Sierra South. Mike White
garbage can! Rotting food is smelly and very attractive to bears. Never use a bear box as a food drop; its capacity is needed for people actually camping in its vicinity. Never leave a bear box unlatched or open, even when people are around.
Above timberline: Up above the tree line, there are no trees to hang your food bags from. But there are still bears—as well as mice, marmots, and ground squirrels—anxious to share your chow. If you don’t have a canister or bulletproof sack (the latter only where legal) but must hang your food, look for a tall rock with an overhanging edge, from which you can dangle your food bags high off the ground and well away from the face of the rock. Unlike bears, marmots and other critters have not learned to get your food by eating through the rope suspending it.Another option is to bag your food and push it deep into a crack in the rocks too small and too deep for a bear to reach into—but be sure you can still retrieve it. One of us has had good luck with this technique; use it only above timberline. You may lose a little food to mice or ground squirrels, but it won’t be much.When dayhiking from a base camp where you can’t put your food in a bear box or leave it in a canister, it’s safer to take as much of it with you as you can.
If a Bear Gets Your Food: Never try to get your food back from a bear. It’s the bear’s food now, and the bear will defend it aggressively against puny you. You may hear that there are no recorded fatalities in bear-human encounters in recent Sierra history. Of course, this isn’t true: Plenty of bears have been killed as a result of repeated encounters. Every time a bear gets some human food, that bear is a step closer to becoming a nuisance bear that has to be killed. And there have been very serious, though not fatal, injuries to humans in these encounters.
If, despite your best efforts, you lose your food to a bear, it may be the end of your trip but not of the world. You won’t starve to death in the maximum three to four days it will take you to walk out from even the most remote Sierra spot. Your pack is now much lighter. And you can probably beg the occasional stick of jerky or handful of gorp from your fellow backpackers along the way. So cheer up, clean up the mess, get going, and plan how you can do it better on your next trip.
A Word About Cars, Theft, and Car Bears: Stealing from and vandalizing cars are becoming all too common at popular trailheads. You can’t ensure that your car and its contents will be safe, but you can increase the odds. Make your car unattractive to thieves and vandals by disabling your engine (your mechanic can show you how), hiding everything you leave in the car, and closing all windows and locking all doors and compartments. Get and use a locking gas-tank cap. If you have more than one car, use the most modest one for driving to the trailhead.
Bearproof your car by not leaving any food in it and by hiding anything that looks like a picnic cooler or other food carrier—bears know what to look for. To a bear, a car with food in it is just an oversized can waiting to be opened. Some trailheads have bear boxes. Leave any food and toiletries you’re not taking into the backcountry in these bear boxes rather than in your car.
The Regulations: Call, write to, or get on the website of the agency in charge of the area you plan to visit in order to learn the latest regulations, especially those concerning bears and food storage. For each trailhead in this book, you’ll find the agency’s name, physical address, phone number, and web address (if there is one) under Information and Permits.
Wilderness and Campfire Permits
In most places, everyone who travels overnight into a national park or national forest wilderness is required to carry a wilderness permit from the agency administering the starting trailhead. If your trip extends through more than one national forest or through both a national forest and a national park, get your permit from the forest or park where your trip starts.
A wilderness permit is issued for a single trip with a specific start date, for specific entry and exit points, and for a specified amount of time. Your permit is inflexible as to the trailhead entry point and start date. A separate permit is required for each trip. Group sizes and numbers of stock are usually restricted.
The permit system has a couple functions: The agencies responsible for the backcountry learn how many people and head of stock are using each trailhead, so they can make better decisions to prevent overuse of these areas. By giving out information with the permit on how to camp safely, avoid impact on the wilderness, and properly deal with bears, the agencies also educate wilderness users.
During the summer months, forest rangers patrol many backcountry trails, and they may ask to see your wilderness permit. If you do not have one, you may be fined and expelled from the backcountry.
There are two ways to get a permit: in person (on demand) and by advance reservation. Whether you plan to apply for your wilderness permit in advance or at the time of your trip in person, we strongly suggest you telephone the administering agency or check its website first. Rules, regulations, and procedures for issuing permits change fairly often. Further, weather, runoff conditions, and forest fires sometimes close trails in the backcountry; you can learn about this, too, in your telephone call or web research. Within each trailhead chapter, we identify the agency in charge and how to get in touch with them for more information.
HELPFUL WEBSITE
SierraNevadaWild.gov (http://sierranevadawild.gov/) is a user-friendly government source for backcountry trip planning in Sierra Nevada national parks, forests, and public lands. You’ll find a wealth of wilderness information here—some via links—for all established Sierra Nevada wilderness areas, though not for proposed wilderness additions and wilderness study areas.
On-Demand Permits
You can go in person for a permit to an agency location near your entry point the day before or on the day you plan to begin your trip. The national forests and the national parks maintain a number of conveniently located facilities to serve you. Because of the severe cutbacks in funding, however, the agencies don’t know from year to year which locations will be open during the summer season. Use the information provided in each trailhead section to find the visitor center, ranger station, or satellite most convenient for you.
Reserving Permits in Advance
You can also reserve a permit by mail (and sometimes by email, fax, or phone) up to six months in advance of your trip. Use the information provided in each trailhead section to discover how and when to apply.
If you apply for a permit reservation in advance:
Know whether a fee applies; if so, include payment in the appropriate form. By mail: Include a money order or check for that amount made payable to the US Department of Agriculture—Forest Service for Forest Service wilderness areas and to the National Park Service for Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, or use a credit card. By fax or phone: Use a credit card. When using a credit card, supply the card type, number, and expiration date. Applications lacking the required fee will not be processed.
If applying by mail or fax, enclose or fax a completed wilderness permit application form, one for each trip, or write a letter containing the same information. If applying by phone, be ready to supply the same information. Some agencies’ websites have permit-application forms you can print out or download. If not, here is the information you need to supply: name, address, daytime phone, number of people in the party, method of travel (ski, snowshoe, foot, horse, etc.), number of stock (if applicable), start and end dates, entry and exit trailheads, principal destination, alternate dates and/or trailheads. You may also be asked for an itinerary.
Be sure to provide a second and even a third choice of trailhead and/or entry date, in case your first choice is not available.
If the agency will not mail your permit, find out where you should pick it up.
Quotas
For most trailheads, the agencies have set limits or quotas on the number of people who can enter a trailhead per day. Quotas are in effect mainly in the summer months; the time when they are in effect is called the quota period. Where quotas apply, only a limited number of advance reservations are accepted. The remainder of