JMT South Bound Itinerary

Garrett,

I think it looks fine.

My only advice is to be flexible. I came up with a similar itinerary (although 14 day), and completely disregarded it once out there. We ended up finishing in 11 days. We went fast when we felt like going fast; we stopped and just hung out when we felt like stopping. There's great camping along the entire JMT, save for a few few-mile-long stretches.

As of late, I've stopped making itineraries for backpacking trips. I just divide the total mileage by 25 or 20 or 15 depending on my companions, and that tells me how many days long the trip is.

If you take Erik the Black's trail atlas with you, he has established camp sites and water indicated, which makes it even easier.

I don't mean to come off as criticizing you for making an itinerary–as I said, I did too! Just trying to emphasize that sticking to it isn't particularly important.

Thanks Adam!

No criticism taken on my end, I appreciate the honest feed back. I will say I was reading through your trip report again yesterday (and looking at a few pictures :)) so I'm glad to see you posting a reply. Its encouraging for me to see your plan vs actual, aka learn be flexible and enjoy the hike.

Thanks for the feed back and the awesome trip report!

I'll second Adams comments. Be flexible as the trail and weather will really dictate where you end up each night. We ended up not sticking to the "plan" last year on the JMT at all. However, I will be heading out again on the trail in a few weeks for 15 days and once again made an itinerary. Helps pass the time during the winter when all you can think about is getting back on the trail in 6 long months.

With all that said, I would reconsider trying to camp at Sawmill. We found a camp a little ways up the Sawmill Pass trail along the creek (actually between the two channels in the creek) and it was not great. You are better off hiking down a few more miles to find a better camp or hike down to Twin Lakes. I don't recall seeing anything great after Sawmill until you get to Woods Creek.

Funny you should mention this Arn:

> With all that said, I would reconsider trying to camp at Sawmill.
> We found a camp a little ways up the Sawmill Pass trail along the
> creek (actually between the two channels in the creek) and it was
> not great. You are better off hiking down a few more miles to find
> a better camp or hike down to Twin Lakes. I don't recall seeing
> anything great after Sawmill until you get to Woods Creek.

That was one of the few nearly campless sections that I could recall.

We poked around at the Sawmill Pass junction, but didn't see anything great, so we continued down towards Wood's Creek, expecting to find more obvious camping along Wood's Creek. We passed one or two established sites on the way, but all were quite occupied.

We ended up camping at Wood's Creek crossing, but got in late (after dark). Not really a problem, but made for a longer day than we had anticipated.