I’m planning two trips up to the Palisades this summer to bag some 14’ers.
The first is in June and the second is a month later in July. I was thinking about caching a bunch of my climbing and camping gear between trips. I’m not really worried about it getting stolen: it’s just too much work to haul it out. I am worried about critters turning expensive gear (tents, ropes, sleeping bags, etc.) into building materials for their new home.

Does anybody have any experience doing this? Any suggestions?

Thanx for the spelling help!

For cashing gear, eBay and craigslist both work well.

As does the SP Gear forum...

Caching your tent & such for a day or two while you are climbing is ok, but when you leave the wilderness you have to pack all your stuff out with you. Otherwise it becomes litter, or booty

People have been known to use horse & mule packers to bring in (and pack out) lots of heavy gear in the eastern Sierra. But not llamas

The little critters out there - like chipmunks - love to chew on anything that smells good or tastes salty. The Palisades get so much traffic that the varmints are all over the place. Keeping your stuff from getting chewed is difficult.

I've had good success by suspending my gear on rappell from a chock on a cliff face. Makes it difficult for both 2- and 4-legged varmints to get to your gear. Finding an out-of-the-way cliff on which to hang your gear is the hard part. Don't want your cache to be obvious.

I've also had good results by covering my gear in a rock tomb out in the middle of scree fields. Vertical plates on all sides for walls and then flat rocks on top for a roof. Gotta fill in all the space with smaller rocks so that varmints can't burrow into your castle.

I've tried burying stuff in the snow, hanging it from trees, etc., always came back to find my stuff chewed up.

What about caching your stuff in a bear can, and hiding the can somewhere? I don't think skis are gonna get chewed (but you never know).

The other thing that I do sometimes is rent a small storage unit in Bishop to store my gear between trips. Yeah, you gotta carry out your gear, but at least you know it's safe. Plan ahead, rent the unit a few months in advance so that you can be sure that you have the space when you get to Bishop. A few years I didn't plan ahead and had to drive all the way up to Mammoth to find vacant storage spaces, or had to rent large (expensive) spaces.