Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne Fastpack

[Jeremy N]

Companion forum thread to: Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne Fastpack

Hello all, First time posting here and figured I’d start it off with a trip report. I did a two day, 35 mile fastpack up the Grand Canyon Tuolumne fro

[jscott]

Interesting, I saw no bears when I did this in reverse years ago, altho they’re around in spades for sure. I DID see several rattlesnakes around Pate Valley, which is notorious for them. For me, much worse than bears.

I climbed up to White Wolf from around Pate; either way, going up or coming down, that section of trail is a steep route for sure, and pretty long.

I did this in the spring when I discovered the route I wanted to take was completely snowed in. So I went down instead, though the Grand Canyon. Of course the issue then is having the Tuolumne cover sections of trail that run at the base of cliffs. I did manage it on a pretty big snow year to boot. This is a decent spring shake down hike.

[Paul Wagner]

I hiked down from Murphy Creek into the GCT on September 16-17.  I certainly didn’t do as many miles as you did, but then, I’m a lot older than you.  I didn’t see any bears, but I did see plenty of bear scat on the trail. I took one day to hike down below Waterwheel Falls, then hiked back out the next day.

BTW, I think most bears in Yosemite are tagged these days–not just the problem ones.  And yeah, when the water is that low, the fish are not quite so much fun.  Glad you had a good trip.  Mine was memorable but a bit smoky…

 

[JStanky]

I did this hike last year but in August, and to jscott’s point, that valley was full of rattlers…. I had a couple of too close for comfort encounters that had me a bit on edge.  Maybe earlier in the summer they are more active.  There was actually a guy airlifted out a couple of miles outside of Pate Valley a day ahead of us on the trail.  Gorgeous trail…. but very “snakey”  Very impressive that you covered that 24 miles on day 2.

[Brock Dubbels (Spaceman)]

thank you for posting, planning to do this with my wife in september. I was thinking of adding the upper loop of andrew skurkas high route. Anybody try it?

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