As many others have reported, the reservations for Inyo this year are super-competitive like I have never seen before. One issue I had is that the system did not make the August 18 permits available immediately at 7:00 am pacific, which is precisely when I submitted the search query. ?So I had to do so again which cost me around 10-15 seconds. At that time, it appeared that a lot of permits were still available but when I clicked on my choice of Duck Pass, all of the permits were gone!
I didn't expect that, and there were two permits left for Cottonwood Pass, so I grabbed one since I wanted to make sure I got *something* even though I don't really want to start northbound this year.?
After completing the reservation for Cottonwood Pass, I checked overall availability around 7:10 am, and noticed that a Red Cones permit was now available so I grabbed that one and canceled the Cottonwood Pass permit. This way I can start from Mammoth as I had planned, although from a somewhat less desirable start (I wanted to see Duck Lake).
As of right now, there is still one Cottonwood Pass permit (probably the one I cancelled), two Cottonwood Lakes permits, nine Fish Creek permits, two permits for JMT South of Devil's Postpone, five River Trail permits, and that's about it for the popular entry points.
Anyway, just wanted to describe my experience in case it is helpful for others. ?My advice is to give the system five seconds or so after 7:00 am pacific since the inventory doesn't seem to be released at 7 on the dot. ?And be sure to check about 15 minutes later since some people will abandon their carts and permits may go back into the inventory.
This is way more stressful than it used to be!
ravi_jmt2013