Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board turn out south fork to mt sill ?

does anyone know exactly where the turn out off the south fork trail to the lake elsinore drainage is? i know its near willow lake. but where exactly? i am taking the south fork to mt sill any info would be helpful. thanks.

Go past Willow lake (you won't really see it unfortunately). Stay on the SFBP creek trail, up and over a ridge crest and down the other side. Make sure and go down the other side... when the trail comes near a football-field sized marshy area, you are getting close.

I turned off a mile early last year, and it was a big mistake. I did find the correct way on the return, and I have the GPS track somewhere on my computer if that would be helpful.

Also, when you turn left, much later, and do the final 500 foot climb up to Lake Elinore, the use trail is on the right side of the drainage (long, thin, waterfall)

melville, thanks for the info. yes if it is convinient the gps track might be helpful. your description of the football field sized meadow i know is going to be helpful. thanks again.

We just came down that way on Monday, descending Scimitar pass to the south fork trailhead. Followed a use trail with a few cairns from (way) below Lake Elinore to the South Fork trail. Arrived at the point where a sign signaled a branch to Willow Lake. As melville states, when you hike up from the trailhead, this is after you go downhill a little ways from the "ridge crest" at the top of all the switchbacks. The sign was a regular wooden trail marker nailed to a tree.

The trail to Willow Lake is not marked on the Tom Harrison map of the Palisades. So I'm not quite sure where the unmarked use trail to Elinore joins the unmarked trail to Willow. Most likely, this was in the maze of use trails among the several little streams feeding into Willow Lake.

To the best of my recollection, here's a trail description in reverse from what we did, so going in your direction:

From the sign, follow numerous cairns across some rocky terrain. Eventually it goes down to the streams that feed Willow. The easy to spot trampled trail crosses several small streams and then branches in several directions. Some of these probably go to Willow towards the right, but we never saw the lake. We came more from straight ahead, crossing more streams. When you get out of the vegetated stream area, the trail is easy to follow through sparse forest as it slopes up gently.

After that, the use trail is less evident and overgrown in places, but still easy to find as it winds among the boulders, bushes, and steep bank on the left side of the main stream (when looking upstream). Eventually, just below 10K' you reach a tarn that you again squeeze by on the left side on the rocks. After you go up a little bit more, right around 10K', you reach a pond which is where we found the use trail.

Beyond that, going upstream the use trail is little more than sparse cairns and some trampled bushes, making going more difficult and uncertain. You cross the flat area that is marked as marshy on the map, but was mostly dry for us. Head for main stream to Elinore again, not up the valley to the left. Incidentally, this is the valley that drains the Norman Clyde Glacier and would provide a shorter route to Scimitar, but without any accounts of going that way, we were reluctant to blaze a trail. Does anyone know if that valley is passable or know that it is blocked by rock ledges?

Head for the left wall of the stream canyon going to Elinore. As before, you climb on the left side when looking upstream, between the stream and the steep rocks on the bank. Soon after starting up this way, you need to climb over a white, 20' boulder with a cairn on the top. After that, there are some rocky chutes that come down from the left. Further up, after some of these chutes, there is a forested slope that comes most of the way down to the stream, and you want to try to get up into that forest. Going up into the forest, you alternate between short rocky chutes and more forest.

Eventually, at the top of the forest as close as you can get to the stream from Elinore as you can go, you're forced into rocky, boulder-filled chutes over-grown with vegetation. We were able to squeeze by on the left side of several of these chutes, looking uphill, between the rock wall and the dense brush. At one point, we crossed through the brush at the top of a chute and found the next chute where we could squeeze by between the rock and the vegetation again--always on the left side when looking uphill. If you keep doing this, you'll reach the dry chute filled with boulders that parallels the chute in which the stream from Elinore runs. In this last chute, the vegetation eventually gives up, and you can climb all the boulders and eventually reach the edge of Elinore.

I hope that's not too much information, in the sense that you try to follow it exactly and find it's not accurate for going the other way. Sorry, this is my first post here.

I might also be able to get our GPS track, I'll have to ask the Garmin bearer in our group.

Hope this works, trying to post a topo map image I modified...
A: switchbacks
B: trail gets faint here. From here to "C", the use trail is to the south of the drainage, in the woods. North of drainage is all large blocks and talus, and much harder.
C: from here to Lake Elinore, the use trail is on WEST of the drainage, and its a pretty decent trail
[img]http://melville1955.smugmug.com/Other/misc/9621099_RXBEY#648366384_CPmpt[/img]

OK, that didn't work... back to the old method
http://melville1955.smugmug.com/Other/misc/9621099_RXBEY#648366384_CPmpt

Mark, you need to make sure the .jpg extension is part of the string you paste into the image dialog box. You can change the size by changing the M to S or L. Make sure it's capital letter.

thank you so much for everyones input. i feel a bit bad, my friend lori and i, ended up switching permits to north fork. we made the peak early saturday. i would have to say the trip was close to perfection, except for loudest crack of thunder i ever heard in my life. i read the weather reports earlier in the week, so i new it was coming. i was adamant about being down early and we were on the morraine near gamp gayley when it started getting ugly. the rain and hail lasted only about 30 minutes.

i will catalog all this good info. i know it will come in handy in the future. thanks again.

Great. Happy to hear you made it without getting char-broiled. You made Sill from NFBP? assume you went up the N. Couloir route?

Yes and I am glad we were off the peak by the time the storm hit -thanks to John's great leading capabilities. Always interesting when boulder hopping in a hail storm--one of life's many pleasures. Thanks to all who provided us with great information.