[pct-l] Food Cache

[Bob Bankhead]

Possible? Certainly, if you have the time and transportation.

Practical? Not in my opinion. If you're far enough from a re-supply station to make caching worth considering, you'd better have a good plan B if your cache is gone when you get there - or you just can't find it? 

In going from Yosemite to Manning Park, I cached only once - we dug in a cache in the picnic grounds at Sonora Pass (and had a heck of a time finding it again). I would have also liked to do so at the Kearsarge Pass/PCT trail junction just to avoid the detour into Independence, but the ranger at Onion Valley didn't like the looks of our shovel and lightly loaded pack. 

If you do cache and are travelling with others, everyone should go on every caching trip so everyone knows where to find any given cache. A cache does you no good if the one who cached it isn't with you at retrieval time. Especially if it's buried, it can be hard to find even with a GPS and a good description.

Best bet - find a friend or someone from this list who would like to have an all-expenses paid overnight hiking experience while humping your resupply into an established trail junction. 

Lacking and/or supplementing that, either ship yourself a series of resupply boxes or plan to buy locally. The latter supports the local economy and enables a more favorable attitude on the part of the locals to us stinky, filthy hikers. Be sure to thank those who give you rides and other magic along the trail.

A helpful suggestion: If you know you'll be travelling with others, everyone should address their boxes to everyone else in the group so that if needed, anyone of you can retrieve everyone's boxes. It's quite helpful if you're trying to make a pick-up before the PO closes - you can send one person ahead without their pack to make the pickup for all. If someone quits, it also allows any of the others to either order the dropee's box returned to them or to pick it up and make use of whatever they need from it's contents. It's called "flexibility".

Wandering Bob