For you people who didn't get permits-
I'm giving away a big secret that I use to get the best hiking days in the summer and that's to wait for a span of great weather. You can check the weather sites, the NOAA site being best and then apply for a cancellation. I got 3 dayhikes last summer, all clear days. I asked the lady-r-a-n-g-e-r if it was OK that I kept buying so many permits and she said No Problem whatsoever. I could go as many times as I wanted.
I may be wrong, but I strongly suspect they oversell permits knowing that many people won't show up due to illness, divorce, death,or the ever popular "chickening out", etc and then they resell them. I've never had a problem getting the dates I wanted but my dates were in the middle of the week.
If you're looking for group cancellations to bring all of your friends, that's tougher. And if they have cancellations, sometimes you may have to be ready to poick up and go the next day or within a few days. That's hard to schedule when you work. But since I am retired I can get a permit and go whenever I doggone feel like it.
