Welcome, Ethan,
Unfortunately, Inyo N.F. will not allow people to transfer their lottery permits to anyone else. Only the original person listed on the permit application, or the alternate named when you applied to the lottery, may pick up the permit.
They do this to prevent scalpers from obtaining a bunch of permits and then selling them for the highest price they can get.
If you named someone in your group as an alternate, they can keep the permits, but otherwise, you might as well cancel them online so someone else can pick them up.
Actually, there are plenty of permits available before your hike date, as you
can see here -- only the weekends are booked. (But there are always lots of no-shows, and you can pick those up on a Friday afternoon.)
