# Horseshoe Meadows (Cottonwood) Trailhead

Source: Wayproof (https://wayproof.dev/trailheads/horseshoe-meadows-cottonwood/)  
Generated: 2026-09-12  
Structured version: https://wayproof.dev/trailheads/horseshoe-meadows-cottonwood.json

Planning aid, not a booking guarantee. Verify against the official source before acting on any date below.

Cottonwood Lakes & Cottonwood Pass; far southern Sierra

## Permit

- Permit: Inyo NF Wilderness Permit (Golden Trout Wilderness portion -- Cottonwood Basin/Cottonwood Pass)
- Permit group ID: `inyo_gtw`
- Agency: Inyo National Forest
- Quota required: yes
- Quota season: Jun 26 - Sep 15
- Fees: $6/permit + $5/person (same fee structure as the general Inyo NF permit; not independently reconfirmed for this trail specifically)
- Apply: https://www.recreation.gov/permits/233262
- Source last updated: 2021-06-13; last verified by Wayproof: 2026-07-23

### Key dates

- First release (60% of the quota) -- opens 182 days before your entry date at 07:00 America/Los_Angeles -- booking today covers entry around 2027-03-13. (Same recreation.gov mechanics as the general Inyo NF permit; select the Cottonwood Lakes (GT39) or Cottonwood Pass (GT60) trail specifically.)
- Second release (40% of the quota) -- opens 14 days before your entry date at 07:00 America/Los_Angeles -- booking today covers entry around 2026-09-26. (Remaining 40% opens 2 weeks before entry, same release time.)

### How reservations work

Same recreation.gov mechanics as the general Inyo NF permit: 60% of quota reservable starting 6 months before entry, remaining 40% released 2 weeks before entry. Select the Cottonwood Lakes (trail code GT39) or Cottonwood Pass (GT60) trail specifically, NOT a John Muir/Ansel Adams trail.

### Notes

GT-coded trails (trail code begins with GT) run the last Friday in June through September 15, not the general May 1 - Nov 1 Inyo season: Cottonwood Lakes (GT39, quota 60/day, 36/24 split) and Cottonwood Pass (GT60, quota 40/day, 24/16 split). recreation.gov's summary calendar disagrees, naming a May 1 - Nov 1 season for Cottonwood Pass; it is treated as the outlier. Outside the quota season a permit is still required, free/self-issue, but obtained from Inyo NF for this entry rather than Sequoia NF.

### Travel into neighbouring units

Same reciprocity as the general Inyo NF permit: honored for continuous travel into neighboring Golden Trout Wilderness (Sequoia NF side, self-issue) and onward per the same continuous-travel condition.

## Rules in force

What applies once you hold the permit. A rule whose scope is not "this permit" is inherited from state law or an agency-wide policy and applies to other permits in the same jurisdiction too.

### Fire

- **[CA state law]** A free California Campfire Permit is required before you may have a campfire, camp stove, lantern or barbeque -- but holding one does NOT mean fires are allowed where you're going. Local restrictions override it. Two different permits exist; for everywhere this project covers, take the one for federal- and state-controlled lands, not the private-lands one. TWO PERMIT TYPES, and the wrong one is not a valid document. CAL FIRE issues one permit for federal- and state-controlled lands, covering campfires, barbeques and portable stoves, and a separate one for private lands, which additionally requires written permission from the landowner. Both carry the same caveat that local burn restrictions may apply. Every trailhead in this project sits on federal land -- national forest, national park, BLM, or the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit -- except two on East Bay Regional Park District land (Del Valle and Stanford Ave), which is a special district fitting neither category cleanly; which permit applies there is not confirmed. The same portal also issues permits for burning debris, which is a different product and not what a backcountry traveller needs. THE PERMIT IS A PRECONDITION, NOT AN AUTHORISATION: CAL FIRE's own guidance says to check local rules, since many areas restrict or ban campfires outright, especially at elevation or in high fire danger. Where a wilderness bans fires, the permit still matters for a camp stove. YOU MUST CARRY IT: Eldorado NF states the permit has to be available for rangers and other officials to check while you are camping, so an unproduced permit is a permit you do not have. The lantern question is settled: CAL FIRE's permits FAQ omits lanterns from its enumeration, but the campfire-safety page and Eldorado NF's own FAQ both include them, so the fuller list stands on two sources against one summary. The issuing forest states it is also required in some developed campgrounds -- being in a campground is not a reliable exemption. Free, valid for a full calendar year (January 1 to December 31), and available from CAL FIRE, US Forest Service or BLM offices as well as online. The signer must be 18 or older, so a group of minors cannot self-issue. Obtain it at readyforwildfire.org/permits, which links to the portal at permit.preventwildfiresca.org. NOTE: Eldorado NF's own camping page cites 'www.preventwildfiresca.org', which does not resolve -- readyforwildfire.org is the working entry point. (36 CFR 261.52(k); PRC 4433) Source: https://www.readyforwildfire.org/permits/ Evidence: verified, last checked 2026-09-12; log entries none-2026-09-12-01, none-2026-09-12-02, none-2026-09-12-03, none-2026-09-12-04.

