khamike wrote: ↑Thu Feb 06, 2025 5:39 pm
Sorry to necro an old thread but I'm trying to plan a trip and this is the best resource I could find. I called and spoke to a wilderness ranger in yosemite and he told me you are not (officially) allowed to do the HSR in one permit. He pointed to the Hoover wilderness page on recreation.gov where it states
Trips beginning on Hoover Wilderness may continue into the wilderness areas of Yosemite National Park, Stanislaus and Inyo National Forests. However, in order to continue south of Highway 120 you must obtain another permit from the relevent authority that pertains to that entry point.
He said that you are allowed to cross 120 without needing a new permit if you have started with a yosemite permit (so something like the Yosemite high route) but he wasn't sure if you are allowed when coming from the inyo. So it seems like you do need two permits if going N to S but does anyone have a source about whether you can go S to N on one? Needless to say, this all seems unnecessarily complicated. And clearly plenty of people do it without getting a special yosemite permit, but I hate the uncertainty of not knowing if a ranger is going to stop you.
I suspect that they may not allow you to continue south across Tioga Road on your permit from Inyo NF because they are concerned that you will jump on the already over-crowded and impacted John Muir Trail. Maybe if you explain that you are planning to continue on a different trail they might be okay? Also, the only place I've ever encountered a wilderness ranger checking my permit in Yosemite in the last 50 years is on the JMT or PCT. Oops! I just remembered I once had my permit checked at Matthes Lake, which is completely off trail. I was surprised! Turns out, it was a volunteer wilderness ranger. He was mostly concerned to verify that I was not camping close to the lake.
Also, don't forget that if you are planning to hike continuously on the SHR from Twin Lakes to Tuolumne Mdws and beyond that even a continuous permit would not let you stop for the night at the Tuolumne Meadows campground, which is supposed to re-open in August after three years of reconstruction. Two separate permits - for the sections before and after Tuolumne Meadows - would let you spend the intervening night at that campground. And it is a very long hike from the last legal campsite in the Hoover Wilderness area, through Tuolumne Meadows, to the first legal campsite 4 miles south of Tuolumne Meadows.
In a similar vein, I wanted to try a variation where I would start up Nelson lake as mentioned in a previous post, but then cut high along the south side of Lyell canyon past vogelsang, amelia earhart, and maclure lakes before crossing donohue and along the east side past marie and davis lakes until rejoining the trail at 1000 island.
You can do easy cross-country hiking all the way from Nelson Lake to the JMT just north of Donohue Pass and it's all very beautiful country. See these posts of mine for information on the routes and some photos:
viewtopic.php?t=22067
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=21003
viewtopic.php?p=176443
But despite the fact that this is all off trail and I wouldn't be setting foot on the actual JMT, or only briefly, the rangers say I can't exit donohue that way since you must have a lyell canyon permit.
Actually, you don't need to use Donohue Pass to cross from the Lyell Fork to the Rush Creek drainage. You can continue going cross-country by contouring east at about the 11,000 foot level on easy terrain from the JMT just north of Donohue Pass all the way to Kuna Creek, and then head up to Lost Lakes Pass, down south past Lost Lakes and then traverse west back over to the JMT. This is all easy terrain that I've done with my kids as young as age 7. Here's the HST writeup on Lost Lakes Pass:
viewtopic.php?p=122500
Another option to bypass Donohue Pass is the saddle just north of Donohue Peak. There is a small lake that you reach when contouring from the JMT to Kuna Creek. From the JMT on the Rush Creek side, it looked to me that the cross-country route to the saddle just east of that lake would "go". But I can't guarantee it, because I haven't done it.
A final option for your through-hike is to skip Tuolumne Meadows and the Lyell Fork watershed entirely. When you pop into the park by Tioga Pass, walk down the road to the Mono Pass/Parker Pass trailhead, and head up that trail over Parker and Koip Peak Passes to the Rush Creek watershed. The first legal campsite would be to make a short side trip just over Mono Pass to Upper Sardine Lake about 5 miles from the road. From just south of Gem Pass, you don't need to drop down to Gem Lake and then back up Rush Creek. You can contour west at about the 10,000 foot elevation level through open forest until you hit the JMT just north of Rush Creek. Your single Wilderness Permit starting from Twin Lakes should be good for this route because you never camp within Yosemite Park - you just pass through a corner on a "day hike".
-Phil