Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Whitney Lottery 2014

It appears to be working now

Looks like they may have fixed things. I was just now able to make a successful reservation. Good luck to everyone else!

I also succeeded. Kudos to their IT staff!

Looks like I lost my dates, I am in the check out and it gives me a total but it says dates were not re-held try dif. dates. Yeah looks like I can hike in the snow!!!!!

So frustrating! At 0700 I snagged 4 spots on 14 Jul but recreation.gov wouldn't let me check out....kept asking for "additional details." My reservation ultimately timed out and I lost it.

At 0815, I got 1 spot on 16 Jul and was granted permission from recreation.gov to actually purchase it. Yay. I guess.

In the interim, I called recreation.gov world headquarters at their bunker complex in Saskatchewan. After being on hold for 30+ minutes, the represntative told me that there were issues with Whitney permits today and that Inyo Natl Forest had "just now decided to take over the reservation process" and that I should "call them. Need the number?" Wow!

I'm not very smart. You're kidding about the kudos part right?

There is definitely a problem. I did not try the online system until now, but now, I cannot even look up the Whitney permit system.

Here are links that USED to work to get you right to the day use or overnight use permits. When I try them, I get an error screen

Day use
http://www.recreation.gov/permits//r/ent...mp;pGroupSize=1

Overnight permits:
http://www.recreation.gov/permits//r/ent...mp;pGroupSize=1

Part of the error message:

Got my permits after 1hour and fifteen minutes of refreshing the page and picking new available dates. I'm so glad I didn't quit.

Thanks for answering my questions.. I might become a regular here, I have a trip to plan !

Looks like the problem is better now. At noon, I can use the above links to get into the system.

Unfortunately, pretty much all the July and August Day Use slots are gone already.

All the overnight slots (except for a couple of singles) are gone between May 21 and Oct 3.

Can we expect some of these slots to become available?

Yes, but at random times. May 1 will be the next big day, but those will only be the permits that winners have completely ignored, and have neither declined nor accepted. I am told the number has been significant in previous years. But these permits will go online at random times throughout the day on May 1, the same way other released permits are handled.

A few will randomly become available this month as latecomers logon and a few cancel. Or winners return some of their slots.

So what you should do is set up a bookmark/favorite on your browser, setting it to find the specific type (day or overnight) and the dates you want most. In fact, make it your "home page". Then every time you are online, you can see if any are available with a few clicks. Use the links I provided above, copy them, and then modify the date to what you want (I would set the date to a few days before my target).

I cannot find a way to tell it the group size in a link, so it asks every time.

When accepting/confirming overnight permits, does it really matter what you select as location?

I am not sure if we will be staying at Lone Pine Lake or Outpost camp.

Thanks for the help.

> When accepting/confirming overnight permits, does it really matter what you select as location?

Put down your best guess. That info is only used if you wind up missing, and then need to go looking for you. What you put down is the first place they might start looking.

So you can see it isn't that important. I think it is silly that they even require that upon accepting a reservation. It would be better to get that info when the permit is picked up.

Thanks Steve!



Yes, silly like the 'recreation.gov website lottery process'!


I agree with what they're trying to do in theory (in regards to the lottery and limiting traffic), but they are doing a horrible job as far as execution goes.

Yes, it is not a smooth-running process. But then as the saying goes... You get what you pay for.

The U.S. Forest Service has endured budget cuts year after year after year. In many national forests, they don't have any funds to employ any foot rangers. So the trails are completely unpatrolled, and they are using volunteers more and more for maintenance.

I'm not sure about Recreation.gov, but I think it is run by a private contractor, and they get that $6 for each lottery application and non-lottery reservation, so one wonders why it has so many glitches.

However, before they switched to using recreation.gov (3 years ago), they had a paper-lottery process: bins of mail, and it was shuffled randomly using... get this... a leaf blower in the stair well. :-) (We have a picture somewhere.) And it took 6 weeks from the deadline until you got your results.

I had the same question; then figured I would ask when I picked up my permit; as to what the expected #'s were at a campground; to help decide if I wanted to stay on planned Itinery or change a camp site due to volume at the other site.

I wouldn't be suprised if they are asking for what our itinery is; so they can gather stats on usage; since there is no staff to do head counts at sites every day.

Trail Camp and Outpost Camp have less than postive nicknames for a reason. As the season goes along and the # of campers/wag bags and smells increase; people will spread out. In order to be proactive on how to handle that expansion and impact to the area- asking about other options- i.e; Lone Pine and Consultation Lakes; will provide some data to help the Forest Service see how they can manage the impact.

Grand Canyon limits use of areas by asking for very specific itineraries;expecting permittees to follow their plan, and if found off the planned itinery- you better have a good reason; or you'll get an additional expense to your trip.

Popularity brings damage- which in turn brings regulation to save the land from the humans.

WHAT? Reservations were open April 1, but I was not notified, by email, that I didn't get any of my dates until April 3? Why could these notifications not come out earlier, it HAS to be an aotomated process, so it could be run any time after March 15!
Why send an email 2 days late?

April 1...April 3, made no difference to me. I too was unsuccessful getting the overnight permits I applied for. So I was poised at 7 AM April 1st, trying to score some available spots,had an online clock displaying the seconds, pushed "enter" at exactly 7 and......still denied. I've been checking for availability several times a day (as recommended by Steve) but have not seen 1 spot open up. If anyone is able to get a permit please let us know. I'm now thinking that May 1 will be the next opportunity.

Update: Just after this original post I was able to book an overnight permit for 1 in late July even though I wanted 4 permits. I guess I will go solo.

Rickj wrote:
> WHAT? Reservations were open April 1, but I was not notified, by email, that I didn't get any of my dates until April 3?
Rick, there was a week, between March 23 and April 1, that you could have logged on and seen the results of your application. I agree they should have tried notifying people earlier, but they had trouble with that last year, so they tried to inform people about logging in to check. I have no idea why they then decided to send an email after April 1. It makes me wonder, too. As you can see from Reno Frank's experience, it might not have made any difference.

Reno Frank: How many slots were available on the date you were trying for, and what date? That's pretty amazing that you weren't successful. Keep trying, all this month, and again on May 1. What do last year's unused numbers look like for the day-of-week you want late in July? You know that you're very likely to snag the additional permits when you show up to pick up your permit.

Steve, The date I want is Wed Aug 6 for 4 people but I took the single available overnight permit for Tues July 29. If I can't get more permits for my hiking buddies I guess I'll go by myself on the single permit I got today. That was the only available overnight permit from June through October. I was surprised to see it. I will keep on looking and consider taking more people without permits when I go and hope to get permits that day. I do have 4 day permits for mid July in my name. My plan is to do a day hike scouting the Mountaineers Route (possibly summiting) and returning for an overnighter up the Mountaineers Route.I could not book today's permit and had to use my wife's account, however I was able to use my name as an alternate group leader and also used my credit card to pay. So for my further attempts I may have to use another group member's account.