Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board John Muir Trail Shuttles

Hello All,

I will be backpacking the John Muir Trail in Summer 2009 (starting in Yosemite and ending at the Whitney Portal) and need to find a way to get from the Whitney Portal to Lone Pine afterwards. Are there shuttles or is ye ol thumb for hitching or using my tired legs at that point my only options?

Also, I need to get from Lone Pine to Bishop afterwards to rent a car to take my weary self back home. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Matt Parker

I believe CREST runs between Lone Pine and Bishop. You can check out their plans for extended service up to Reno beginning in 2009 here: http://www.ksrw.sierrawave.net/site/content/view/1625/48/

Hi First ride from Portal to town , hangout and get a ride with people going to town.


OK so if you do not plan to buy a car in Bishop car rental is local only so years past we have found rental cars in Ridgecrest that can be left out side the area but may be limited and need to call around price/hold and get a solid answer from the local agent not the Corp. sales pitch .



Starting in Jan. we will have bus service to Reno and Lancaster about 4 days a week so this would get you to the transtit systems Air ,Bus, Rail Rental,


Also as you walk talk to others on the trail and try to set a ride with them, don't wait till you get to the Portal and find out your limited choices. Thanks Doug, another thread talks about leaving cars at the Portal for 4 weeks would they then have another car at the starting point?

I really sweated getting back to my car last summer, what a waste of time! I ended up taking the bus from L.P. to Bishop. Then instead of waiting overnight for the bus to T.M., I stuck out my thumb and three rides later I was at the Ranger Station permit counter. Look, I weigh 240 pounds and have a shaved head. If people will stop for me, they will pick up ANYONE. I believe that a person (with a backpack) in the eastern sierras, is viewed more favorably than in urban areas that I've experienced. The total time spend with an extended thumb was no more than 30 minutes.

People have lost too much faith in the general decency of their fellow man largely by propaganda about hitch hiking and hitch hikers, you'll get a ride anywhere and most likely meet good people while you do it, just don't be shy and go out there and stick up your thumb!

When it comes to something like getting a ride from whitney portal to lone pine I would be suprised if you were walking for more than 10 minutes down the road before you had a ride.

You could hang out and chat with people and try to find a ride but I think you will have faster results if you just start walking with your thumb out.

I mean who here on this board wouldn't pick up a back packer walking down the road from whitney portal if you had room?

Don't know about LP to Reno, but a ride from the Portal to LP is a non-issue. After your hike, stop by the store for a burger and beer and start conversations with any and all of the folks around the store. Bet you a beer you have a ride in single digit (low single digit) minutes.

Plan B is to start walking toward LP and stick out your thumb. Again, you'll soon have a ride.

Matt,

Catching a ride down is very easy. Almost every time we have given a ride to fellow hikers down the hill. You meet people on the trail and talk to them. When we finished the JMT this past summer, we gave a guy a ride to Victorville so he could catch a bus back home. We offered two other guys a ride as well, but they were already gone by the time we got to the portal.

Have fun, it is a great trip,

Scott

I actually tonight thought seriously about doing this trip this summer but maybe the other direction.

It's going to come down to if I can get 22 days off from work.

10 miles a day for me is a solid goal, not too much and not too little and i'm sure I could have just looked it up online but I took the time to add the miles based on tom harrison maps and I came up with 221.1 miles.

It's an exciting prospect so maybe i'll see you on the trail

Thanks to everyone for their feedback. I thought hitching was the best way but it is good to hear it has worked well for others also.

RoguePhotonic, I have backpacked the JMT once before starting in Yosemite and ending at the Portal. I was lucky enough to be backpacking with a friend of mine who's wife dropped us off and picked us up. If you want to talk more about daily mileage and good places to camp, send me an email at matt@mattparkerphotography.com and we can discuss more. I also have the same problem, getting that much time off work but trust me if you can get the time off, do it. It is one of the best experiences of my life and I can't wait to do it again.

