The lottery says no.
Cancellations say maybe.
Under 10% of applicants win the lottery. Cancelled dates return to Recreation.gov. Dibs on Dirt emails you the moment one lands.
Get Started FreeThe Enchantments lottery rejects nine of every ten applicants.
The Enchantment Permit Area covers some of the most photographed alpine terrain in Washington, split into five zones. Core Enchantment is the one everyone wants, and it's allocated per person, up to sixteen in the advance lottery.
Most people apply once a year and hope. The advance lottery window typically opens around February 15 and runs about two weeks, and typically fewer than one in ten applicants gets awarded a permit. If that's your only plan, the odds are against you.
But the lottery isn't the whole story. Unclaimed permits and cancellations both flow back to Recreation.gov as ordinary reservable dates, not into another drawing. That's the opening Dibs on Dirt watches for you.
Three channels decide who gets a zone
There's also a geofenced daily lottery for last-minute entries, but it requires standing within a mile of the ranger district in Leavenworth. It has no bookable inventory of its own, so a cancellation watch belongs on the advance permit, not the daily one.
What an alert can and can't do for the Enchantments
Here's our line, plainly. Dibs on Dirt cannot change the advance lottery draw. Whoever gets picked gets picked, and we won't pretend an alert improves your odds there.
Everything after that is fair game. Unclaimed dates and in-season cancellations both return to Recreation.gov as directly bookable inventory. That's the structural opposite of a permit like Half Dome, where cancellations just feed back into another lottery.
One more thing worth being precise about: watch the advance permit, not the daily lottery. The daily lottery is geofenced and has no availability of its own, so a watch there can never fire.
Three steps to your zone
Core is the one everyone wants. It isn't the only one.
The Enchantment Permit Area splits into five zones. Core Enchantment is allocated per person, up to sixteen in the advance lottery and up to eight in the daily lottery. The other four zones are allocated by group, with a maximum group size of eight.
What we watch at a glance
Be first when a zone opens up
Core Enchantment or any of the other four zones, Dibs on Dirt watches around the clock and emails you when an unclaimed or cancelled date frees up. Set a free watch and go pack.