Since no permits are required up to Lone Pine Lake (which is a short distance before the beginning of the Whitney Zone on the MT), the issue of what time you are allowed to hike up to that point on your permit (which you don't have, because you don't need it) is moot.

Since whenever the Whitney Zone has existed in its current form, has anyone had a permit checked between the TH and Lone Pine Lake?

CaT


If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracle of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.
- Lyndon Johnson, on signing the Wilderness Act into law (1964)