Starting at the Portal was an idea I had too but after thinking about I decided to start at Yosemite again. The best part of the trip is the High Sierra's in Kings Canyon and Sequoia NP and you hit a pass practically every day. Starting in Yosemite gives you some time to acclimate and get your body used to the strain of long distance backpacking. I think starting from the Portal would be very tough physically although it is definitely doable.

Take Care,
Matt

lol - in 1993, I walked the entire portal road in a hot August afternoon and not one car stopped for me - uphill.

If you want to make sure you get a ride, call Bob Ennis, who in the summers runs a licensed shuttle service in Lone Pine. I used his services last summer because I was hiking the Muir with my two 10-year-olds and needed to make sure I got from Whitney Portal to Yosemite without major hangups and layover in Mammoth.

(760) 876-1915

http://www.mtwhitneyshuttle.com/

Ouch! that must have been aggravating!



Well I did get the time off and I plan to take off even longer.

I have planned the hike so far for 24 days of hiking and 5 days of lay over days for when we find some where that is awesome to just hang out an extra day or since I have only just planned a basic layout I may add some side trips if there is anything worth seeing.

I have no doubt the first 4 or 5 days of this trip are going to be extremely difficult to say the least

Here is what I have layed out so let me know what you think about it based off where you have camped: I'll just note where I plan to camp for the night:

1 - Climb Whitney and Muir and camp at guitar lake
2 - Tyndall Creek
3 - Climb Mt Tyndall and camp in Williamson Bowl
4 - Climb Williamson and camp at Tyndall Creek
5 - Bubbs Creek Area
6 - Rae Lakes
7 - Bottom of Mt Cedric Wright
8 - Below Cardinal Lake
9 - Palisade Lakes
10 - Little Pete Meadow
11 - Wanda Lake
12 - Evolution Meadow
13 - Blayney Meadows
14 - Hike to the Lost Valley Pack station and camp at Sallie Keys Lakes
15 - Recess Peak Creek
16 - Silver Pass Lake
17 - Purple Lake
18 - Upper Crator Meadow
19 - Use Pack station and camp at Johnston Meadow
20 - Thousand Island Lake
21 - Bellow Potter Point somewhere
22 - Cathedral Lake
23 - Sunrise Creek
24 - Climb Half Dome and hike out

RP:

You might be better served to camp at one of the tarns around the plateau of Shepherd Pass rather than in the Big Willie Bowl. It's a horrendous boulder slog and not too much flat, comfortable spots. Pickings are MUCH better out on the plateau area! I also can't really imagine wanting to haul a larger pack (well, then normal, I suppose) in there.

-L

I'm open for the ideas though I'd like to be as close as possible to williamson to get up the summit as soon as possible though I doubt it would add that much more to just camp out there.

I honestly had planned to summit Tyndall with a full pack on but i'm sure there is some place at the bottom where leaving the packs would be nice.

I'll have to study some pictures for this area.

compared to that first day you plan (are you starting at the Portal to do Whitney and get back down to Guitar lake?) those two segments I quoted are a morning stroll.

my two 10-year-olds went from Goddard Canyon to Muir Pass in one day, including a 2 hour fishing break at Evolution Lake, and that was uphill. Palisade Lakes to Little Pete Meadow is a 2/3 day hike at best, mostly downhill and only slowed down by cruddy trail conditions in the valley below the golden staircase (lots of trees across the trail and they;ve been there for a long time)


I've done the Muir Trail and variations of it many times, but never have I started in the south. My reasons:

a) keep the best stuff for the end. Excluding Yosemite itself, I find the trek from Yosemite to Kings Canyon much less "grand" than the stretch that starts at the Piute Creek bridge to Mt. Whitney.

b) low passes first, high passes last. If you're accimation isn't up to snuff, that is the way to go. I've never had altitude issues southbound, slept on Whitney on the last night, etc, even though I live at 900 feet year round.

c) Whitney is a piece of cake to climb once you have 200 miles of Muir behind you and you know there's pizza and beer waiting for you when you get down.

d) you carry the smaller food loads in the beginning of the hike, as resupply is much more frequently in the north. Once you get to Kings Canyon you'll be ready for the big box of food to get you to the end.

e) it's a motivation thing - the lure of climbing the highest peak in the lower 48 as the crown of the hike is a much stronger pull for me than to descend into the tourist masses in Yosemite. I've actually only started there twice in 8 hikes. People with boom boxes on their shoulders heading up the paved trail to the falls are my strongest memory of the opening stretch in '89, which was the last time I hiked out of the valley.

