Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion interesting thread on the north fork

Hikehigh wrote:
> making the reservations online and not so far in advance

The February reservation period is set so that people can then reserve a camp site at Whitney Portal to match their hiking reservation.

On-line lottery applications (and computerized (overnight) lottery processing) are in the works, but not next year.


> The Half Dome system seems like a good way to go.
The entire summer's quota sold out in minutes! It may be changed to a lottery, too. And Yosemite does not have a no-show redistribution mechanism, so far fewer people go than have permits.

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.

I apologize ahead of time for my confusion, but I have sort of lost my way in the information exchanged.

1. The North Fork used to have its own quota, apart from the general 150 Dayhikers limit, Yes?

2. The overnight permits for North Fork remain a smaller, separate, quota, yes?

3. Currently, the North Fork is now lumped in with the 150 Dayhike passes as combined with South Fork, yes?

4. Most --if not all-- of the technical routes to other local peaks originate out of the North Fork, thus, many folk do not ultimately remain in the area, but must access the North Fork to reach their destinations, no?

Again, I apologize if I am asking the obvious, but I sometimes have a hard time extrapolating the facts from the opinions in longer posts.

Bee, it is confusing stuff. Let's try.

1. The North Fork used to have its own quota, apart from the general 150 Dayhikers limit, Yes?

No. I believe there was no quota for NF dayhikes. Can't remember what the overnight was.

2. The overnight permits for North Fork remain a smaller, separate, quota, yes?

Yes, 10, as opposed to 60.


3. Currently, the North Fork is now lumped in with the 150 Dayhike passes as combined with South Fork, yes?

Yes, but it is 100 total spots.


4. Most --if not all-- of the technical routes to other local peaks originate out of the North Fork, thus, many folk do not ultimately remain in the area, but must access the North Fork to reach their destinations, no?

Yes, (not all, southern mountains generally accessed by southern trailheads)but that is a hard number to get at. I suspect a very small number.

here is the Inyo site: inyo Whitney permit info

for example, my friend Paul Garry just climbed a bunch of peaks out of the
Miter Basin area, Pickering, Joe Devel, etc. they had not been climbed,
according to the registers, in 3-5 years, each. Even Guyot hardly gets climbed.

I would think, with the exception of Russell, there are only a few climbers a
year on those peaks, at most.

but that's just a guess.