Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion "This is not your permit!"??

"This is NOT your Permit. Bring this letter with you to the Permit Issue Station". This is what my permit confirmation email reads.

It also reads: "Permit Pick Up: You should receive a reminder email 14 days before your trip." My permit date is 7/29. So far, no email.

Further down, it reads "NOTE: Confirm & Pick up Permit before the Deadline or Reservation will be canceled."

What the heck am I supposed to do? Wait for the email to drive to Lone Pine and be told that my permit was canceled because I never got the email?

I am very confused. Can someone please advise? I get they have a quintillion emails to send but still.....

Thank you.

Chris, I am glad you asked the questions. I am sure there are lots of people who are confused about all of that.

Addressing each line:
> This is NOT your Permit. Bring this letter with you to the Permit Issue Station.

Translation: The email confirms your reservation only. You must pick up the actual permit at the Eastern Sierra Interagency Visitor Center, just off Hwy 395, on Hwy 136 to Death Valley, one mile south of downtown Lone Pine. (Google Map). The Visitor Center is open daily from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. If you need to pick up your permit after hours, you can call the Wilderness Permit number (760-873-2483), a day or two before, and they can put your permit in the night-pickup box in the kiosk by the road.

> "Permit Pick Up: You should receive a reminder email 14 days before your trip." My permit date is 7/29. So far, no email.

The Recreation.gov website is supposed to send you that email reminder automatically, but I don't think it is working. At least I have never received that two-week notice in the past, and I think most people have not. (Someone please correct me if you have seen it.)

That reminder is an invitation to check-in online on the Recreation.gov website. I've been told that if you check in online, they will hold your permit for you even if you don't show up to pick it up. You are not required to check-in online. All you need to do is show up at the VC before the deadline, up to two days before your entry date.

If you have a reservation for an overnight permit, the pickup deadline at the VC is 10 AM on the entry date. If you show up at 3 PM, but have confirmed online, you should get the permit. If you don't confirm, and don't call to say you will be late, they will give the permit away to walk-in people. The same holds for Day Hike permits, only the deadline is 12 noon the day BEFORE the hike date.

The online confirmation also allows you to reduce your group size, which releases the unused slots to others online -- a good thing to do.

> NOTE: Confirm & Pick up Permit before the Deadline or Reservation will be canceled.

I am not sure if your email states the deadline days and times, but they are what I wrote above:
    Overnight backpack permits:  10 AM on the entry date.
    Day hike permits:  12 noon the day before the hike.

Steve, thanks for taking the time to clarify all this....



Last year, I was careless (stupid?) and did not read the whole confirmation email. I was basically a no-show. My day permit had gotten canceled. Fortunately, there were plenty available that day (was a Thursday) and got one for the following day as a walk-in.



I logged in to Recreation.gov but can't seem to find a way to check in anywhere. It's probably too soon for my permit, I am guessing.



No date and time.

/=================/

It sounds like I need to be smart(-er than last year) and before even checking in my hotel, pick up my permit. Thank you!

> I logged in to Recreation.gov but can't seem to find a way to check in anywhere. It's probably too soon for my permit, I am guessing.

It is within the two-week confirmation window, so you SHOULD be able to log in and confirm. Try this:

Log in to Recreation.gov

Once logged in, you should see the screen with the left column showing: My Account, Current Reservations, Pre-Registration, Lottery Applications, etc etc.

Click on Current Reservations, and it should show your July 29 permit reservation. There will be a "See Detail" link. I believe you need to click "See Detail" to get to the confirmation option.

It seems getting a permit is almost as bad as getting a passport these days.

"See detail" is there. A page full of disclaimers etc but nothing/nowhere to confirm.

I'll call the visitor Center.

What a pain!

Call the Wilderness Permit number (760-873-2483). They are the ones to help with recreation.gov problems.

Please report what they tell you.

I called the VC this morning and entered the twilight zone (...head spinning...).

The lady ("Sandy") I spoke to was very helpful. She told me that based on my reservation number, my permit is confirmed.

How can my permit be confirmed when I am are unable to see the Confirm button/link? Beats me.

She told me the people who designed the recreation.gov web site have made so that the Confirm button/link DISAPPEARS once you are confirmed. So how did I confirm my own permit since I never saw it to begin with? She had no answer....

I feel bad for that lady if she has to field phone calls for people as confused as me but what a crappy web design (tax dollars at work?)!!

My advice to everyone is to call the VC with your reservation number early in the morning i.e before the onslaught of visitors etc. BTW, you can pick up your permit up to two days in advance.

Chris.

PS: I tried the web site with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. No difference. No Confirm button/link.

Chris, that is pretty unusual.

Just one question: When you logon to recreation.gov and look at Current Reservations, in the Reservation Number column, there is a "status". What does yours show?

Reservation Number
Status

6-1356481 NRSO
Reserved - Payment Confirmed

For what it is worth, when I did this earlier this year, I never received the email, but when I checked my account on recreation.gov, the reservation was listed, and there was a button to push that said something like "confirm reservation" or some such.

I had an overnight permit reservation. My understanding for that type of reservation (i.e., overnight) was that, if you don't confirm, they will release it at 10 a.m. your day of entry. If you do confirm, they will hold it until the end of the day.

Good luck!

I had a aug 2nd permit, i logged in to recreation.gov and didn't see the confirmation button son see details link. But there was an option to request confirmation email, when i clicked that, there came up the confirmation button. Its not even clear that its a button and we have to click that. I would have completely missed to do that if i didn't see this question before. All this complex procedure baffles me.

My Inyo contact says many people are confused by the confirmation process. The button appears the one time, and after you click it, it never comes back. I think Chris clicked it, and didn't realize THAT was all he needed to do.

They plan to improve the confirmation email information so the confirmation process is easier to understand.

Sure....blame the new guy .... then again, you're probably right. I'd like to think I am not a complete mental midget (just a little, according to my wife) but it had more obvious to me, I would never had started this thread.



What would be neat is if they'd ask members of the BBoard for input before they start improving the confirmation email.

Anyhoo.

> Sure....blame the new guy

You're welcome.

> What would be neat is if they'd ask members of the BBoard for input

Well, "they" do read these comments.

Unfortunately, recreation.gov is a big cumbersome outfit, built to service reservations to camp sites, river run lotteries, trail permits, and who knows what else. The Whitney lottery and permit system had to be shoehorned into the existing structure, so I'm not surprised that things don't always fit right or work well.

On top of that, "they" keep having their budgets cut, starting with the previous federal administration, and it continues now with the "sequestration" process, so they have less and less time and staff to address the problems.

"What else" includes Pearl Harbor Tours, Washington Monument, and Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. And those I know only because we have used them.

The Recreation.gov system for those services is pretty nifty. Enter a date and it tells you if there are any times available.

My overnight permit is for two weeks from today and I did not get a reminder email. I logged in on the recreation.gov website and looked under "Current Reservations" which showed both my camping reservation and my permit reservation (both showing payment confirmed). Once I clicked the "see detail" box on the permit reservation, it took me to what looked like a summary of my permit with dates (entrance & exit), method of travel (foot), and number of people. There was a box that said "Confirm Reservation" which as Steve stated, once clicked it goes away. After I confirmed my permit reservation, I got a screen that said "Permit Reservation Confirmation Completed!". You can print that page (it says so on the upper right) or continue to current reservations (lower left). I went back to my current reservations, clicked my permit detail again and asked for a confirmation letter from the four options at the top. The confirmation letter does say that it is not your permit, but if you take that to the VC, they will issue your permit. It may be a little cumbersome but I am not complaining!