Question Prevent clipping during animation

Another day struggling with animations in Unity. I can't believe how very few resources I can find to help achieve such a basic task as climbing an object. Not from the perspective of detecting a ledge, but what to do after, in order to get a character to move to the desired position.

Anyway. I settled on using root motion to lift the character into position, but he's clipping into the wall as he pulls himself up. I can set an offset before triggering the animation to force him into a position that will prevent the clipping but that doesn't seem very technical...more like guesswork.

Is this how it's done? You apply magic values until it looks ok? How have other people tackled this?