Hey all, just booked my first permit under the new system a few weeks ago. My understanding of the new rules is:
"Alternates must respond to the recreation.gov email sent at the time of reservation and accept being an alternate within 72 hours of reservation, or the permit will not have alternates."
My alternate did not receive an email and is listed as "pending" on the permit when I check my permit on recreation.gov. He can't find anything in trash or spam folders.
Anyone else run into this problem yet? Can it be fixed when I pick up the permit?

If you are going regardless then you don't need to list an alternate....

None of mine got a message, either. Then, at some point, it was announced that they gave up on the original plan to email alternates for 2019. Their code for this can be seen as a notification at the top of their home page: "Alternate verification is not necessary for the 2019 season."