Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Resupply Cache

That would be about right. To get to Junction from anywhere is going to be a minimum 3 day trip with 3 animals and a packer. And to do that, it would have to be Rock Creek Pack Station coming from Cottonwood or Onion Valley Pack Station coming over Shepard Pass. Might even be 4 days.



True to a certain extent. Most trail crews (though not all) require some level of stock or helicopter support. Both Yosemite and Sequoia Kings use stock extensively.

The down side is stock causes impacts -- both mechanical on trails and environmental as a result of manure and grazing -- that is disproportionate to the number of people they bring in.

Somewhere between 3% and 6% of stock (in a Yosemite study) carry both Giardia and Cryptosporidium. Stock manure and urine dumps large quantities of nitrogen into watersheds that likely contributes to algae blooms in lakes and streams. And, of course, when they're grazed, they remove tons of grasses, forbes etc. from the meadow and riparian ecosystems; the loose grazing also destroys fragile habitat that, in Wilderness, is supposed to be protected.

My main problem with stock is, to the extent we agree that numbers of people should be limited to some level of carrying capacity, then stock is not considered in that calculation by any of the agencies involved in Wilderness management.They're treated separately as if they're a user group with the same privileges (or, really, more) as people.

If a boy scout were to dig a pit in a meadow or pick flowers, they'd get either a stern talking to or a citation (depending on attitude...). But a horse rolling in a meadow and creating a dirt pit or eating those same flowers is considered an acceptable impact.

There are a number of mitigation that can be done to ensure stock users can continue to use Wilderness areas, but they're very slow to be accepted and adopted.

George