Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion 2013 Whitney Lottery Information

The results will be on recreation.gov, by April. So if you did not receive an email but can see your application status on recreation.gov, you should be able to see if you won or not when the results are posted on the website.

hope this helps

Thanks for replying, but I just don't understand why some people get an email saying yes or no., but not everyone? Sigh. If its computer generated it should have been automatic. I'm guessing it means we didn't get a permit, but will have to wait till April 1 st to know for sure. Doesn't seem like it should be this complicated. Thanks for trying to explain.

Still hope for you MaryC.

I got lucky. Out of 5 submitted applications I received notification this evening that I had 1 success. Yipee!

All the best luck to the rest of you.

Unsuccessful in the lottery but still have our Cottonwood entry/Portal exit permit June 23 thru 29th. More days on the trail + more miles (47 if we do Langley too) + still summit = too much fun

It doesn't necessarily mean you did not get it. I personally have received mine, 2 unsuccessful and 1 successful (still during school so i have to decline). I know multiple people who have not gotten their emails. It is a new system they have set up this year so who knows what happened

Inyo N.F. passed along these stats:

Lottery results:

  total applications  12,153

  successful           4,591

  unsuccessful         7,562

Most results were emailed March 23.

Still waiting for an email saying yes or no. Not sure what "most emails sent mar 23"
Is supposed to mean. whats the criteria? why not all emails sent out? ......so we wait.

MaryC, I'd phone the Wilderness Permit Office and ask. Not sure if they are open today, but I am sure they will be Monday: 760-873-2483 ...Or alternately, you could call the Recreation.gov number: 1-877-444-6777 today and ask. I think people at either place should be able to look up your application(s), and see the results.

I wrote the "most emails sent Mar 23" phrase based on your experience.

I won overnight permits for Aug 18th, which was my preferred date.

I don't know how many permits I won though as the email doesn't say which 'choice' won.

I tried calling both offices this morning. Recreation.gov directs you to call the Inyo # listed above. Inyo office told me they can't access the info until April 1st.

Ok, then here are some suggestions:

For those who have not received an email notice:
1. First suggestion is to look in junk mail
2. Many email systems block robo-mail from automated systems like Recreation.gov. (As an example, Hotmail and Yahoo both block email from whitneyzone.com)
3. If you cannot find the missing email, you will need to wait until April 1 to log onto your Recreation.gov account and check there.

For those who received a permit for a date they did not select: Log onto Recreation.gov and re-check your lottery application details. You should be able to see the dates on the applications. It is possible that due to the difficulty entering the application info, (it is known that dates sometimes got erased), that people re-selected a date, but got the wrong month.

For those with wrong dates, at least you don't have to pay the non-refundable $15 per hiker fees.

- - - - - - - - - -

On April 1 the reservation calendar will open for reservations. It will be the live calendar for reservations for the rest of the season, with canceled space returning to the calendar within 24 hours at a random time.

On April 1, the calendar will show some space available, due to returned/canceled reservations. During April (the acceptance period), as people log on and decline reservations or reduce their group size, those slots will become available at a random time within 24 hours of the cancellation.

Trips that are not accepted by midnight EST on April 30 will be canceled and will return to the reservation calendar at random times within 24 hours.

Do we know what time it will open on April 1st? Also, does anyone know if the "permits available" numbers listed on any certain date are an accurate depiction of what might be available on April 1st?

Their times are usually Midnight Eastern Time, so I would try at 9 PM Pacific time here in Calif, on Sunday, March 31.

As for "permits available":   Checking just now, the numbers look realistic for what is left after the lottery. So I would think the numbers on each date are what will be available on March 31.

Thanks. Will certainly give it a shot!

So my permit request for 1 person overnight on Sept 02 +/- 6 days (lots of data entry) was rejected. Yet going to rec.gov site I see 2 unused on the 2nd and 4 unused on the 3rd. Seems like either one of those should have resulted in a success letter on my lottery permit request. I went back and verified my request on the site and there were no data entry errors. My 1st choice on the entry was Sept 02. I wonder how it is that a permit was not granted?

Curious.

Same thing happened to me. Showing availability on days that I requested unsuccessfully.

I'm guessing someone was lucky enough to "win" two slots, accepted one and rejected the other, putting it back in the pool. Could be way off though...

> I'm guessing someone was lucky enough to "win" two slots, accepted one and rejected the other

In running a pre-lottery test run, I saw where once a single application was successful, all the others for the person were cancelled, even though there were more slots available for the other applications.

Nobody can log in and cancel as of yet -- that also starts April 1, and cancelled slots will show up within 24 hours of the cancellation at random times.

The Inyo staff who send me updates indicated there had already been some cancellations. I'm not sure how that occurs -- maybe someone calling the wilderness permit office or something.

Anyway, 9 PM March 31 (Sunday night) is your "Tee Time". (Please let us know how that works out.)

Edit, more info: In order to correspond with telephone availability, the April 1 opening is set to start at 10 AM Eastern Time. However, things don't always run as promised, so I would definitely be checking on Sunday night.

If you were not sucessful in the lottery I think there is still a great chance that you can get a permit. We asked for a group of 10 and 7 of us turned in applications. 5 were successful in getting dates (I was hoping for one and we got five, unbelievable). So I know in April there will be at least 20 spots that will come available for July 6th (two guys got the same day) 10 on July 20 and 10 on Aug 18th.

Good luck!

The supplementary lottery on April 1 has a bit of a West Coast bias with the midnight (Eastern) check in (and I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't go smoothly, given the many web problems thus far; their lottery page was poorly designed. Many folks noted that data simply disappeared midway through their tedious, non-intuitive application.)

Maybe the old method (described as paper applications randomly mixed by fans blowing them around a closet) wasn't so bad. At least it didn't cost six dollars send one in.

Anyway, good luck to one and all!

I thought it was mentioned that they are going to wait until 7am Pacific since it would be when the visitor center opens? May be wrong on that...

Don't blame Inyo for all these problems, sure they are the ones that have to permitting office, but they don't (As far as I know) actually make the changes to recreation.gov

The paper method was a lot more labor intensive than the online one. Sure it may be more work for us to input the data, but we just do it a few times... Imagine if it were YOUR job to sort out and file 12000+ permit applications in a 6 week window. NO THANK YOU!

Thanks, you too!