by AlmostThere » Tue Dec 01, 2015 11:42 am
For a true backcountry experience, I go to Sequoia/Kings Canyon NPs or the national forest wildernesses. Not Yosemite. And I stay away from the Rae Lakes Loop or the High Sierra Trail. If a trail shows up in a bucket list or guide book, I look for other trails if solitary hiking is more my goal. Yosemite by default is not the place to be to avoid people.
If you would like to get away from crowds, see the Sierra high country, etc... rent a big light bear canister from Wild Ideas (online, by mail) and load it up with your food, get a permit from one of the trailheads (from the Sierra National Forest offices) up highway 168 (Edison over Silver or Goodale Pass, for example, though that's touching on the JMT - or Maxson trailhead out of Courtright Reservoir) and go out for a loop.
The odds are great if you are anywhere near the JMT, you will see one person after the next, but anywhere else in the Ansel Adams or John Muir wildernesses more than a day's hiking from the trailhead, you will see a couple people at most for most of the week.
The scenery of the front country in Yosemite is worth the crowds - at least once. You will be missing out if you don't see it. For a backcountry Sierra experience, though, it's not really where I'd go. A loop from Ansel Adams into the park will be more likely the thing -- say, heading up from the Clover Meadow trailhead through the niche to Cora Lakes and beyond, crossing into Yosemite and heading round Red Peak Pass then back, will get you more solitude and less permitting headaches than anything permitted through the park. Going from the Fernandez trailhead through Liliian/Lady Lakes then up Isberg Pass into the park would be absolutely splendid hiking, classic Sierra scenery -- if the snow levels are such that getting into the trailheads on those roads would be possible that early. And, you need a good rough road car -- either high clearance or skill in getting low clearance cars in places where people with trucks get nervous.
As much as I love Yosemite, as beautiful as it is, any time someone says 'true backcountry experience' it is the last place that I think to send them. For me, rarely-used trails in faraway places where the yellow columbines flourish in granite and pika yell at me and we see wildlife only briefly before it runs away is true backcountry. Tame herds of deer that walk within four feet of you, bears that walk away when you yell at them and return an hour later in hopes that you've left out a sandwich, chipmunks that sit on your foot and unprepared people who ask for directions because they managed to hike out to a backcountry lake and can't remember what trail they came in on, that's been a Yosemite experience for me. I did 8 and a half days from Florence Lake (along the JMT, one of the resupply points) to Courtright - the first two days were on the JMT. We left it and saw one person with a dog for the entire rest of the trip, wandering over trails that were falling into such disuse that sometimes we had to look around for it. It was fabulous -- quiet -- beautiful -- most of all, without people around, peaceful for just the three of us. We did not want to come out at all. But, we had a ride coming to pick us up, and I was nearly out of food... one of the best trips ever, and not possible in the parks. And I walked in and got the permit for free, no reservation.
Go to Yosemite, hike a five day out of Hetch Hetchy -- that's about as untrammeled as Yosemite will get. People will be thronging to hike the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, the JMT from Tuolumne Meadows, the area around Half Dome and Clouds Rest. They will be hammering the phones and fax machines to get permits from Happy Isles, Glacier Point and Mono Meadow. The one-nighters will occupy Ten Lakes, Young Lakes, Saddlebag Lakes (just outside the park on Tioga but no quotas and pretty much the fallback for all the people who are unable to get permits out of Tuolumne Meadows). A loop over Red Peak Pass and back down would be good as well, but your first couple of days will be quite busy with day hikers then with people doing the High Sierra Camp loop (tent cabins and showers make that accessible to the non-backpacking crowd).