Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Whitney Lottery Progress 2010

As of Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Today's mail has the end of the lottery letters going out.

The only applications that have not been responded to are the ones with problems of some sort.  The most common problem holding up these results letters is incorrect credit card information.  We have started contacting those people by email and phone, for the 100 or so remaining applications.

As of Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The calendar of available space went onto the website today, so people can begin looking at what is available on line.

Hundreds of letters are going into the mail this week. (2000 letters in the last 2 days) The last of the unsuccessful letters are going to the post office on April 1. The last of the successful letters should be going in the mail the rest of this week, and on Monday April 5.

I will write again when the last letter is mailed. Everyone should get their results letter by April 15th. We still cannot search for individual results while the final fee collection transactions are being completed.

As of Thursday, March 25, 2010

We finished the reservation making phase of the lottery this afternoon, now the big box is empty!

Coming to mail boxes soon:
4034 good news letters
2844 no luck this time.

Tomorrow we will all turn to working on the outgoing mail. We expect to send out hundreds of letters in Friday and Saturday's mail. The unsuccessful letters will all be mailed as quick as we can put them into envelopes.
The charge card machine will be running non stop to get the successful letters going out as quickly as possible. It may take another week to get all the letters mailed.

As of Thursday, March 18, 2010

Batches of letters are going out, and most people should get letters in the next several weeks.

We sent out about 600 letters so far this week, with many more to go out tomorrow.  There are a lot of successful letters in a back log at the work station that completes the collection of the fees, both credit card and paid by check.

The unsuccessful letters are going out faster, as they only need to be put into an envelope.

Out of the 7,370 applications we received, we have about 2,800 to go.
(62% completed)

As of March 4, 2010

Processing of the 2010 Mt. Whitney lottery is not quite half way done; we still have 4928 applications to go!

• 7168  Applications received so far
•   285  Applications sent back for corrections or additional information
• 6727  Applications accepted into the lottery box
• 1799  Reservations made; some are pending payment processing
•   858  successful letters mailed
•   142  unsuccessful letters mailed

As of February 19, 2010 processing of the 2010 Mt. Whitney lottery has begun!

The first of the Letters will be mailed soon, so people should be receiving their lottery results in March or April.

Please note we cannot search for, change, intercept or report on the status of your individual application at this time.

After the last lottery application is pulled out and processed, the calendar will be updated to show what dates still have space left.

When can you apply for the left over dates?

You can apply by phone, fax or mail starting on the dates below.

• Wednesday, April 21^st for trips that start in May, June, or July
• Wednesday, April 28^th for trips that start in August, or later

We appreciate people not interrupting so we can complete the lottery work as quickly as possible.

We'll be happy to answer your questions, after April 1st

                    ------------------------------
                   | 5135 applications have been  |
                   | accepted into the lottery    |
                    ------------------------------
                                  |
            -----------------------------------------------
The box    |               How we do it                    |
is this--> |                                               |
full       | Applications are put into a big box           |
           | ...and stirred into random order              |
           |                                               |
           | February 16, we begin making reservations     |
           | from applications drawn at random.            |
           | Late arrivals are added to the box each day.  |
           |                                               |
           | As each application is drawn, a reservation   |
           | is made if quota space is still available for |
           | the entry date and group size you requested   |
           |                                               |
           | Expect notification of results by mail        |
           | ...after April 1.                             |
            -----------------------------------------------

Thanks from all the staff,
Wilderness Permit Reservations