Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Muir Trail Ranch to Whitney. Kearsarge reprovision

On a July JMT southbound trip, after reprovision at Muir Trail Ranch, would you:

(A) Carry all food to last until Whitney Portal? This of course can be done, but traveling lighter is preferable. see option below:

(B) Arrange reprovision at Vidette/Kearsarge area? Some packers will drop off a huge load for a big fee. How about a small load piggybacked with others? For another 5 days/2 people it would not be much of a package. Any one arrange this? Any recommendations? I am aware of various possibilities but prefer to hear some first hand experience.

I'm exiting at Kearsarge but my cousin and wife are continuing to Whitney. Any advice for them is appreciated. Thanks, Harvey

I'd go with option A. Simpler. Less expensive.

You could be hero and carry the extra food for your wife and friend.

actually, I did offer to carry some of it for them. but am still looking for other ideas. anyone? Harvey

Hi Harvey,

I most recently resupplied at the MTR in 2003 while heading southbound on the JMT. I travelled light (no tent, no stove, no water filter) averaging 20 miles a day. I arrived at the Kearsarge area (Bullfrog Lake) with only a handful of raisins left. As intended, I then hiked out over Kearsarge Pass to resupply.

If one did not want to walk out over Kearsarge Pass to resupply, then consider the following:
(1) Plan on at most 3 days to go from the Kearsarge area to Whitney Portal (something like 42 miles). By this time on the JMT one will be very fit and travelling light out of necessity!
(2) Add 2 days more food at the MTR resupply to what one would normally have if exiting out Kearsarge Pass. This will be roughly an additional 4 pounds per person.
(3) Catch fish for solid nutrition while travelling light on the home stretch to Mt Whitney. For example, at the Rae Lakes (at the isthmus between the Middle and Lower Lakes) and at Guitar Lake the fishing is always great, even with primitive gear.(Carry an ounce or two of tackle and use a branch or hiking stick for a pole.) If necessary, cook the fish on a warm rock, but don't sleep nearby as there might be visitors at night!

The MTR is very reliable for resupply. Also it is not important if one arrives a few days ahead or behind schedule. Your bucket of gear will be sitting in the storage shack for you. However, I have gone by the clearing where the JMT and Kearsarge Pass Trail meet to find packers waiting (for hours) for their clients to arrive. In fact on August 11 of last year when I was coming down from Glen Pass, the packers clients were No Shows.

This July 22 I am looking forward to coming over Kearsarge Pass and then heading south on the JMT. Your family will likely be thrilled by the scenery on this final stetch of the JMT. The view of Mt Whitney from the top of Bighorn Plateau is one of my favorites.

Have a great adventure. Jim

If you are fit, carrying the food really isn't that bad.

One option I have been thinking about is seeing if I could mail my food to a pack outfit in Onion Valley and then hike down and pick it up myself. That way you can go at your own pace, but you don't have to leave the wilderness and go all the way down to Independence for a resupply. I'm not sure if the packers would be okay with that though. They might not even be open when the PCTers come through anyways.

From several JMT journals I read last year, some groups had to break some rules in order to hike from MTR to Whitney without a resupply: 1) hiding a food cache in a bear canister near Kearsarge Pass and 2) bagging the extra freeze dried food that did not fit in the bear canister and sleeping with it at the foot of the sleeping bag.

here is another option. if you are dead set against carrying the extra food( that would be be my first choice), have a packer leave it in one of the metal bear boxes at kearsarge lakes with your name on it and a note on the date you plan to pick it up. they could drop it off the day before and that way if you are a day or 2 behind schedule it will still be there. i have heard people do this in the past and it seemed to work. having a packer meet you, like said in early posts, could open a can of worms if you are behind schedule. remember even the best of plans on timetables don't always work out. throw in some thunderstorms, blisters, high stream crossings and just plain being tired can put you behind. my stove broke heading south, had to hike over bishop pass into town, get a new one and back over the pass. added 2 days of long hard hiking plus i was wasted once i got back on the jmt. with the food already in your pack your options increase, my 2 cents.

thanks for replies

dayhiker, I've had up-close bear encounters, so no way I would do what you read about.

rhody, yes, a dropoff 2 days ahead is what we plan

What I am really looking for is a personal reference for a good and reliable packer who would do a small load and cheap. Does not sound too likely as on all my previous trips and all my readings about the area this option does not seem documented.

Are the metal boxes bear boxes, or cache boxes. It is illegal to cache in bear boxes, but I have done it regardless.

