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JMT without the bridges

 

With all of the discussion of the bridges being out on the JMT this season, I was thinking...
What was the original route of the trail? There surely were no bridges in the early days.

People traversing the trail is one thing, what about stock?

-Rick B.
 
Edited

To answer your first question, the original route differs from about 80 miles of the present one.? Some of the original route was less challenging with stream crossings, but not much.? The middle San Joaquin was avoided b y taking what today is the High Trail, but Mono Creek for example, was crossed about 2 miles or more below where today's bridge is.? The trail did not cross the Tuolumne at all, although much JMT traffic is now routed across it twice.? Other bridges were added later, more for convenience than necessity.? At Woods Creek for example, where in spite of it having the most spectacular bridge on the trail, there is also a stock crossing.
 

here were indeed bridges very early on.? One of the first sections completed, as it happens, was the section that includes this year's most notorious outage, the South San Joaquin between Piute and Evo Creek.? The original Piute bridge was completed by August of 1916, when none other but Stephen Mather (photo) crossed it on the first recorded long distance trip on the John Muir trail per se, about 10 days before the National Park Service was created by act of Congress..?

The Muir Trail Rock is about a half mile from this crossing and was carved? - and dated 1917 - by one of the USFS trail crew to commemorate finishing the section in that year.
 

I've read that the last part of the JMT built was over Mather Pass. Before that it went over Cartridge Pass which is just to the west.?

Kim

On Fri, Sep 29, 2023 at 7:36?PM Peter Hirst <peter.p.hirst@...> wrote:

here were indeed bridges very early on.? One of the first sections completed, as it happens, was the section that includes this year's most notorious outage, the South San Joaquin between Piute and Evo Creek.? The original Piute bridge was completed by August of 1916, when none other but Stephen Mather (photo) crossed it on the first recorded long distance trip on the John Muir trail per se, about 10 days before the National Park Service was created by act of Congress..?

The Muir Trail Rock is about a half mile from this crossing and was carved? - and dated 1917 - by one of the USFS trail crew to commemorate finishing the section in that year.
 

The last part built was the Golden Staircase, between Deer Meadow and Palisades Lakes, in 1938.? Before then, Cartridge Pass was one? of the bypasses often used, but the official route through that section was always as it is today.? Several backpackers - called "knapsackers" back then - used it, and Little Joe LeConte first connected it from both sides on his 1908 trip? from Tuolumne to Road's End.? He could or would not take stock over the whole section, so he completed it by tagging Mather Pass from both sides without stock. It was a key part of the "High Mountain Route", and then the JMT, thereafter.

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