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John Curran Ladd
1616 Castro Street
San Francisco, CA? 94114-3707
415-648-9279

John, thank you for the prompt response. Are the raw data available to view?

One thing I am curious about is the attrition rate. I witnessed a number of people leaving early for one reason or another. The participants in the research paper you linked had an attrition rate of only 4%. I suspect that is artificially low due to the self-selected nature of the survey and maybe there's no easy way around that. But it has to be higher, I think, even without including those who didn't even start.

Updated 3/21/22 with revised links and other more current information/plans.

See??leading to a where the reports will be collected. Start with _How to find reports.pdf in that folder, which includes some links to material not found in the Drive folder itself.

In 2015-16, I recruited a number of fellow hikers with analytic and data presentation skills to do a comprehensive reporting on the 2015 survey, which had 1,286 useful respondents. See, most notably,?

BTW: I'd love other volunteers with data skills I lack -- data presentation skills, particularly in Tableau, analytic skills using tools like R or able to build an online predictive calculator that could predict things like typical miles per day given entered age, prior experience, relative physical fitness, BMI, pack weight etc.?Email me if interested in any of these. It may take some time before I could start to onboard you as I already have a number of volunteers who are moving faster than I can keep up with. An embarrassment of riches from a very helpful community here and even on Facebook.

It was a ton of work and it wasn't clear that repeating the 2015 work each year was worth the effort. And I feared burnout among the volunteers I needed to present the data well.

I decided to efficiently use my own resources, and to readily recruit others with analytic skills, by waiting until I could pool results across multiple years. That would allow us to look both at problems that were the same year-to-year and how some problems differed between years.

There are some reports from 2016 thru 2019, but they are minimal compared to the 2015 reporting. There are also a number of 2014 reports in the Drive folder.

So I am working now on pooling and cleaning the data from 2014 to 2021. There are 6,969 usable responses to many of the questions.

Individual multi-year graphics will start to come out often. They will be found in the folder above.

We are giving priority to actionable data helping 2022 hikers.

Serious multi-factor analysis of pooled responses probably won't come out until the Summer (probably too late for the 2022 hiking season) as the data assembly work is surprisingly tedious because the 2014 and 2015 questions were partly reframed for 2016 and later years. I don't give the data to folks with analytic skills until it is reasonably complete for the issue we are trying to address.?

There is an academic group of Wilderness Medical Society members out of UCF Fresno, led by Dr. Susanne Spano, have published peer-reviewed reports on the earliest (2014) version of the survey and I look forward to seeing their analysis of the pooled data, though publishing delays will probably push them until 2023 at best.?


The article was originally behind a paywall, but it is now freely available as a PDF

If any links are broken or you notice typos or unclear text, please email JohnLadd@...?and tell me so. I will fix them.

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John Curran Ladd
415-648-9279 (landline)
Communications via private replies to my posts or by direct emails to?JohnLadd@...

Thanks, Peter. That’s very interesting!

Where does one go to find the results of these annual surveys? I googled and couldn't find the data. Surely it's accessible (and not just on FB). Can someone point me to it? Thx.

I would like to add an interesting point about VVR.? I have heard many people say theu don't want to stop there because they don't want to "miss any of the Trail".? However, Vermilion Valley is much more a part of the authentic JMT wilderness experience than many realize.

As we discovered in researching and hiking the original JMT route, the Trail was explored and originally established right through the hearty ov the Vermilion Valley, with several important early trips passing very close to VVR.

