Day 0 - Getting to the JMT — What We Saw, What We Read

Our car parked at Half Dome Village getting a few visitors.

The logistics of getting to the JMT can sometimes be tricky. The most common approach (besides having nice friends in the area to drive you to and pick you up from the trailhead) seems to be parking a car at one end of the route. We chose to park our car in Yosemite and take a series of shuttles down to Lone Pine and up to our trailhead. Of course, since we were starting our hike in September, the logistics of getting a shuttle was not as straightforward as we had hoped. The typical public transportation itinerary for getting to Lone Pine from Yosemite looks like this:

Yosemite Area Rapid Transit System (YARTS) bus from Yosemite to Mammoth Lakes ($18 per person one way)
Eastern Sierra Transit shuttle from Mammoth Lakes to Lone Pine *$14.25 per person one way)
Hitch a ride or call one of the local shuttle services (Lone Pine Keith/Lone Pine Kurt charge $75 from Lone Pine to the trailhead; exceptional service!)

Unfortunately we hit a few bumps along the way. First, our permit set our start date as Tuesday, September 5th, the day immediately following Labor Day. As a result, the Eastern Sierra Transit shuttle was not running on Labor Day Monday. In addition, beginning in September YARTS runs only on weekends. So, it looked like we would have to take the YARTS bus on Sunday and then find camping in Mammoth Lakes for two days before being able to catch shuttles to the start of our hike. Then we caught a break! We joined the John Muir Trail Yahoo Group and posted asking if anyone was heading down from Mammoth Lakes through Lone Pine on Labor Day and was willing to give us a ride. We were in luck! A generous hiker named Larry and his friends (just finishing up from a weekend near Devil's Postpile) offered to give us a ride. In all, our route to the trailhead ended up looking like this:

Sunday September 3rd: Parked our car at Yosemite's Half Dome Village in the afternoon. YARTS shuttle to Mammoth Lakes in the evening. Camp in Mammoth Lakes overnight.
Monday September 4th. Catch a ride from Larry down to Lone Pine. Picked up by Lone Pine Kieth at the Eastern Sierra Interagency Ranger Station and taken to Horseshoe Meadow Campground.
Tuesday September 5th. Already at our campsite ready to begin the trail!

We arrived in Yosemite on one of the hottest days of the year. Our car lumbered up the winding roads through a smoky haze of nearby fires and sweltering 100 degree heat. Given that it was Labor Day weekend and a Sunday, Yosemite was crowded and we circled for at least an hour trying to find a parking spot. Eventually we found a spot and took a few hours to explore Yosemite Valley before catching our bus.

Peaks of Yosemite Valley shrouded in a smoky haze.

A sudden rainfall around 4pm took us by surprise. It cleared the valley of the persistent haze and opened up views to the peaks towering above the valley. It also, unfortunately, caused a tree to fall on the main road exiting the park that would take us to Mammoth Lakes that evening. We learned that the tree had fallen on a car and a rescue team was on their way as well as a team to assess roadway safety. We felt fortunate for our safety and waited for a few more hours in the valley while the crew cleared the road.

After a long ride, our bus finally brought us to Mammoth Lakes around midnight. We stepped out into the night in a sleepy daze and walked five minutes to the nearby New Shady Rest campground and pitched a tent in the dark. We were grateful to find a site on Labor Day weekend and a place to sleep for the night. Our night was colder than expected, so the next morning we made our way to a local gear store and bought a couple extra sleeping bag liners and base layers for the trail. Then we found a place to sit, charge our phones, read about the trail and wait for a call from Larry for our ride to Lone Pine.

Larry and his friends were incredibly friendly and kind people. We threw our packs in the back of his Ford pickup, climbed in the front and chatted for the hour and a half ride to Lone Pine. They had all hiked the trail before and gave us suggestions and encouragement (and some peace of mind about bears) along the way. We hope to pay it forward and one day provide a ride to a future JMT hiker like Larry did for us.

Lone Pine Kieth was waiting for us at the Ranger station when we arrived a couple hours later. We picked up our permit and hopped in his Jeep to begin the steep climb into the Sierras. We set up our tent, ate a hot meal, and were just settling into our sleeping bags when a gigantic charter bus rolled into the campground. We were shocked that a bus like that could navigate the winding road up into the mountains, let alone in the dark! Gradually, the bus released from it a multitude of young campers on a trip from Santa Barbara. With only a few chaperoning adults, they were left to their own devices to set up their shelters and prepare meals as we (and later we heard many of the other backpackers camping there) laid in our bags hoping and waiting that someone would go tell them to quiet down. All in all, it was a relatively smooth trip to the trailhead, completed in several legs, just so that we could begin our hike!