Just a note: I had friends two years ago who did the JMT and resupplied at MTR. They ran out of food near Kearsarge and we had to bring food to them. It's about 9-10 days from MTR to the summit. 240Jeff has the right idea. There's a place in Independence who will haul it in for you, but it's not cheap. It could be $90-150 or you could walk the 15 miles and store it in one of the two bear boxes at the Kearsarge/JMT crossing.
The decision is yours. Either have friends you can call in a pinch or risk running out of food. You choose.
Lots of luck,
Greg Lukenbill

"There's a place in Independence who will haul it in for you, but it's not cheap. It could be $90-150"

name?

since there are >500 views on this thread, there must be some interest

OOH. Bad idea. It will quickly become apparent to the Ranger in the area, who patrols daily, that this is abandoned stuff, and it will be removed. This is not legal use of a Bear Box.

It's called the Cottonwood Pack Station located in Independence. I think if you send it in or carry it in before you start attatched with a note that says you will be retaining your bear cannister on such and such a date, I don't think it will be taken away. You may want to enclose a copy of your JMT permit and itinerary might help.
Or talk to the rangers in Lone Pine, but they've been known to give misinformation. The ranger who was at Charlotte Lake who I met two years ago was very cool. I think if you let the rangers know in Lone Pine that you are going to make a food drop at the Kearsarge bear boxes on such and such a date, they can let the ranger at Charlotte Lake know when you are going to pick up your supplies.
If you decide to go with Cottonwood Pack Station, they can take it in a couple of days or week before you get to the Kearsarge bear boxes.
Hope this helps,
Greg Lukenbill

I'm planning on option 1- carry everything. I plan to get acclimated on a fairly leisurely hike from Red's to MTR. Then layover a day and pack my belly full of food. For the 116 stretch from MTR to the portal I expect to take 7 or 8 days. I can squeeze 7 nights of food in my Garcia can.

Jim

Does anyone know if there's an option to drop your food at the pack station in Onion Valley and then pick it up at the station when you hike past the area? I did that in 1988, but the year after that the place was closed and we carried all our food from MTR to the portal. Never been back to Onion Valley since.

I don't need them to pack 10 pounds of food in - seems like overkill. The extra hike to the pack station and back up into the park appears like a much more reliable option to me, but that obviously only works if there are people at the pack station during the daytime so I can retrieve my food when I get there.

This is an interesting thread as i've had this problem before and in the end loaded up more food. This year i'll be southbound
coming over granite pass to Cedar Grove roads end and could do with a resupply at this point. Would it be acceptable to leave a bag of food in a bear box in the car park before we hit the trail, I know it may disappear meantime but thats a chance i'll have to take; has anyone else resupplied at Cedar grove in whatever manner. We can carry the loads but we can also maybe include a couple bottles of wine in the resupply which would be nice. Cheers for now; Pike.

the consensus about leaving food in bear boxes, even if just for just a few days, is that it most likely will be gone by the time you get there. Too many "speed hikers" out there who feed off whatever they can find to cut down on pack weight.

A friend left a cache in a bearbox this past summer for a JMT hike. When he arrived weeks later he found a note from the backcountry ranger warning him not to do that again. The food was there too.

I walked the JMT and decided to take my own advice. That pack was sure heavy hiking out of Muir Trail Ranch! But I'd do it the same way again.

I wonder what Mr. Lankford and his friends ended up doing?

You didn't mention how many days total your wife and cousin will require to go from MTR to the Portal. We all know the distance but time is another important variable. But if it's 8 days or less additional resupply should not be necessary with careful planning and a little experience.

When I did the JMT (S-N) I didn't resupply until Red's Meadow. It may be easier than you think. Most people carry way more food than they need. When you get to MTR check out the tons of extra food people leave there. MTR gives it away but when I was there no one was taking it.

Please don't consider using bear boxes against the rules. Not cool. Believe it or not, I've needed space in bear lockers that were chock full of other people's stuff who were nowhere in sight. Some of it looked like it had been there a while. I've even seen gear stored in some.

Personally, I like to be independent and not rely on others, especially for something mission critical like food. I would spend time wondering if the cache will actually be there. Odds are it will, but what if it's not? Stick to the KISS principle because Mr. Murphy is always lurking around the corner. I want peace of mind in knowing that all my food is with me.

We made it from Yosemite to about Squaw Lake/Silver Pass when haze, forest fire smoke and July heat + humidity began slowing us down "behind schedule." Kept going until the highlight of the trip, a nasty sleet storm at Bear Creek. After reprovisioning at damp, humid MTR, we abandoned plans to finish the whole JMT. left stuff in the swap box, later talked to the ranger in Evolution who said, as I stood there in the pouring rain, that the official chance of rain was only 20%. He correctly assessed the problem as "a once every five years monsoonal flow." These were the storms that washed out roads elsewhere. Had a fantastic exit route over Lamarck. I had done it before westbound, but it is a totally different experience doing it eastbound. Harvey