Yep. Bartholomew used galvanized garbage cans, tied up in trees and wired shut. Still, if a bear had found them, there would have been no problem tearing it apart. I actually found one of his caches at Crabtree Meadow in the 90s. The food still dry and in good shape. Several of us drank to Orland's health with a cup of his cocoa... . A group (I mention above) that skied his route had his original diary and we looked for the caches not accounted for (several had been found already). I found the site of the Dusy Basin one but someone had found it only weeks before and it disappeared. The wire and a couple of cans were left there. Anyway, I think they're all accounted for now. I turned over the Crabtree one to NPS Sequoia Kings where it's probably mouldering in a basement somewhere. Should have given it to Tahoe (?) ski museum who would have appreciated it more.I recall someone wondered on a prior post why bears did not get at Orland's food caches. The book notes he hoisted his caches into trees. He probably also wired the lids to the cans - that is what we did. In our case we placed six caches, most were above tree line, by suspending the cans over the edge of precipices, beyond the reach of larger critters.
Also above I mention that Gene Rose was working on a book about the snow survey. The good news is there's a manuscript in the editing process. Not sure of the publishing date but it's looking far more hopeful. He writes a history of the snow survey in the Sierra starting in the late 1800s when Reno was looking at the Sierra as a source of water and flooding that occurred there. Transects were established by Frank Church around Tahoe to help predict runoff. When published, I'll post here. Gene's done an incredible job of writing books about otherwise obscure parts of Sierra history. This ought to be great.
PS: @Hobbes: Please tell me you went in and got all your cache buckets? They are really a pain for b/c rangers to haul out... .