A day in the life of your resupply bucket

When your bucket leaves your hands at your post office, its journey has just begun.  The bucket will get sent to our Post Office in Lakeshore, California.  Buckets are picked up once or twice weekly by our staff and loaded into the ranch truck.  From there, they make the long journey to Florence Lake.

Once your bucket arrives at Florence Lake, it is stored for pickup in a secure storage bin. At this point in their journey, buckets are priority-sorted by the expected pickup that you indicated on your label. Your bucket still has a ways to go before it gets to Muir Trail Ranch.

The ranch crew comes out to Florence to get buckets that have expected pickup dates coming up in the next several days.  Usually this trip has several chores involved such as hauling trash or empty gas containers out of MTR.  The buckets are loaded onto the ranch boat.

Once across the lake to the South Landing, the buckets are unloaded onto either a Unimog or pack horses.  This can take a bit of time to make sure the load is secure.  Once secure, the buckets make the last five mile journey into Muir Trail Ranch.  Five miles takes two or more hours if everything goes well.  Anything can happen in the middle of nowhere.

If we're unable to use a 4x4, we rely on our four legged friends to get your bucket safely into the ranch.

Upon arrival at the ranch, your bucket is stored in our bucket house until you pick it up on your way through on the JMT/PCT.  All in all it takes a lot of time for your bucket to get to Muir Trail Ranch which is why we ask for you to give at least three (3) weeks for arrival.