In 1894 and 1895, Theodore Solomons passed through the Valley and up Bear Creek to a camp at the base of Seven Gables, before moving up the South San Joaquin to explore Evolution Valley.? In 1908, Joseph N Leconte, on what would later be recognized as the first through-hike on the High Mountain Route that? became the JMT, dropped over Silver Pass and crossed Mono Creek and the Valley a mile or two closer to VVR than the present route,? at the low point of Bear Ridge visible from VVR.? In 1916, Wilbur McClure and the Second Mather Mountain Party followed Leconte's Route and mapped it as the original JMT.? In 1919, following his interpretation of McClure's Route, Francis Farquhar dropped even farther down the Valley traveling NoBo to the confluence of Cold Creek and Mono Creek, which is just below the present dam, and then hiked east passing very close to where VVR is today before continuing up Mono Creek to Silver Pass.? I tws not ntil some time after Farquhar's trip that the commonly used route shifted to its present location over Bear Ridge at the head of the Valley. ?

On the merits of the various routes, I don't know of anyone who thinks the slog over Bear Ridge on the modern route is nearly as interesting or enjoyable as a foray into the Vermilion Valley, and neither apparently, did the early explorers and planners of the JMT.

Thank you so much!? That is great information.

I echo what Steve Perry said re VVR. ?I'll also add that even though it was a bit of a pain to get to VVR (basically an extra day of hiking for a zero day there) vs MTR, VVR did seem quite busy. ?If it wasn't running at capacity, it was probably close to it.

I’m resupplying at MTR. I asked about staying overnight (they normally have some availability if large groups are not staying) but they aren’t offering this service in 2021. ?So anyone who wants showers, food, etc should definitely plan on VVR which is a great place. MTR is closer to the trail and since I don’t have a lot of time it is just easier although it is much more expensive to send a resupply there due to their extremely remote location

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We just got off the JMT SOBO and stayed two nights at VVR. Don’t let any of the weird reviews on Guthook confuse you, VVR is a wonderful place. Very good food and extremely friendly. New management (Mike) is great.?

I just got off the trail. Air quality was bad in the Owens Valley, but cleared up dramatically once you got up and over into the mountains. So what you get on the east side of Kearsarge can be (and was) dramatically different from the west side. ?It was also much better at altitude than down below.

Thank you, really good judgement on your part.? If I do start on Sept. 8, I'll be ready to call it off if it doesn't feel right on the initial climb up Kearsage Pass.? Should know within a mile or two, that is not a trivial climb.

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I chose to use VVR instead of MTR, and it was the best decision I made on my JMT hike. The folks at VVR were amazing and so accommodating. ?The price for the resupply was about 1/3 of MTR. ?And the hike down Bear Ridge Trail great! ? Don’t let the fact that the ferry is not running deter you from choosing VVR as an option.?

Hi Laura,

At the bottom of the email you’ll see a link that says “your subscription” than once you’ve logged in to that you’ll see your username in the top right corner of the webpage. You should be able to change your email by clicking on the “Account” link. Nobody else can do this for you (I believe)

Carol

Could you please change my email address to sussmanlaura@...?? Thank you?

We had planned a hike up Sheppard's Pass to Florence Lake August 23 - September 8th. ( slow, I know, we are in our 60s and 70s)? anyway we started up Sheppard's Pass this last Monday morning and it was just too smokey so we turned around 1 mile in.? ?

"Are numbers actually down?"

I don't know. Maybe John Ladd and his annual survey can capture this to some extent. Someone told me that MTR has a significant reduction in their bucket business this year. That probably correlates pretty well.

I noticed this, too at the places mentioned but especially at the South Fork crossing, which usually looks like a Scout camporee.? One tent at about 5:00 PM. I even had Whitney summit all to myself early enough in the day to make Trail Camp in daylight.? Particularly surprising as BP camps at Yos Valley, Tuolumne, Red's and VVR, as well as trailhead quotas, seemed as packed as ever.? Are people spreading out? Getting off trail to camp? Are numbers actually down?? Shorter hikes? Alternate routes?

Just having finished my JMT, I was surprised by how empty some of the usually busy Sierra spots were — don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the increased solitude, it just wasn’t what I expected. Rae Lakes was pretty empty, the vast majority of tent pads around the lake were unoccupied. Guitar Lake was pretty empty. At many of the passes we were alone for at least part of the time, and otherwise there would be only one or a few other people.?