Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Whitney via Horseshoe Meadows-Permit Process

A question on the required wilderness permit to backpack from Horseshoe Meadows and exit via the Whitney Trail:

-Background: I'm trying to plan a "Whitney thru the back door" trip for this September, coming from Horseshoe Meadows (possibly taking an extra day to summit Langley, too), via Guyot Meadows and Guitar Lake, up to Trail Crest, side trip to summit Whitney, and out with a Whitney exit permit. Sounds reasonable, and I've read that's some very pretty country.

I tried going through the recreation.gov site to see how to set this up.....I can find the Long Lake/Cottonwood Lakes area part of the permit easily enough, but the remaining nights (which it asks me to specify each one) are not in their dropdown list at all, and when I try to specify "Mt. Whitney-exit" (like the Wildernss Permit page says), I don't find that in the dropdown for the exit point.
What in the heck am I doing wrong here?

Help?

Lewis

At the risk of replying to myself.....I found how to get there from here. Not terribly well laid out on recreation.gov.

Use the search bar for "Mt. Whitney". Go to the Mt. Whitney page that has the button on the right for the lottery entry. Just adjacent is a button labeled "walk me through". Click this, takes you to a series of questions, which when you say that you are exiting through Whitney, will take you to a page to specify an entry location and permit availability, AND has a second tab for the Mt. Whitney exit permit and availability. Then the permit info and purchase page looks correct.

Hope this helps someone else as equally clueless as me,

Lewis

The easier way is to use the "Inyo National Forest - Wilderness Permits" page. After you click "Explore Available Permits", immediately change the menu that says "Overnight" to "Overnight Exiting Mt Whitney".