I think the best thing to do would be to get rid of the separate north fork/ main trail over night permits and make it all the same system. 70 overnight permits for the entire mt. whitney zone. The actual north fork portion of the "mt. whitney zone" is just as big as the main trail portion, but it only gets 15% of the available overnight spots?
Then kiss any permits on the north fork goodbye. You've got 10,000 or so people trying to get these permits who want to do the main trail. How many who want to do the north fork? Let's be generous and say a thousand. That would statistically give you 10%, instead of the 15% now. Remember that, mountaineers! It was hikehigh's idea to REDUCE your permits.
The fact is that the north and south forks are very different creatures. One way to look at it is that one has 11 miles to distribute people, the other about 4. Another, is that there are quite a few relatively large areas where once could camp on the south side, but not so on the north. If you doubled the number of people going up the south fork, it would hardly make a difference, as it is all trail. But it would definitely make a difference on the North side, where there is little trail, and more route.