Given the number of days you have available, though, going south north should not be too difficult. I would budget more time in the first half and less in the north, though. The heavy pack with the extra food will be twice as bad up to Whitney, but you will have time to recover once you're over it. Later in the hike you'll be eating up the miles so fast, you'll wonder why you allocated so much time for that part of the trail.

Anyway, feel free to ask about the trail and areas nearby that may be worth a detour or different route altogether.

I've had a couple instances of bad luck too but mostly hitching has out worked okay. It helps to not be on a tight schedule.

I should add that downhill to Lone Pine, I've never had to walk. It's a lot easier to get a ride up there when you ask people who are about to drive down into the valley before they leave the parking lot.

One year I left my car at Horseshow Meadows where hitch-hiking is more challenging due to lack of traffic. So we brought bicycles, which we then stored with the nice people at the La Florista flower shop for the next 2 weeks before picking them back up on our way out from another Muir adventure.

Back then there was a Greyhound running at 10pm to Lee Vining... those were the days.

End of the JMT mid september we couldn't catch a ride to lone pine in the late afternoon. Tried for about an hour, then gave up and spent the night at the portal.

Yeah that's the plan...



Well information like this is nice to know because I picked little pete meadow based on I thought it might be too far to head to the bigger one or some where else.

I am not really worried if it wont take much of the day in fact I actually like the idea so I could fish or just plain relax in the beautiful sierras

I understand it's probably better to go the other way but a few reasons for me wanting to do it this way are I have never climbed Whitney from the front but I have done it from the back and hiked out that way, i'd like to end in yosemite because I have never been there before so doing half dome at the end seems like something really nice to do and also i'd like to climb williamson and if I turn the trip around it will be closed by the time I reach it.

Thanks for all the info, everything helps and as for detour stuff I would like to keep with the main route to at least do it once but if you know of anything really worth seeing off the trail then let me know

climing Whintey from the "front" is overrated Been there, done that... My favorite visit to the summit was to start just south of Glen Pass, cross Forester, eat supper below Guitar Lake, wait for the full moon to rise around 9pm, reach the summit by 3am - most amazing hike of my life.

As for areas worth seeing - there are areas of the Muir I absolutely disike, but then you want to do the "regular trail" at least once, so I shouldn't point those out, plus it may just be my preference.

The only really worth-while alternate that's close to the regular trail relates to your desire to climb Half Dome.

Half Dome used to be more fun when it was still legal to sleep on top. We used to do that on day 1 of our Muir hikes in the late 80s. Now I would go to Clouds Rest instead. Much better view anyway (Half Dome is better suited to "look at" than to "look from") and I don't think there's an overnight camping ban.

If you leave the Muir heading west from Sunrise High Sierra Camp to Sunrise Lakes and pick up the trail from Yenaya Lake to Clouds Restm, you can add that peak to your route before Half Dome and possibly still bag that one if still interested after looking at it from above. It's not much of a detour at all to go over Clouds Rest, but if you time it and the weather is good, a night on its summit will be unforgettable. No tent sites, but plenty of room for bags. I think last time I was up there we had 6 people on the summit at night. Bring plenty fo water - there's only one stream after Sunrise Lakes and it may be pretty dry depending on season.

The descent from Clouds rest is steep and drops you onto the JMT just east of the Half Dome Trail turnoff. All I recall about the regular JMT between that point and Sunrise High Sierra Camp is that it's dry and rather limited in vistas or anything else memorable.

Here's a map that gives you an idea of how little you are changing about the JMT to add a real highlight to the last section.