Day hiking permits for Mt Whitney

Hiking anything in the Mt Whitney region (even remote mountains like Mt Morgenson and Mt Tunnabora that hardly ever get a visitor) (so much so that even the rangers don't know them) has become a bureaucratic nightmare.

Hiking Mt Whitney and its neighboring mountains is not easy. It is not the mountain, it's the bureaucracy that makes it so difficult. You do need a permit to hike up Whitney and any nearby mountain in the summer. If you don't have a permit, rangers will cite you and turn you back. The regulations are so complicated that rangers themselves disagree on their interpretations.

The "Whitney zone" (the zone that requires a permit even for day hikes) keeps being expanded year after year, with ever more erratic rules and regulations and ever more rangers added to their staff in order to enforce them. I can see the day when the "Whitney Zone" will extend over the entire wilderness and the Inyo National Forest will simply declare independence.

There are now rangers checking permits also on the North Fork/ Mountaneering route. They have vastly improved that route, but the catch is that now everybody walks the same way up the "mountaineering" route and it's therefore easier for rangers to check everyone's permit.

To hike the regular Mt Whitney trail in one day requires a day-hike permit. This is not only a very unfair practice, which rewards people who've got nothing to do over people who have a job and can't plan ahead, but over the last few years they have also made it as difficult as possible for us to get one. The permit system is matched only by horror tales of the old Soviet Union.

That said, permits for summer day hikes can in theory be obtained from Inyo National Forest (1-760-873-2408). Lone Pine ranger station 760 876-6200. Permits cost money (rangers will tell you that the permits are free and you pay for the reservation, but the reservation is mandatory...)

These permits become available sometime at the beginning of the year (usually february) and are first assigned via a lottery (no, this is not a joke). As of 2024, there are only 3 ways to get a permit: during the lottery period (February 1 – March 1); during a mini sale on April 22nd; during the hiking season (May 1 – November 1) via the website ($21 each in 2024). The latter is what most people try, and that's why most people can't hike Mt Whitney or any of the nearby mountains included in the Whitney Zone: there are typically zero permits available between May and October on every single day. If you keep checking day and night, every now and then a cancellation happens and a permit becomes available. The motivation to cancel one's permit is very low because there is no refund.

It is worth keeping this section even though it is outdated: until 2018, to prove that there is no limit to human stupidity, the winners of the lottery didn't get a permit: they only got a letter that they were entitled to a permit (a permit-permitting letter, if you wish). To get the actual permit, one had to show up in person the day before the hike at the ranger station in Lone Pine.

During the lottery period, in order to maximize chances of obtaining a permit for the desired day, it has become commonplace to ask two or three friends to apply for the same day that you want. In theory permits are non-transferrable, but you are not required to carry a photo id on the trail (yet!), so rangers have no way to check if you are really the person who bought that permit.

Old hikers beware! In the past (before 2001), you would not be checked for permits if you started hiking very early in the morning and returned late afternoon: this is no longer true. The rangers have enough of our tax money to actually ambush hikers on the Whitney trail all day and night long. On one summer day i met three rangers checking permits, and it wasn't even a weekend.

This is a typical form of bureaucracy that feeds itself: both the fees and the fines are needed in order to be able to pay the salaries to the rangers who enforce the rules.

to complain about the unfair permit system.

My rant

Ironically, the part of the trail that can be hiked without a permit is precisely the part that goes through a forest and where wildlife can indeed be seen. I am not sure what "delicate ecosystem" gets hurt on Mt Russell, a mountain that normally would get one or two visitors a day and is now considered part of the "Whitney Zone" (and therefore gets an average of zero visitors). Ditto for all the mountains around Lake Tulainyo. If the goal was to close Mt Russell to the general public, it succeeded. Ditto for the Russell-Carillon pass: if you want to transit through it, you need a Whitney permit. That's a remote pass that probably no more than 100 people a year would use (incidentally, it is just a big pile of sand and loose rocks).

Of course, Mt Whitney gets more visitors than other 4,000-meter mountains. It is, after all, the only major mountain with a trail all the way to the top. However, the permit system has simply increased its popularity and there are now many more people who desire hiking it (most of them totally unprepared). So the permit system has encouraged people to hike Whitney instead of discouraging them.

Summarizing, i doubt that these hiking permits are meant to limit damage to a delicate ecological environment. Furthermore, the quota system is simply sending a lot more hikers to other routes, some of which are more delicate ecosystems. To me, these hiking permits are just bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake.

If we truly want to protect the wilderness, i can easily name the real enemies, having walked all over those mountains for almost 40 years. First and foremost, plastic. The plastic bottle that you carry is lethal. If you drop it (and sooner or later you will), it will stay there forever. I routinely collect one or two plastic items from the Whitney trail. Every year we add a few thousand plastic items to the wilderness. If the bureaucracy wants to protect the environment, i would start by banning plastic beyond the parking lot (or at least setting a limit to how much plastic one can carry): no plastic bottles, no sunscreen and insect repellent in plastic containers, no food sold or wrapped in plastic, etc. (Incidentally this is easy to do - my friends know that i never carry plastic bottles and the only plastic in my backpack is pretty much the emergency poncho). Can you believe that it is illegal to hike the Mt Whitney trail without a permit (ostensibly in order to protect a fragile ecosystem) but perfectly legal to carry plastic bottles (that definitely hurt any ecosystem, fragile or not)?