## Location

- Coordinates: 36.4506, -118.1697
- Elevation: 10,040 ft
- Side of range: east
- Wilderness: Golden Trout Wilderness
- Agency: Inyo NF

## Peaks nearest this trailhead (5)

UNVERIFIED: assigned by straight-line proximity, not by a confirmed approach relationship. Permits attach to the entry point, so a peak listed here may be climbed from a different trailhead. Do not state these as this trailhead's approach list.

Cirque Peak, Cirque Peak #, Kern Peak, Mount Muah, Trail Peak #

## Verification history

- inyo_gtw-2026-07-23-01 2026-07-23 [new-group] New permit_group. Cottonwood Lakes (trail code GT39) and Cottonwood Pass (GT60) are GT-prefixed trails, which per this PDF's footer text have a DIFFERENT quota season (last Friday in June - Sep 15) than the general Inyo John Muir/Ansel Adams May1-Nov1 season. Season NAME corroborated by the fs.usda.gov general wilderness-permits page (source_last_updated 2026-07-08, see the inyo_jmw_aaw entry above), but the specific quota NUMBERS (60/day, 40/day, 60/40 split) come only from this 2021 PDF -- lower confidence, worth re-checking. Corrects a prior mistake: Horseshoe Meadows (Cottonwood) had been tagged to inyo_jmw_aaw with the wrong (May1-Nov1) season. Source: https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/nfs/files/legacy-media/inyo/List%20of%20Trail%20Names%20and%20Quotas%206-13-2021.pdf
- inyo_gtw-2026-07-23-02 2026-07-23 [unresolved-conflict] CONFLICTS with the 2026-07-23 new-group entry above. This is a screenshot of the general Inyo NF recreation.gov listing (the same one apply_url already points to), whose 'Important Dates' table explicitly names 'Cottonwood Pass - Golden Trout Wilderness' with quota season May 1, 2026 - November 1, 2026 -- i.e. the GENERAL Inyo season, NOT the shorter 'last Friday in June - Sep 15' season the 2021 PDF gave for GT-coded trails. This screenshot was originally sent alongside the PDF screenshot in the same message but was not actually reviewed until a later turn -- a real gap in that verification pass, caught when the user asked whether it had been backfilled. NOT YET RECONCILED: possible explanations include (a) this recreation.gov 'Important Dates' table reflects whichever trail is currently selected in the page's interactive booking widget rather than being Cottonwood-specific and may not be accurate for that trail, (b) the 2021 PDF is simply outdated and the season has since changed to match the general Inyo season, or (c) some other explanation not yet checked. Next step: check the 'Trail Names & Quota' link in this same page's Additional Information panel -- it may be an updated version of the 2021 PDF with a newer date, which would settle this directly. permits.csv NOT changed pending resolution; inyo_gtw's notes field flags this conflict so it surfaces in --permits output too, not just here. Conflict: inyo-gtw-quota-table-source (cross_source). Source: https://www.recreation.gov/permits/233262
- inyo_gtw-2026-07-23-03 2026-07-23 [unresolved-conflict] Followed up on the prior entry's suggested next step: user opened the 'Trail Names & Quota' link from the recreation.gov Additional Information panel and it resolves to this SAME URL/PDF, confirmed byte-for-byte via full text extraction (not just filename match) -- footer text verbatim matches the 2026-07-23 new-group entry above, word for word, including the Golden Trout season line. This does NOT resolve the conflict -- it SHARPENS it: recreation.gov's own listing page simultaneously (a) shows a live 'Important Dates' calendar claiming May1-Nov1 for Cottonwood Pass, and (b) links to its own official reference document, confirmed unchanged since 2021, saying the shorter Jun26-Sep15 season. The two are inconsistent with EACH OTHER, not just with each other across different sites. Still not reconciled -- a decisive test would be checking whether Cottonwood Pass is actually bookable/shows availability on recreation.gov outside the Jun-Sep15 window (e.g. try selecting an April date); that would settle which system the live booking engine actually enforces. Not yet done. permits.csv still unchanged pending this. Conflict: inyo-gtw-quota-table-source (cross_source). Source: https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/nfs/files/legacy-media/inyo/List%20of%20Trail%20Names%20and%20Quotas%206-13-2021.pdf
