Preparing for the JMT: cache drops

16 Apr

“The amateurs discuss tactics: The professionals discuss logistics.”

This great Napoleon quote reminds me of our preparations for the John Muir Trail hike. Whether planning an AT hike, a PCT, or any long through hike, a lot goes into preparation. After you decide what to take camping, you also need to know what you’re going to be eating weeks or months ahead of time. Then, you have to figure out how to get your food and other supplies at various points along the way in the wilderness, which is where our cache drop logistics begin.

For us, it involved a lot of driving. Luckily we live in Los Angeles which isn’t a short drive to the Sierra Nevada, but if you’re willing to put in a long day or two you can take care of most of your caches over a weekend.

We started by driving up to Edison Lake on the West Side of the Sierras. It’s a pretty rough narrow road out there. We dropped off three of our 5 gallon plastic drums at the Lake Edison Store, where for a fee they ferry the supplies across the lake and then mule them in to Muir Trail Ranch which is only a couple of miles off the trail just north of Kings Canyon National Park. If you aren’t able to do this in person you can also mail the drums to them.

From Edison Lake, we hightailed it up to Tuolumne Meadows on the East Side of Yosemite off Highway 120. The Trail meets up with the highway here two to four days from the trail head at Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley.  We stashed two large bags of supplies in the bear boxes right where the highway meets the trail. There is also a small general store there, where if you don’t have the time to drop a cache, you can buy food and supplies.

The year we did the trail happened to be the snowiest year in two decades, which made not only the journey exciting, but also the preparations. We had planned on dropping off our next cache at Red’s Meadow in Devil’s Postpile National Monument. The only problem was even though it was the last weekend in June, the road out there was still closed. (Of course it opened only two or three days after we needed to get out there.) Lucky for us we had already planned on having friends meet us there, so it was just a matter of giving them our supplies to bring along. There is also a general store at Red’s Meadow in the monument where you can mail supplies and they’ll hold them for a fee. Or again buy food, but this is the last spot along the trail where there is a reasonably stocked store.

Once you’ve left Postpile, you don’t come in contact with a road again until you have finished the JMT at Whitney Portal, so it becomes more interesting from here on out. Of course as I already mentioned, you can use Muir Trail Ranch’s services. There’s also Vermillion Resort which isn’t far from Edison Lake where you can mail or drop off your supplies. It’s further north so you’ll get that cache a couple of days earlier. One disadvantage to Vermilion is that it’s on the west side of the lake, so you have to take a ferry to get there and stay for the night. We skipped this and just waited the extra 3 days to get to Muir Trail Ranch which worked out great for us. We stayed the night there, and it was a wonderful break from the trail.

Once you’ve left the ranch you enter into some of the most spectacular and also remote wilderness in the country. There is no easy way to resupply for the rest of the trip. Our initial plan was to hike over Kearsage Pass the weekend before and leave a cache at Charlotte Lake. Heavy snow and a really severe case of altitude sickness on the way up forced us to scrap our plans. We ended up hiring Berner Packers from Bishop to meet us on the trail. This wasn’t the cheapest of options, but it certainly beat us having to hike an extra day off the trail and back over a pass to get supplies at Onion Valley. You can also hike in from Cedar Grove on the west side of the Sierras if you have the time. The Berner’s rider met us right on time at the junction of the Kearsage Pass Trail and the JMT to deliver our final cache.

Again, it’s a lot of work, and I wouldn’t recommend putting it off until the last minute. There are several great guide books and some really helpful websites to help you along the way. Also, I think my favorite resource is the Yahoo JMT Group. It’s a pretty big collective of wonderful, knowledgeable and helpful people. If you have questions you can post to the message board, and you will always get answers promptly.