekend compared to other weekends in the "peak season"

The following analysis points should give potential applicants an understanding of how they can build better applications to improve their odds of winning the Enchantments Lottery.

Increase in Application Levels

Applications for the Enchantments Lottery have increased since the Forest Service started publishing data in 2020. The increases have been steady except for a large jump from 2020-2021.

Between 2020 and 2024, application entries for the Enchantments Lottery increased by 61.76% (16,328). The number of awarded permits per year has also increased. The increases are the result of:

The length of the permit season increasing
Daily Walk-Up Lottery days decreasing

More permits were awarded in 2024 because the Daily Walk-Up Lottery was closed an extra day, which meant more permits were given out for Monday than in 2023. I'll discuss this change later in the article. For now, I'll simply mention that 134 more permits were awarded on Mondays in 2024 than in 2023.

Probability of Winning a Permit by Zone

The Core Enchantment Zone sees more applications and entries than any other zone. Likewise, the zone that awarded the most permits in the advanced lottery was the Core Enchantment Zone.

The high permit numbers for the Core Enchantment Zone are due to the quotas and permits being determined by PEOPLE and not GROUP.

Application Entries

In previous articles, I've discussed that a single application does not compete against ALL other applications. It only competes against other applications with entries that share a zone and entry date.

If you take all the applications in the lottery (42,765) and divide it by the applications that won Core Enchantment Zone permits (790), one may think there is approximately a 1.8% of winning a permit for the Core Enchantment Zone. In some ways, this statistic is accurate. It only falls apart when more information is introduced, like, for example, how the lottery works.

Because applications only compete against other applications with the same zone we can remove applications that didn't include at least one Core Enchantment Zone entry (7,160). Subsequently, the percentage of winning a Core Enchantment Zone increased to 2.2% because some apply to other zones.

Instead of looking at the total applications as a single unit on the denominator but by zone on the numerator, we should divide the applications by zone as well. For example, an application may contain entries for the Core Enchantment Zone AND the Colchuck Zone.

Splitting the application into groups based on whether the application included an entry for an individual zone allows us to get a better outlook on the probabilities of winning per zone.

As seen in previous analyses, the Core Enchantment Zone and Colchuck Zone are very competitive. The numbers by zone are:

Core Enchantment Zone: 2.22% (790/35,605)
Colchuck Zone: 2.62% (380/14,496)
Stuart Zone: 9.15% (529/5,783)
Snow Zone: 7.27% (689/9,474)
Eightmile/Caroline Zone: 14.02% (353/2,518)

Although the above probabilities are better, there is a significant overlap between the applications that's misleading because a losing application in one group could end up as a winning application in another.

The best way to look at the Enchantments Lottery data is to examine each application by its entries.

The Penalty for Applying to the Core Enchantment Zone

Considering the structure of an application, I looked at the number of applications that applied with at least one Core Enchantment Zone entry (35,605) and the number of those applications that won permits (1,877).

Not all these winners were awarded Core Enchantment Zone Permits, but they still won a permit. Their odds of winning a permit (albeit may not be in the Core Enchantment Zone) was 5.27%. This represents an interesting trade-off. How does each entry for the Core Enchantment Zone affect an application's chances of winning a permit?

To answer the following question, I broke the applications down into the following categories:

Applied for the Core Enchantment Zone ONCE and two other zones.
Applied for the Core Enchantment Zone TWICE and one other zone.
Applied for ONLY the Core Enchantment Zone for all three entries
Did not apply for the Core Enchantment Zone

Then, I looked at the percentage of awarded applications for each of the groups.

The analysis helps determine the trade-off of how each entry for the Core Enchantment Zone affects the applicant's chances of winning a permit.

Applicants that did not apply for the Core Enchantment Zone in any of their three entries had a 12.07% of winning a permit (864/7160).
Applicants that applied ONCE for the Core Enchantment Zone and two other zones that were not the Core Enchantment Zone had a 10.01% chance of winning a permit (912/9110).
Applicants who applied TWICE for the Core Enchantment Zone and one other zone that was not the Core Enchantment Zone had a 6.24% chance of winning a permit (331/5308).
Applicants applying for ONLY the Core Enchantment Zone for all three entries had a 2.76% of winning a permit (552/19986).

The above breakdown shows a great trade-off for each additional entry for the Core Enchantment Zone. I think it proves that using one entry for the Core Enchantment Zone doesn't hurt the chances of an application that much. Who knows, maybe this year you get a great draw and your ship comes in.

The Best Months by Zone

To analyze the months and days of the week, I fully split the applications into individual entries to examine trade-offs between zones, days of the week, and months.

It is well known, from previous analyses an applicant can improve their chances of winning by applying in months when the weather or conditions are not ideal (i.e., May and October). Examining probabilities based on month is a little bland. I found a heatmap chart, showing the number of entries (not applications) by month and zone was much more fun.

Total entries for a zone are nice, but I took it a step further. In the below heatmap, the "heat" is represented based on the probability of success given a zone and month.

Remember, this graphic shows success at the entry-level, not the application level. Whether an applicant is interested in a zone or month they can use the chart to evaluate their application entry choices.

For example, in August, an applicant can double their chances by applying for the Colchuck Zone compared to the Core Enchantment Zone. Similarly, in August, an applicant can triple their entry chance by applying for the Stuart Zone compared to the Colchuck Zone.

