Too bad for Marty, congrats MtP. The longer trip will be less stressful, that's for sure.
I heard from my Inyo National Forest contact that the lottery filled over 99% of the slots between May 1 and Nov 1. There almost no remaining slots left to get on April 1, so they won't be opening those up. So that moves to May 1, when all the permits that were won, but the winners did not pay for the slots, will become available.
