I'm planing the JMT, Mammoth to Yosemite Valley and will be doing this solo. The origional plan was to park my car at Yosemite Valley and catch the shuttle bus to mammoth and just hike back. This has always worked from Toulumne to Yosemite. Yarts explains that the only bus leaving the Valley and heading to Mammoth departs at 5:00 PM, not 0500 am like I had heard. Any ideas on how to pull this strategy off? If I do as planned, this will knock off an entire day of hiking, which I have budgeted 6days of good walking to complete this portion.

The plan will be more like - park in the Valley, get on the bus, ride to Mammoth, spend the night, get on a shuttle, get on another shuttle and get off at the trailhead.

You could catch a ride with someone heading over Tioga... might be able to hook up with someone via the forum who's heading to the east side on the same schedule. But you might have to add a day to your travel time on either end depending.

You could park in Mammoth, YARTS to Yosemite and start from that end instead - would reverse the bus schedule and not leave you with those shuttle rides in Mammoth until you got there. The last shuttle out of Reds Meadow leaves fairly late in the day, after 5 I think.