Food Resupplies and Car Logistics 8/1-8/2
On this day I began the process of hiking the third part of my 500 mile PCT Sierra Section trek, in which my wife helped me to drop off my car at Donner Pass, two food resupplies at Echo Summit and Sonora Pass, then arrive back in Mammoth Lakes, fully prepared to hike 250 more miles non-stop from where I left off in July.
I tried my best to figure out a way to do those logistics all by myself, using buses and shuttles, but it was disheartening. Donner Pass was the real problem. After spending a day driving there, dropping off food on the way, I would have to sleep in the car overnight, spend a second day getting to Reno via hiking ten miles plus two bus rides, staying overnight at a motel, catching another bus south to Mammoth, spending yet another night in a motel, then taking the fourth and final shuttle bus up the hill to the trailhead. Plus eating meals on the way because I needed every ounce of the seven days of backpacking food in my pack for the trek. The time and expense was formidable.
I was ready to bite the bullet and do it anyway when Vicki took pity on me. Maybe she was rewarding me for coming home two weeks earlier to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. If so, I was glad to accept her help. She volunteered to take both of our cars north, drop off mine at the far end, then help me with the food stashes and the restart at Mammoth. After which she would drive back home alone. What a great wife I have!
Of course, I also tried asking her, for the umpteenth time, whether she wanted to hike the PCT with me. To which she replied “Don’t push your luck.”
So I spent a week making sure that everything was ready, and then we left home on August 1st in two cars. It’s a 600 mile drive to Donner Pass from San Diego, and that was a lot to do in one day. We broke it up into manageable chunks of two hours each, and also left home early, in the dark, to get the jump on the evil LA traffic. We took breaks to get gas, to eat, and sometimes just to take a walk. It worked out OK, and we arrived at a National Forest campground just west of the pass.
It was called the North Fork Campground, because it was in the forest near the North Fork of the North Fork of the American River. Really! What a mouthful. By the time the river got up here in the mountains it was more like a creek, but that was OK. And the campsite wasn’t even full. It was on a first-come-first-serve policy. We had our choice of spots, and took one near the back of the loop. Both cars fit in the entryway.
It was still quite hot out at this elevation, so we decided to take a short hike to stretch our legs and give the afternoon a chance to cool off. My topo map said that there was a waterfall nearby. Vicki and I are gluttons for waterfalls, so of course we had to take a walk down the trail to check it out. There was at least one deep pool along the waterfall that some teenagers were jumping into from the top. It looked scary but fun. Maybe more scary than fun. I kept waiting for one of them to jump, so I could get a photo or video, but they never got around to daring each other to do it again. Then we turned around and headed back to camp.
For dinner, we each ate some of the leftovers we bought on the road, then went to bed before sunset. We’d been driving since 3am, and we really needed the rest. But the following morning we felt fine. We had more driving ahead of us, but we also took the time to eat a proper freeze-dried breakfast, like we always do when camping. Then it was time to drive our two cars to the Donner Pass PCT Trailhead.
I parked my car in a shady spot near some pines, and double-checked the interior to make sure I left only what I had to in the car, that I had my keys for when I arrived here in three weeks time, and that my backpack was now in Vicki’s car, also complete with everything I was going to be carrying. I also put my hiking clothes in her car, and left a set of driving clothes in my car. I left some snacks inside Vicki’s older-style bear canister for when I arrived, and a couple of sodas as a treat. Then I locked it and hoped that I remembered everything.
Since this was my trip, Vicki let me do the driving that day. She would be driving home for six hours tomorrow, so today was my turn. Fair enough. We drove east on I-80 then south on Highway 89 along Lake Tahoe, and stopped at a couple of vista points along the way. It was part of our get-our-butts-moving-every-two-hours strategy.
A short distance after that, at South Lake Tahoe, we turned west on Highway 50 and drove up the hill to Echo Summit. The PCT came by near a trailhead parking lot just south of Echo Lake. Echo Lake was too busy with tourists (and bears) to leave a full bear canister of food nearby. This closed-for-summer ski resort was the perfect spot. My plan was to stash a small blue BV-450 bear canister there, crammed with four days of food. I found a good spot down in large crack between big granite boulders, and hoped that the bears didn’t find it and move it around. They wouldn’t get into it, but how would I find it myself otherwise?
It was a long drive south from there to Sonora Pass. Many more miles of driving than the 75 miles of the PCT. We drove over Monitor Pass on Highway 89 until meeting up with good old US 395. We took that south to Highway 108, hung a right, and drove on up the steep winding grade to the pass.
There was a big parking lot at the PCT trailhead. Vicki got out and walked around a bit while I headed off to find a safe spot to stash my large blue BV-500 bear canister. This one had six days of food inside. Really I needed five days to get to Echo Summit from here, but I also needed five days of food to get to Donner Pass from there. Hence, I would carry an extra day for the first five days. It was all good. These bear cans were my old ones that I no longer use now that I shelled out the big bucks for an ultralight carbon fiber Bearikaid can. That’s the one in my backpack. These others were simply saving me from hitchhiking into town to get my food.
Now, theoretically, the US Forest Service frowns on leaving food in bear canisters for weeks at a time. I don’t know why. They are perfectly happy when you leave one outside your tent every night! I understand their reasoning, even if the logic is ultimately faulty. However, I feel that my own due diligence in can placement was enough to prevent a bear from eating my food. That is all that matters in the end.
As we left the trailhead parking lot, we discovered three PCT Thru-Hikers standing on the highway hitchhiking to the west. We wanted to head east, but I also knew that Kennedy Meadows North was down that hill, and I had never been there. Vicki wanted to give them a ride, so we did. The hill was very steep, the car was overloaded, and the car’s brakes began stinking like the pads were starting to burn, but we made it to the side road leading to KM North. We parked in the lot, then went inside to have some lunch. There were tons of tourists, campers, fishermen, kids, and smelly PCT hikers all over the place. It felt like home. And the food turned out to be quite good, and not too expensive, either. We were glad we came. Then we had to drive all the way back up the hill.
It was raining lightly when we arrived at Sonora Pass the second time, and as we headed downhill (at a 27% grade!) we remembered about a “side quest” that we saw on the way in. It was called Leavitt Falls Vista. Well, as waterfall addicts, anything with a waterfall is something we’ll try. The view over Leavitt Meadows was amazing, and we remembered hiking down there, far across the way, with similarly stormy clouds last year, back in 2023. So we parked the car and walked along the edge of a cliff on a small unmarked trail. We weren’t entirely sure what we were looking for. But we found it eventually. The waterfall was far below us, and it took a bit of maneuvering on the cliffside to get a decent view, but photos and videos were taken successfully.
We were expecting today’s driving to be relatively short, but all these side trips really made the time fly by. After the falls, we simply wanted to get to our motel in Mammoth right away. After a couple more hours of driving, past Bridgeport, Lee Vining, Mono Lake, and the June Lake Loop, we finally arrived in the town of Mammoth Lakes. It was late enough that we decided to get some take-out for dinner, and eat it later. The room itself was good, and we carried our stuff inside. Then it was time to eat!
We hung out in the room until the temperature cooled down. We took a walk around the area and generally stretched our legs. Then it was time to spend one last night together, before we parted ways in the morning.
For a topographic map of the hike see my CalTopo Page
For LOTS more photos of the trek see my Flickr Page
<< Back to Day 25 Onward to Day 27 >> 
hikingtales.com 