ItOpened Blog · Permits & Lotteries
Half Dome Permits: The Real Odds
The headline number — a 22% success rate — is the most misleading statistic in Yosemite. NPS's own lottery data shows the odds for the dates everyone wants collapse below 1%. Here's the full picture, and how to play it.
Quick answers
- How many Half Dome permits are issued per day?
- 300 total when the cables are up: 225 for day hikers and 75 for backpackers with wilderness permits. The season typically runs from the Friday before Memorial Day to mid-October.
- What are the odds of winning the Half Dome lottery?
- Per NPS-published statistics, the preseason lottery drew about 35,289 applications with a 22% overall success rate in recent published data — but that average is carried by unpopular dates. For weekend dates, the 2024 preseason success rate was 0.8%.
- When is the Half Dome preseason lottery?
- Applications open March 1–31 on Recreation.gov for the whole cables season. A second, daily lottery runs during the season, two days before each hike date, with about 35,561 applications and a 19% success rate in the same published data.
- How much does a Half Dome permit cost?
- A $10 non-refundable application fee per lottery entry, plus $10 per person if you win, per Recreation.gov's permit listing.
Every March, roughly 35,000 applications land in Yosemite's preseason lottery for a prize that sounds abundant: 300 hikers a day on the Half Dome cables, across a season of roughly five months. The National Park Service, to its credit, publishes the results in unusual detail — and the detail is where the hope goes to die, and where a real strategy begins.
The average is a lie of aggregation
The preseason lottery's overall success rate — about 22% in the NPS statistics compiled from recent seasons — blends two completely different lotteries hiding inside one. Weekday permits in late September, when the crowds thin and the weather cools, succeed often enough to pull the average up. Weekend permits in June, July, and August are a different universe: NPS data shows 21% of all applications target Saturdays alone, and the weekend success rate for 2024 preseason dates was 0.8% — roughly one in 125. Per individual date choice, analysts of the NPS figures put peak-date odds at about 1%.
The daily lottery, held two days before each hike date during the season, drew a comparable flood — about 35,561 applications at a 19% headline success rate — with the same weekend collapse. A 2026 access study that ranks the world's most waitlisted experiences estimates Half Dome at roughly 4.5 applicants per available place and a median effective wait of 2.8 years for the people who keep trying for the dates they actually want.
| Lottery | Applications (recent NPS data) | Headline success | Peak-weekend reality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preseason (apply in March) | ~35,289 | ~22% | 0.8% for 2024 weekend dates |
| Daily (2 days ahead) | ~35,561 | ~19% | Half or less of preseason odds on the same dates |
Four levers that actually move your odds
- Day of week. Nothing else comes close. Shifting from Saturday to a Tuesday or Wednesday moves you out of the 0.8% pool entirely.
- Season edges. Late May (weather permitting) and late September into October are materially easier than the June–August core.
- Use all seven date choices. A preseason application allows up to seven dates or ranges. Every additional acceptable date is another ticket — applicants who name one perfect Saturday are volunteering for the worst odds in the system.
- Stack the daily lottery on top. Treat the two-day-ahead draw as insurance, not your plan: enter during your trip whenever a cables day would fit, including mid-trip pivots. Late-spring weather cancellations can make daily odds on marginal days noticeably better, because other applicants skip them.
The backpacker side door
Seventy-five of the 300 daily permits ride on wilderness permits for backpackers starting from trailheads that make Half Dome a sensible summit day. Those wilderness permits have their own quota system and their own release rhythm on Recreation.gov — and unlike the cables lottery, unbooked wilderness inventory and its cancellations behave like first-come inventory, which is watchable. Pairing a wilderness-permit watch with a daily-lottery habit is the closest thing to a system this mountain allows.
What we do and don't sell here
To be precise about our own product: ItOpened does not watch Half Dome lottery outcomes — lotteries are deadline games, won by applying correctly and often, and we publish the odds above so you can do exactly that. What our scanners do watch is the surrounding first-come inventory that makes a Half Dome trip possible: Yosemite Valley campgrounds that sell out five months ahead and recycle cancellations all season (in our first nights of live scanning, Upper Pines produced more confirmed openings than any other campground we watch — see the cancellation index). Win the permit with the calendar; win the campsite with the watch.
Reading the NPS statistics like an analyst
The NPS lottery statistics reward a careful read, because the park publishes the denominators most lotteries hide. Three patterns stand out in the compiled data. First, demand is brutally concentrated: Saturdays alone attract about 21% of all applications — three times their share of the calendar. Second, the preseason and daily lotteries draw almost identical application volumes (~35,000 each), which means the daily draw is not a sleepy backwater; it is a second full-scale lottery that happens to reward being nearby and flexible. Third, the gap between the headline rate (~22% / ~19%) and the weekend rate (0.8% preseason in 2024) is so wide that any single "odds of Half Dome" number quoted without a day-of-week attached is functionally meaningless. When a friend says "my coworker won on his first try," the statistically literate question is: for which date?
If you lose both lotteries
A Yosemite trip built around Half Dome should never be hostage to it. The park contains summit-class alternatives that require no cables permit at all: Clouds Rest, reached from Tenaya Lake, stands higher than Half Dome with a broader view of it; Sentinel Dome and Taft Point deliver the Valley-rim panorama on a short trail; the Upper Yosemite Fall and North Dome routes fill a hard day honestly. Rangers make the same point in a different register: the cables are one route in a park of hundreds. Build the trip, enter both lotteries, and let a win be an upgrade rather than the plan. And if the daily lottery tempts you into hiking unprepared — the cables route is roughly 14–16 miles round trip with serious elevation gain, attempted by many who shouldn't — the permit is not the mountain's main filter. Fitness is.
The season, and why edges matter twice
The cables typically stand from the Friday before Memorial Day to the second Tuesday of October, conditions permitting — snow, ice, and storm damage move both ends. The season's edges are doubly advantaged: the lottery odds improve (fewer applicants chase late-May and October dates) and the surrounding trip gets easier, because the Valley's campgrounds and the park's roads are under less pressure. The trade is weather risk, which is real — early-season cables can be delayed by the same snowpack that makes the waterfalls spectacular. For most applicants, that trade is the best one available in the entire Half Dome system, and it costs nothing but flexibility.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Half Dome lottery rigged toward locals or repeat applicants?
No. It is a random draw run on Recreation.gov. The published statistics show the outcome differences come from date selection, not applicant identity.
Can I get a Half Dome permit without the lottery?
Only via the backpacker route: a wilderness permit from a qualifying trailhead includes the option to add Half Dome, subject to its own quotas. There is no walk-up cables permit.
What happens to permits when winners cancel?
Lottery permits are not re-released into a public pool for others to book. Unused permits simply go unused — which is why date selection strategy matters more than vigilance here.
When do the cables go up and come down?
Typically the Friday before Memorial Day through the second Tuesday of October, conditions permitting. Permits are required seven days a week whenever the cables are up.
Sources
- National Park Service, Yosemite Half Dome permit lottery statistics (nps.gov/yose — applications, success rates by lottery and day of week, 2012–2024 series), as compiled by yosemite.life (35,289 preseason applications, 22%; 35,561 daily, 19%) and She Dreams of Alpine (2024 weekend success rate 0.8%).
- Recreation.gov, Half Dome permit listing (300 permits/day: 225 day-hiker, 75 backpacker; $10 application + $10 per-person fees).
- Jade Peak Access Index (2026): Half Dome — 4.5 applicants per place, 2.8-year median wait.
Every figure in this article traces to one of the sources above. If a number isn't sourced, we don't print it.
Last updated 2026-10-30.