My group got a permit for Monday, Aug. 5 - woo-hoo! We put in 10 overnight permit applications, 5 in my name, 5 in another person's name. I got four "unsuccessful" notices (not sure what happened to my 5th application), but the other person had a successful application. We had Aug. 5 as our 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices, with the only variation being a different group size for each alternative, and we aren't sure yet how many people are in our permit group -- it wasn't in the notification email, and I don't think it will show up on the recreation.gov website until April 1.

We did everything we could reasonably do to improve our chances, including using all 14 alternatives in each application. All 10 of our applications were identical, and we thought that 10 applications would give us a reasonable shot (and we thought, for a group, that $60 was a tolerable cost for our applications).

Last edited by bettywouldgo; 03/23/13 03:49 PM.