Getting to the Trail

A JMT hike begins six months in advance with the acquisition of a permit. I’ll go into more detail about that process in the next post. But, back in February we got a permit to hike Northbound (Mt Whitney to Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley). After that, it was just a matter of waiting for our assigned start date to roll around.

Now, a few days before our permit date, we are ready to go! With our direction chosen and permit in hand, the only thing left to do is travel to the trailhead where we are starting. We decided to drive from Texas to California through Arizona, which meant we needed to cross the Arizona Trail. That ended up happening in Flagstaff, so we stopped for a bit as we passed through to walk a mile on the AZT.

We spent a couple of days driving out to Mammoth Lakes, CA where we left our car, and then took an arranged shuttle to Horseshoe Meadow in Inyo National Forrest. Our shuttle driver had thru-hiked the PCT and the Arizona Trail, so we all had plenty to talk about for the 2 1/2 hour drive. She had lots of questions for Rocket about the AT as well. She knew we were planning to camp at the Cottonwood Pass trailhead (which has trash bins) before starting our hike the next day, so asked if we brought any luxury food for dinner. Rocket responded: Yes, Mountain House! As soon as they said that, we realized how ridiculous it sounded. I guess most people would not consider freeze-dried food a luxury, but, for us it is! We even brought a second one for breakfast, since we don’t need to fit them in our bear canisters or carry out the packaging.