High Sierra Topix

Hey, all. This is my first post. You have a great site. It's nice to hear from lots of enthusiastic backpackers.

My husband and I are planning to hike the JMT northbound in August. We applied for the Whitney permit, but we haven't heard any lottery results yet. I hope that's not a bad sign and that our application just hasn't been pulled out of the barrel yet. Patience, I guess.

Assuming we do get a permit, we will be starting around 07 August (depending on which day we get the permit for). We plan to mail a food drop to Muir Trail Ranch. Best guess is we'll get there on the tenth day out. In order to make a reasonable starting load, we are considering carrying one bear can with about 5 days food and caching a second can on the Kearsarge Pass trail, somewhere near the pass. We would hike the cache can in on the day before our Whitney permit date, so the can would be sitting around for about four days. Any thoughts on this plan? Legal? Marmots? If a bear has 4 days to play with a Garcia can, will she bust into it?

Transportation-wise, we are wondering if anyone heading southbound would like to try to work out a car shuttle. We will be in Yosemite during July as YA volunteers (we hope - don't have a commitment yet, but we think we have a good shot), so if you are starting in Yosemite, we could drive your vehicle to Whitney Portal. Alternatively, if you are starting after us, you could drop your car at WP and drive our vehicle to Yosemite.

Thanks for any ideas regarding food caching and car pooling. Hike on!

A friend met someone on the trail, was on the same schedule going opposite directions, exchanged keys, and they both had transportation at the end of the trip!

When we did the JMT our ride had to cancel last minute, so we hitched and got 3 rides to Mammoth.

If I'm in the area at the time, I might be able to help, but right now I'm still working out my summer plans.

Interesting car shuttle idea. We've been considering our options in this dept as well. We leave southbound Aug 9th out of Happy Isles. I'm not sure I could promise to get there much earlier than the 7th or 8th, though. Let me know when your plans are more firm....
PS our car is a 5 speed - in case the conversation ends there.

Hello, V-E. We also drive a 5 speed, so that would be no problem. We just received our Whitney permit for an 09 August departure. The ninth was our fourth choice so we were lucky to get a permit, I think. Let's talk about details some and see if we can work out a shuttle. Cool. Snow Nymph had an idea about swapping keys en route, so that's an idea too, but that would require more driving. More later...

WOW, EXCITING and CONGRATS! Kinda fun to know we'd be starting out at opposite ends of the trail on the same day. Let's visit the options as we get closer. We'll be leaving our area for CA end of July-ish.
Lisa at Oikos Hollow

Super, V-E. RJ (of "AirRJ") and I are hoping to be doing a month of volunteer work in Yosemite Valley during July. We'd then have a few days off before hitting the trail. One of our ideas on how to resupply during the long southern portion is to cache a bear canister near Kearsarge Pass. Then we would only have to carry one can from Whitney. So far I haven't heard any thoughts from other folks on this plan, but maybe we get some feedback.
Talk to you more later.

Here's what we did for our 30 day trip. We did the first 100 miles in 12 days, then took our time for the next 18 days.

We started off with 2 days of food and left our first cache (5 days) at Tuolumne Meadows, so we wouldn't have to start off so heavy.
Next cache was Reds Meadow (5 days).

After that was Muir Ranch, where we mailed our 10 day cache which included a change of clothes. Our friend brought fuel in and took the dirty clothes out.
Some friends brought an 8 day cache in over Kearsarge Pass to Charlotte Lake. We probably should have hiked up to the Kearsarge Lakes, since we lost elevation hiking down to Charlotte, then had to carry the food back up (ugh). They brought in a few extra goodies, which was awesome since we had already been out 22 days, and my body was craving stuff . . . like bread and fresh fruit.

Our photos and daily mileage/el gain are on the webpage, under John Muir trail 2001

When I did the JMT Northbound 2 years ago I used the public transit to get back to my car at Whitney Portal. I was lucky in that my parents picked me up in the Valley and drove me to Mammoth, but that wasn't necessary. The <a href="http://www.yarts.com/">YART system</a> runs from the valley over to Mammoth. Then from there you can pick up the <a href="http://www.countyofinyo.org/transit/CRESTpage.htm"Mono County Transit Bus</a>(at McD's) back to Lone Pine. If you get to Lone Pine in the day it is easy to hitch a ride to the portal. Just my exp. Good luck with those permits, I had the same issue, even though I was one.
For the food drop it probably isn't legal to store food for that long in the bc, but at the Kearsarge Lakes there are a few bear boxes you can probably hijack for a few days. I wouldn't leave the canister out at the pass, bear or even human could move it to where it can't be found. Good luck, also depending on my timing, I may be interested in doing a food drop for you over the pass, PM me or email me if you like.
Eric J Lee

We weren't able to get a Whitney permit for our northbound trip in 2000 so we started at Cottonwood and went over New Army Pass to start our trek. Just in case....