6 night backpack from White Wolf questions (Trip Report)

[Oregon Rainrunner]

We are looking to do a 6 day backpack trip in Yosemite late August.
We have our wilderness permit to start and finish at White Wolf.
We would like to start at White Wolf, head up the GCT to Toulumne Meadows where we would restock our food / shower. Then we would follow the John Muir trail down to Sunrise Lakes and cut over to May Lake and then the 10 Lakes trail back to White wolf. It looks to be about 84 miles which is doable for us, even with the elevation and the elevation change.


My questions are:
Do I need to get more than the White Wolf permit to do this route?

And if so, What other 6 day trip would you recommend from White Wolf including GCT would you recommend. ( we don't care to do really short days and hang around the camp the rest of the day, so spending the whole 6 days in the canyon isn't what we would like to do)

Can I mail my supply's to Tuolumne Meadows like the PCT hikers do?

With the drought, will finding water on this route be hard to impossible that late in the summer with out dipping out of the lakes?






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[paula53]

There are no showers in Tuolumne Meadows. The only showers are at Tuolumne High Sierra Camp, and they are only for the guests staying there.

[AlmostThere]

You may need two permits if you plan to stay at Tuolumne Meadows in the middle of the trip. Exiting the wilderness generally terminates the permit - if you walk along the road, for example, instead of crossing it and continuing on the trail. Or stay at a frontcountry campground - the Tuolumne Meadows campground is outside the wilderness and you need to be at least four miles from any trailhead there to camp for the night to be considered wilderness camping. If you stop for your resupply, then continue hiking and camp in the wilderness, I suspect you will be able to do this in one permit. You should verify with a ranger.

Why wouldn't you want to use lake water? You need to filter or otherwise purify water anyway so there is no real difference.

[Oregon Rainrunner]

Thanks for the info.
No we don't plan on camping in Tuolumne Meadows. I was thinking of the first night somewhere around Pate Valley, the second night somewhere around Return Creek, Third night around Young Lakes, Fourth night somewhere around Catherdral Lakes, fifth night maybe around Raisin Lake, sixth night around Ten Lakes, then head back to White Wolf.
The first and last days will be partial hiking days since we have to pick up the bear canisters and pack them, the last day will be shorter mileage. We will be using purifying pills, and would prefer to use flowing water instead of lake water due to the possibility of an off taste from the lake that late in the summer.

[AlmostThere]

I would think that the chlorine dioxide taste would pretty much override any additional "flavor." Most of the lakes have no oaks around them, so no tannins to taint the water. (If you are planning to use iodine, you might reconsider since it does not really do much against giardia.)

Young Lakes to Cathedral is a lot of hiking. If you are thinking of taking the shuttle or walking the road to the next trailhead that'll definitely nullify a wilderness permit. There's not a connecting trail that doesn't take you miles out of the way.

I hope you have experience in hiking at elevation since you are really planning some ambitious miles.

[balzaccom]

Young Lakes to Cathedral has to be about what, 12 miles? And not too much up and down.

But if this were my trip, I think I would go from Glen Aulin over Pothole Dome to Cathedral...and then from there straight cross-country down to Tenaya Lake, where I could pick up the Murphy's Creek trail to Ten Lakes Basin.

It's still a lot of hiking. Just be prepared to bail out if you need to do that...the good news is that after the first couple of days you'll always be within about a half-day hike of the highway...and can hitch a ride back to White Wolf somehow...

[AlmostThere]

It is perhaps a lot of hiking - if you hike at lower elevation, and don't have a lot of experience above 6,000 feet. It may be not as much hiking as you normally do, if you go to high elevation often. That's wholly subjective. But the majority of the folks who come along when I take my hiking group out to higher elevations find 12 miles is quite a bit more than they thought it was.

[Oregon Rainrunner]

Thanks for all the great info.

We hike up here in Oregon in the Cascades. This year we plan on a lot of day hikes in the Columbia Gorge heading up several of the mountains with around 3,000 ft elevation gains pretty much straight up, then several overnight backpack trips on Mt Hood up to the 6,000 to 8,000 ft elevations. When we have done our loop hikes around the different mountains in the Cascades, most of these are around 6,000 ft. My wife did a 100 mile backpack at Philmont with the scouts a few years ago and that had elevations up 10,000, and she did fine, they had done practice hikes all summer before it.

I will plan cutoffs in case we want to cut it short, but I am pretty confident that we could be able to handle this trip by the end of the summer when we finally have our "hiking" legs under us, plus we both run and bike on top of our hiking, but after reading these comments and some on the PCT blogs, we are thinking about shortening it to around 60 miles. We could do this by heading back to Glen Aulin from Tuolumne meadows and then down to the 10 lakes trail.

[Oregon Rainrunner]

We did our backpack this last week and had a wonderful time.
Thank you everyone for your suggestions, it was greatly appreciated.

Here is a link to our trip report and pictures on Portland hikers.
A great site if you ever plan on hiking or backpacking here in Oregon.
Yosemite backpack trip - Portland Hikers

Thanks again
Kevin