High Sierra Topix

Phil R: well, not an unreasonable idea, but I don't really see it working. Two reasons:

The first is the whole idea is not to clog up the boxes for any length of time. Keep the food moving through the boxes with only the campers who are there. Most folks (something around 90%+ -- which is pretty darned amazing) carry canisters. But for the first day or two, they can't get all their food in the canisters, thus the boxes. In August especially, those boxes fill up many nights. If caches are there taking up space for a week or a month, that means no one else can use them.

Then, second, the whole dynamic of "college students" being available for scut work has changed. There's just not that many around who can afford low wages (thus the number of college students applying even for ranger/fee collector jobs etc has dropped); and, there are only a trickle who are even interested. As an example, only one or two a season (at most) ask how they can get a job as a ranger. 20 years ago, I'd get dozens of questions like that a week.

Finally, it's not really the tax dollar thing, it's the actual weight. Some aging & gimped up ranger just has to hump the stuff out or back to the station on his back. Try coming up the Vidette switchbacks with a cache you found at Center Basin box -- another 20 lbs to your pack?!? Sure. Totally not fun.

It's lonely on the frontier... .

On the bright side, if you can find a ranger early season, it's likely s/he'd say it was OK to leave a cache at the station or something. But it's got to be a personal agreement and a solemn vow to pick the thing up; take out the garbage; take out the bucket.

Other good cache spots are General Delivery to a Post Office; the Muir Trail Ranch (something like $30 for a box now, I think). And Edison Lake (forgot their name... -- also a small charge).

Freestone: thanks. Yep, it's all about the bears

Take care,

g.

Regarding college students, I was referring to coming up with a solution to the problem, not necessarily working in the forest. And the cost of hauling it out was referring to hiring someone to do that and relieve the rangers of that responsibility.

I am thinking about the bears. I am concerned that one of the ways thru hikers will cope is to cache food anyway, just not in food storage boxes. If not done right, that could affect bears down the line.

Thanks again for the responses!

I have always hiked mine in and hiked mine out. Anytime you give people the chance to take advantage of a good thing , many will abuse it. And I am sympathetic to the poor grunts {rangers} who have to pack out someone elses junk. You are not protecting the bears. Bears do what bears do. They naturally do goofy stuff. I live with them ,so I know how destructive they can be ,even when all precautions are taken. There is too many dadgum bears around anyway. I do my part. Nothing like a good ,lean spring bear for jerky, roast ,or stew. Don't want to put no fat bear in my pot. jls

I think someone is baiting Bearlover....

I always use a bear canister and resupply myself, but I have heard those lockers get too full anyway! And why hike in a resupply ahead of time over mailing one in to the accepted places....? Dee

I'm reviving an old thread about food caches...

I was watching a video yesterday, which had been posted by a 2021 PCT hiker. She said a hiker was digging a cathole and found a buried food cache. It was a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket! The food was ruined and expired, so who knows how long it had been there. This was in the Kearsarge Lakes area. Video link is below, starts at the 11:57 mark. Is this common and we just don't hear about it much? Or is this an outlier?

FYI, they packed out the bucket. Good for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lGunMN_tLQ

Wow, that's wild! I'm pretty sure food caches are illegal nowadays. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, though. SeKi explicitly calls out caching in bear boxes as against the rules. Not sure what other parks say.