YARTS logistics and which direction to hike TM/Agnew Meadows

[potatopants88]

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out logistically which way to hike between Tuolumne Meadows and Agnew Meadows. First off, I'm having some sort of mental block trying to understand the YARTS schedule between Mammoth Lakes and Tuolumne Meadows. Can you help?

When does the shuttle from Mammoth Mountain Inn to Tuolumne Meadows leave?
When does the shuttle from Tuolumne Meadows to Mammoth Mountain Inn leave?

Second, I'm having a hard time finding a resource that covers elevation and mileage so I can figure out which is the easier direction. Any guidance you can give in terms of info or recommended sources would be most welcome.

Thanks for your help!

[dan]

The YARTS schedule is at http://www.yarts.org/schedules.html
They only head to Mammoth in Summer. The bus reaches Mammoth late in the evening and heads back to Yosemite early in the morning.

The easier direction is Tuolumne to Mammoth, as Agnew Meadows is a lot lower than Tuolumne. But I've done both directions without major trouble. There's a fair amount of climbing from Agnew Meadows up to 1000 Island Lake, but it's not steep.

[AlmostThere]

What you will actually do is get the shuttle from Agnew to the ski resort, another shuttle to town, and the YARTS to Tuolumne.

I would drive to mammoth and leave the car there, shuttle back to tuolumne, and hike back to the car.

[potatopants88]

Thanks, this helps. That schedule on the yarts site just looks weird to my brain for some reason.

So if we got to Mammoth early enough in the morning, we could leave our car and catch the morning shuttle up to Tuolumne. That makes a lot of sense. That way we're not arriving back at Agnew Meadows on our last day and having to wait until the following morning to catch the shuttle. I knew I didn't want to do that.

Thanks so much for the help.

[AlmostThere]

Depends on where you want to leave the car. If you want to risk parking it somewhere in Mammoth, no problem. If you want to park it at the trailhead, you'll still need to ride the two shuttles (the Reds Meadow $8 shuttle and the free ski resort shuttle to town) to get out to where the YARTS picks up, and I'm sure those don't run before 8 am.

It would be easy to drive over the day before you want to start, park the car, hike around Devil's Postpile, get on the Reds shuttle late in the day, stay the night in town, and catch the YARTS at 8:30 - the Shilo Inn it stops in front of is right handy, and if you'd rather camp, there are a national forest campground and an RV resort campground within 5 - 10 minutes walk from there.