- inyo_gtw-2026-07-23-04 2026-07-23 [confirms-existing] User independently found a SECOND government-hosted copy of this same table, at a different URL/path (fs.usda.gov's 'publication' library rather than 'legacy-media') -- this filename doesn't embed a date, so source_last_updated is unknown for this specific copy. Content is identical to the 2021-06-13 PDF: same title, same table order, same Cottonwood Lakes (GT39, 60/36/24) and Cottonwood Pass (GT60, 40/24/16) figures, same 'Golden Trout Wilderness ... Quota applies Last Friday in June through Sept 15th' footer text verbatim. RESOLVING the conflict logged in the two prior entries: it's now 2 independent official reference documents (different URLs) agreeing on the shorter Jun26-Sep15 GT season, versus 1 dynamic recreation.gov summary calendar claiming May1-Nov1 whose specificity to Cottonwood Pass was never independently confirmed (most likely a generic/default range the widget shows regardless of which trail is selected, rather than a real season change). Weight of evidence favors the shorter season already in permits.csv -- closing this as resolved in that direction. Not a certainty: the fully decisive test (checking live recreation.gov booking availability for Cottonwood outside Jun-Sep) was still not performed, and remains available if the user wants to fully rule out the other possibility. Conflict: inyo-gtw-quota-table-source (cross_source). Source: https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/nfs/files/publication/trail%20quota%20sheet.pdf_0.pdf
- inyo_gtw-2026-07-23-05 2026-07-23 [confirms-existing] User ran the live-booking-availability test suggested in the prior entry. Checked recreation.gov's per-day availability table directly (not just the summary calendar text) for two dates: (1) 4/21/2027 -- before both proposed seasons, so non-discriminating as expected -- Cottonwood Lakes and Cottonwood Pass both show a released value of 0 (confirmed no quota, not 'NR'). (2) 9/21-24/2026 -- inside the discriminating window (after Sep15, before Nov1) -- Cottonwood Lakes and Cottonwood Pass show 'NR' on all 4 days. Per the page's own legend, NR = 'Not Yet Released', a distinct status from 'Unavailable' -- it means the system hasn't opened booking for that date, not that the date is confirmed out of season. Critically, the SAME 4 dates for Deer Lakes (a plain John Muir Wilderness trail, general Inyo system) already show real released numbers (6, 6, NR, 6) one row below -- meaning the 6-month advance window is clearly already open system-wide for that date range, yet Cottonwood specifically has not released for it. This is strong (not fully conclusive, since NR could in principle still resolve to a nonzero number later) structural evidence that Cottonwood Lakes/Cottonwood Pass run on a DIFFERENT release/quota mechanism than standard JM-coded trails, consistent with -- and further supporting -- the shorter GT-specific season already adopted in permits.csv. Does not upgrade the resolution to full certainty, but adds a third independent data point (live booking system behavior, not just static documents) pointing the same direction as the two PDF sources. Source: https://www.recreation.gov/permits/233262