Hiking from Yosemite to Kings and Sequoia

[rawcore]

Okay so I'm planning on visiting Yosemite for the first time in June. Has anyone done the hike from Yosemite to Kings? How hard is it? Are there nice campsites? How easy is it to navigate? Anything I should know about?

Thank you

[AlmostThere]

Um... "the hike from Yosemite to Kings"? Do you mean the John Muir Trail? Because there are plenty of routes one could take, some are more straightforward than others...

I'm not even sure where to start with "is there anything I should know." How to backpack for 20 days at a stretch might be good. How to pack a backpack, how to pack a bear canister, how to get wilderness permits... maybe you should start. How much backpacking experience do you have?

[rawcore]

Um... "the hike from Yosemite to Kings"? Do you mean the John Muir Trail? Because there are plenty of routes one could take, some are more straightforward than others...

Yeah I guess so, I was looking into it. Getting a bus that gets into the visitor centre and can't imagine that the route starts there. I looked it up and on google it says it's a 100 mile route (or 38hrs) going along John Muir Trail/Pacific Crest Trail/Sierra High Rte to get to Kings. Being generous I gave myself 5 days (less than 8hrs a day) of hiking, then Kings Canyon to Sequoia looks like it would be about 3 more days beyond that, thus my confusion over the length of the John Muir.

I'm not even sure where to start with "is there anything I should know." How to backpack for 20 days at a stretch might be good. How to pack a backpack, how to pack a bear canister, how to get wilderness permits... maybe you should start. How much backpacking experience do you have?

I've been hiking all my life, but less backpacking. And yes I looked at all that.

[AlmostThere]

Well, to start with... the JMT is 210 miles long and ends at the very top of Mt Whitney, and then there's 11 more miles to get to Whitney Portal.

Sierra High Route is probably a bad idea if you are asking if things are easy to navigate, as it requires compass/map skills and some skill at selecting routes/routefinding, there is no trail.

Most people do 20-25 days, hiking the JMT, with planned resupplies - you mail yourself a big bucket of food to Vermillion Valley Resort and/or Muir Trail Ranch. Google is doing you no favors. And you are late entering the lottery for the permit to do it.

Here you go: https://www.pcta.org/discover-the-trail ... uir-trail/

Five days might get you to Mammoth Lakes, if you hike long days.

[rawcore]

Okay, hiking the JMT doesn't seem logistical. Is there a good route that I can start at the visitor centre and do a 4 night circuit around Yosemite? Have been trying to look at campsites, problem is a lot of them are first come first serve which may be problematic if I arrive late and it's full?

[AlmostThere]

I'm not sure which campsites you are looking at. Camp 4 is no longer first come first serve, there's a lottery the day before. All the campgrounds in the valley are reservable and usually booked the first few minutes reservations are available. The backpacker camp in the valley is available even without a backpacker permit if you are arriving via public transportation - it's walk in, and you may end up sharing a bear locker and campsite but so far as I know you aren't going to be tossed out because it doesn't get "full" - they just keep packing people in. With a wilderness permit, you are given a night before and a night following your itinerary for backcountry travel.

Four night circuit around Yosemite as in the entire park, no. You can probably do four nights along the north rim of Yosemite Valley and drop down Snow Creek trail back to the valley floor, sure. That would give you some great overlooks of the Valley and all the granite.

https://www.backpacker.com/trips/alone- ... -north-rim

You can start from the valley floor at Rockslides trailhead, which is harder to find but still a permittable trailhead. Or catch a ride on a bus up the road toward Crane Flat and ask the driver to let you off at the Old Big Oak Flat trailhead parking on the way up.

[Phil]

June usually still entails a considerable amount of snow on the trails at elevations around and about 9000+/- ft. Mosquitoes and high creek and river flows can also be problems, so you get really limited in trails to choose from. One of the general exceptions is the North Rim of the valley that AlmostThere mentioned.

[AlmostThere]

Okay, upon re-reading, I think it might be needed to break this down a little more...

There are two kinds of camping. In the Yosemite Valley you can only stay in campgrounds. You cannot backpack anywhere.

Backpacking, aka hiking and then camping in the wilderness (which the Valley floor is NOT) requires a wilderness permit that you get at the visitor center. You select a trailhead you want to start at - there are a number of them around the valley floor and the Old Big Oak Flat trailhead I mentioned is on the way out of the valley. You rent a bear canister and pack all your food, trash and anything with a smell inside, each night, instead of having designated campsites you find flat spots for your tent along the way.

You probably want to reserve a spot if you are staying in the valley and day hiking, not backpacking. You probably want to reserve a wilderness permit (not the same thing, not the same process) if you want to backpack in the wilderness. All the details are at nps.gov/yose - you can find info in the menus. Wilderness permit reservations are done online now, there's a link on the backpacking/wilderness permit page. Campsites in the valley are reserved via recreation.gov - with the exception of the backpacker campsites, which are all walk in.