Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Permit Pickup in August

Hey everyone,

My group is trying to get our permit for Aug 27th and have not been successful so far. We emailed SM.FS.WildPmt_Inyo@usda.gov with our information a week ago and have not yet received a response. We have also called the Eastern Sierra Visitor Center and Inyo National Forest Wilderness Permit Office multiple times but nobody has answered.

Any advice from others who have been successful on how to get through to anyone or receive our permit?

Thanks,
Will

No luck for my group either. We requested the permit to be emailed; it has been two days and have not heard anything back. On the website it says can take up to 2 days for the permit to be emailed. We also called all the numbers on the Mt. Whitney permit pickup link, no answer, and no way to leave a voicemail.

Worst comes worst, we plan to print the permit confirmation page from Recreation.gov, even though it is not the actual permit...

My plans for 2020 included six backpacking trips and a zillion day trips, but nothing to the Whitney Zone. One trip was before the quota period, so I just wrote my own walk-up permit. I had to reserve the others and then email the FS to get the actual permit by email. I got them all with no problems, but their response time varied from one day to about five.

So about 2 hours after I posted this we actually received our permit by email. We never got through to a person on the phone, but did send a follow up email yesterday morning with our info again and they responded same day. I would suggest doing the same if it has been more than a few days!

I got through easily using this number 760-876-6200. The ranger even offered to email my permit to me ahead of the 2 week period.

That’s great!

We still haven’t receive a reply, which is odd since you would think they would reply to all the emails at once. Maybe they are overwhelmed with recent wildfires or short of resource.

We called 760-876-6200 and couldn’t reach anyone.

This number actually allows people to leave a voicemail: 760-873-2483.

Update: finally reached someone and got our permit emailed after calling 760-876-6200 multiple times.

Guess the advice is to be persistent and keep following up.