[pct-l] Travel conundrum: Los Angeles to Mammoth Lake

[mark v]

Good PCT-Lers, Here's a doozy:

Assuming my feet are still taking me northbound in
mid-June, i have to get off the trail for one week to
fly east. I'm guessing i'll be at about Mammoth Lake. 
Maybe Independence, maybe Tuolumne, but i'm aiming at
Mammoth as my best guess.  Getting off the trail i
have no problem, since Emma is meeting me with a car,
and we've made flights from Los Angeles.  But for the
way back, ugh.

I've looked up the bus and rail schedules.  I arrive
back in LA on a Friday at 10am.  From there, i can
take a Metrolink train to Lancaster, switch to a Kern
bus to Mojave and one to Ridgecrest.  But that's my
dead-end.  I arrive too late in the day to catch a
CREST bus north from Ridgecrest, and guess what...the
bus only runs on weekdays.  So that leaves me very
stuck.

Is there some way to get from LA to Mammoth that i'm
overlooking?  Some way that doesn't take more than 1
day?  I guess i could take the train to Merced, and
take Yosemite busses all the way across the next day,
but that's a 2 day circuitous way to get back to the
trail.  And we're not even figuring in the difficulty
of shuttling or hitching to the trailhead from town.  

Any ideas would be welcomed!

markv



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