I hiked up Whitney from the west last September after securing a “walk-up” Trail Crest exit permit from Cottonwood Lakes via New Army Pass and can speak to this.The best thing to do would be hang onto your Cottonwood Pass permits, but check Recreation.gov regularly to see if any Cottonwood Pass with Trail Crest exit permits become available. What you’re hoping for is someone cancelling their Trail Crest exit permit. If that happens, reserve the new permits with Trail Crest exit and cancel your old permits after confirming you have the new permits. I was able to secure my permits 3 weeks before my trip as there were some cancellations and permits became available for my start date.
From Recreation.gov:
Reservations open DAILY at 7AM PST:
- 60% of spaces are released 6 months in advance, on the matching date (example entry date of July 4 opens on January 4)
- "W" means 60% of spaces were posted and sold out, 40% of spaces remain but are not yet released
- 40% of spaces are released 2 weeks in advance, on the same day of the week (example entry date of Tuesday July 4 opens on Tuesday June 20)
The Trail Crest exit permit quota is independent of the entry quota and applies to all wilderness permits starting from any trailhead in the Inyo NF/SEKI system. It’s based on your start date not your exit date. So a group of 5 starting from Bishop Pass and a group of 5 starting from Cottonwood Lakes could both reserve wilderness permits for their respective trailheads with Trail Crest exit permits for August 15th. That would fill that day’s entire walk up permit allocation for Trail Crest exit.
You can also keep an eye out for Cottonwood Lakes wilderness permits. The view of Mt. Langley, GWD, and Mt. Whitney is something else from the top of New Army Pass.
