Mt Whitney Zone
Planning on bagging Mt. Sill this Saturday on either the North or South Fork route. Just trying to gauge at what people think of the two options. The approach from the North fork sounds more manageable, but getting up to glacier notch is making me a little nervous. People who tried to gain glacier notch, while avoiding the Palisade glacier, say they made some low class 4 moves on some very loose and precarious terrain. This doesn't sound very fun, but this late in the season, I'm assuming we'd have more options to avoid the ice. If gaining glacier notch is as loose and steep as something like the Red Rocks on Mid Pal, I'm not too worried then. I'll be going with Benefar, so it's just going to be a party of 2, so rockfall risk could probably be mitigated there. I'm just trying to see how bad this option really gets through people's experiences.

The alternative is the South fork route to avoid the Palisade glacier altogether. Only issue here is that I've heard the bushwacking and approach is horrendous. Plus Scaruffi describes a stream crossing on the southfork which "may be impassable after rain", which the Sierras have gotten a lot of recently. I don't know if that's an exaggeration, but that doesn't sound too promising either.

So, what do you guys think? Play our cards right on the North Fork or just endure the bushwacking slog on the South Fork? Any preferences/comments would be greatly appreciated.
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