What numbers do you think would be more appropriate for a region the size of the North Fork?
25-30 seems reasonable. How can the main trail handle 60 overnights and probably 90% of the 100 available day hiker permits but north fork only gets 10? Doesn't make sense.
What you say does not make sense. Under the constraints of wilderness classification, The Whitney main trail does not handle 60 overnights in a reasonable manner. The north fork is already suffering under the level of use it has. If the north fork is drawing as small a percentage of the 100 day use quota as you suggest there doesn't seem to be the interest there to justify an increase in any quota there. If you want to remake the north fork in the image of the main trail by increasing the overload, you need to sell the upgrade of the north fork trail to the level of the main trail. Find the money to pay for that first. Maybe you can accomplish that by converting the whole drainage to national park. When you do, you will find the fee structure much steeper than today's.
Guide services are available to the general public. Anyone is free to use such such services or not, but no one deserves any bigger (or smaller) share in a quota because of that choice.
Your assertion about the guided quota being fee driven is nonsense. If it were true, there would a guide quota in place to insure that income from the main trail.
I expect that most of the readers of this thread understood that you were including made up numbers. That demonstrates more of the nature of the denigrated cliche bureaucracy than the quota system shows.
Dale B. Dalrymple