Or, an applicant might see that the percent change in probability by month isn't worth much when looking at July-Sept., which brings me to my favorite part of the analysis: the day of the week.

The Best Day of the Week to Apply

Day of the week is my favorite way of dissecting and analyzing the Enchantments data. Most people don't like to change the zone or month of their trip. However, the day of the week is a small decision the applicant must make and it's where there is a good chance to improve the odds of winning a permit.

In the above chart, Friday, Thursday, and Saturday have the most application entries with Friday being the clear frontrunner. Somewhat surprising is Monday in the fourth position. Some people may think Monday is a good weekday to apply but it's surprisingly popular, as far as weekdays go. Most importantly, Sunday remained the least applied for a day in 2024 with a modest increase from 2023 (+9.14%).

Another fun chart is to look at the increase in total entries from 2020 to 2024.

Despite seeing a 147.89% increase in application entries from 2020, Sunday remains the least applied day in an application entry.

It's easy to intuit that the best days to apply are based on total application entries. So it would follow that Friday, Thursday, and Saturday have the worst chances of being awarded permits while Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday have the best.

This intuition is mostly true. But, in 2024, as previously mentioned, Monday was given more inventory in the advanced lottery, which means despite being the fourth most popular day to apply, it's also the second most awarded day behind Sunday.

Monday was the only day to better its odds from 2023 to 2024. Just like with the zone and month, we can put the day of the week numbers on a heatmap and split the entries by zone.

The Core Enchantment Zone dominates the map with the Colchuck Zone making a modest appearance on the weekends. This heatmap can be viewed from a slightly different lens using the percentage awarded as the "heat" instead of total entries.

This is probably my favorite graphic from the 2024 analysis. I'm not a big fan of advocating for applicants to move their entry month around because bringing dangerous conditions into play, especially for people not ready to handle them, can occur when trying to go in a shoulder-season month.

Instead, it's a safer bet to try and increase application odds by selecting zones and days of the week that are less popular. One of the best ways to evaluate which zones and days of the week are the best combination is using the above heatmap.

Take special note of Sunday in the Stuart Zone. I went on a two-night trip to the Stuart Zone last September and it was one of the best trips I've ever been on. A 1/10 percent of winning a permit for the Stuart Zone is surprising and something that I wouldn't ignore.

Best Group Size in the Core Enchantment Zone

The Core Enchantment Zone permits are determined by people and not by group. Therefore, group size matters when applying for the Core Enchantment Zone.

The percentage of awarded entries by group size in the Core Enchantment Zone in 2024 are:

1: 5.40%
2: 1.33%
3: 0.92%
4: 0.80%
5: 0.67%
6: 0.77%
7: 0.33%
8: 0.78%

These numbers are pretty typical for the Core Enchantment Zone. A group size of 1 fits into any availability on a given day where a group of 2,3,4, etc. would depend on how many spaces are available.

A lonely applicant can improve their odds by applying solo, or they could improve their chances by applying on a Sunday or Monday instead and still invite some friends along.

Labor Day Weekend

Data is now available for five years of Enchantments Lottery results. I thought it would be interesting to look at whether Labor Day Weekend was a good weekend to apply.

To set up the data, I combined the application entries from 2020-2024. There are 531,085 entries in the data set. Then, I grouped the entries by month and day of the month (i.e., July 15) disregarding the year. Next, I created a heatmap to visualize the total entries for each month and day of the month combinations.

After looking over the heatmap I picked a somewhat arbitrary number based on where the entries per day went "cold". I determined that peak season could be defined as when application entries for the five years were above 4,000 entries per day. This criteria yielded a peak season of July 12-Sept 17.

I filtered the dataset using the peak season criteria and by day of the week because I only wanted to evaluate Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Next, I looked up the dates for Labor Day from 2020 to 2024 and flagged the Labor Day Weekend entries.

After dividing the entries into the two groups I was ready to run the analysis. One group included peak season weekend entries excluding Labor Day. The other group was weekend entries on Labor Day.

Finally, I looked at the percentage of awarded entries in these groups and found:

Labor Day Weekend

Total Application Entries: 12,382
Total Awarded Labor Day Weekend: 200
Percentage Awarded Labor Day Weekend: 1.62%

Non-Labor Day Weekend

Total Application Entries: 156,775
Total Awarded: 2,228
Percentage Awarded: 1.42%

At first glance, Labor Day Weekend does have a slightly better percentage of yielding a successful entry compared to non-Labor Day Weekends.

However, using a chi-square test of independence for two or more population proportions yielded a p-value of 0.083. My specific test concluded the statistic was not significant after placing the level of significance at 0.05. However, someone placing the level of significance higher, at say 0.10 percent, may disagree. There could be a slight advantage to applying on Labor Day than on other weekends during the peak season!

View the full analysis on Github

Conclusion

Many of the findings from previous analyses were held for the 2024 data. That said, it was fun to see the effects of closing the Daily Walk-Up Lottery down in 2024 for an additional day and the impact it had on application success on Mondays.

Additionally, evaluating Labor Day Weekend against other peak season weekends was fun. There may be more to explore here taking into account common summer vacation schedules or other holidays like the July 4th weekend.

I enjoy working with the Enchantments Lottery Results data and am glad the Forest Service publishes it on their site. I hope they continue to publish it so I see the changes as the lottery evolves from year to year.