Coyote Buttes North Advanced Lottery (The Wave)

A permit for Coyote Buttes North, in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness in Arizona, administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The photos show open sandstone country with no built trail surface: broad slickrock benches cracked into plates, cone-shaped buttes banded in red, orange and white, and the curved, deeply striped troughs of the formation known as the Wave, with shallow water standing in the low points. Sparse shrubs and a few juniper hold in pockets of sand between the rock, and rain pools on the flats sit still enough to reflect the sky. One frame shows the approach rather than the rock: a vehicle sunk past its wheel rims in deep red mud on a rutted, unpaved road crossing open desert.