John Muir Trail, August 15 - September 7, 2007 Galleries

JMT Days 8-10, Red's Meadow to Vermillion Valley Resort : This part of the JMT takes you away from easy shuttles. Red's Meadow Resort is accessed from the east while Vermillion Valley Resort is accessed from the west via a remarkable, one-lane mountain road. This is also the infamous '4 miles without water' section. Because you are above the water rather than beside it, you are compensated by great views. Could have been a misadventure, but was not. We took a chance during this section. Our Red's Meadow resupply included soap, shampoo, and conditioner for Red's Meadow and for Vermillion Valley Resort since we did not resupply there. At Duck Creek, we couldn't fit the hygiene stuff into the bear canister, so we hid it in a hollow at the base of a tree, right beside the tent. We knew a bear could smell it, but it seemed our best option at the time. We also could not fit our brandy in the bear canister, so we submerged the container in Duck Creek!!! We were lucky. (We know better, but we miscalculated.) Folks we met in this section. A kid who reminded us of our son, solo hiking because his buddy dropped out. "I always move from hippie town to hippie town." A dad with his just turned 10 year-old son who had a walking stick he made with carvings of his trips, inlaid obsidian he had found, and feathers he had found. Best of all --- Trail Angel from the Sierrapalooza 2004! She and Katie were hiking the JMT from Cottonwood to Tuolumne Meadows. We saw the Boston Boys again, coming from the other way. At VVR, we visited with Rosemarie and Ethan, Brice and Naomi, and Les, who gave us two extra dinners so we could start out early. Thanks, Les! Lake Thomas Edison was weird. It had receded more than a mile. The lake bed was all tree stumps and large patches of sinking mud. Jerry found a fishing lure made in Finland. I found an obsidian arrowhead. The ferry was a motorboat; it met up with a van on the far side because the water was quite a distance from the resort. Dinner at Vermillion Valley Resort was excellent. It was fun to hang out and visit. We had planned a layover day, but didn't need one, so we left after one night.

JMT Days 8-10, Red's Meadow to Vermillion Valley Resort

This part of the JMT takes you away from easy shuttles. Red's Meadow ...

Updated: Jul 14, 2008 11:54pm PST

JMT Days 21-24 Rae Lakes to Whitney Portal : This section of trail can be accessed from the east or west. From the west, you can get to Rae Lakes from Zumwalt Meadows at the end of Hwy 180 in Kings Canyon. It's possible to do a loop following South Fork Kings River thru Paradise Valley one way and Bubbs Creek the other way. From the east, you can get to the JMT from Kearsarge Pass, the route most often used by folks coming in to resupply thru-hikers. Rae Lakes are beautiful. I imagine the view from Glen Pass is beautiful, but our Glen Pass photo is taken from the bottom on the south side. Days before we got there, a passing hiker mentioned that Glen Pass was a knife edge. That knowledge festered in my subconscious until I arrived and got hit by a blast of wind on my left and a cliff edge on my right. Fear was directing me, and I didn't even glance when Jerry pointed out a blooming Sky Pilot, the only one of the whole trip as it turned out. Forester Pass was familiar to us. When we crossed in 2005, we had to walk across a snow chute so narrow and steep-sided that there was no where to place trekking poles! Having survived 2005 without feeling panicky, I wasn't worried this time. However, Forester Pass became a watershed life experience for me. Coming down, I was in control but dominated by the thought that I did not like heights and exposure. Somewhere near the bottom, I announced that I was not going to Whitney. I would go over Trail Crest and that was that. Somehow, Jerry had the wisdom to say little. He did correctly point out that I had walked for many miles on mountain trails without ever falling off the trail or on the trail for that matter. I brooded and walked for a long time until the idea of positive self-talk rose to the surface of my consciousness. From that point on, when I thought of the trail from Trail Crest to Whitney -- famous for the exposed 'windows' and almost my undoing the only other time I did it -- I informed myself that I would not give in to irrational fear! Forester Pass is the last Pass before Trail Crest and Whitney. We began to sense that the end was near. We looked forward to the Dow Villa, but we were not at all worn out or burned out. My toes still hurt, but trail life was a joy. Bighorn Plateau was beautiful with long views to the Great Western Divide. Crabtree Meadow, with its wag bag distribution point, was a reminder that civilization was near. We saw a group of overloaded, panting kids stop to read the wag bag sign and move on toward Whitney without taking a bag. We rested and used the outdoor facilities for the last time, then grabbed a bag apiece and started the ascent to Guitar Lake. Shortly later, we overtook the tired group. Without saying a word to each other, we passed them and practically sprinted up the trail, staying far ahead of them the whole way up. All along the JMT, groups came upon us from behind and continued ahead. Our itinerary allowed us a relatively leisurely pace, but at the cost of feeling like slow pokes. This was our last chance to take the lead, and we took it with a vengeance, laughing inside the whole way. Positive self-talk worked great! We strolled to Whitney, savoring our last day on the trail, stopping at each window to photograph the view. Whitney was anticlimactic, hazy views, hordes of people. We hung out a bit, took some pictures, and signed the register. Our focus changed when we started down. We became obsessed with getting to the Whitney Portal store for cheeseburgers before they closed. We practically ran, eating bits of trail mix without stopping, and passing everyone else on the trail. It felt fantastic, and we made it to the store before it closed. People we met in this section: A group of UC Riverside students on the south side of Glen Pass, working on an NPS contract to gather water samples and study nitrogen pollution from cars. Ted and Kathy from Seattle, fellow thru-hikers who started and finished the same days we did. They had planned to spend the night at Trail Camp and had their site set up when we passed by, but changed their minds and made it to the Whitney Portal store in time to join us for a celebratory meal. Thoughts at the end of the hike: "We did it!"

JMT Days 21-24 Rae Lakes to Whitney Portal

This section of trail can be accessed from the east or west. From the ...

Updated: Jul 13, 2008 11:18am PST

JMT Days 17-20 Big Pete Meadow to Rae Lakes : Big and Little Pete Meadows at the head of Le Conte Canyon are about 15 miles from South Lake over Bishop Pass. This is a great place for section hikers to enter or exit. Thru hikers who decide to leave early or take a town break can also exit here. We saw two JMT hikers coming back from Deer Meadow, abandoning their JMT thru-hike to exit over Bishop Pass. They were a day or so ahead of us and getting rained on regularly with no break to dry things out. What a difference a day makes! The morning after our rainy day dawned cloudy. We spread everything out to dry and were blessed with no rain. Les appeared on the trail, heading out over Bishop after a night as a paying guest at Muir Trail Ranch to escape the rain. Deer Meadow is a misnomer. It's forested, but we did see a deer. The hike to Deer Meadow was very tiring for me. After lunch, I gave Jerry my rain gear to carry. We made camp early and carried water away from Palisade Creek to wash our clothes and bodies with our tiny supply of Dr. Bronner's Castile soap, first soap since Vermillion Valley Resort on night 10. The hike up the Golden Staircase and over Mather Pass was exhausting, but beautiful. Lower Palisade Lake is pristine. Jerry saw golden trout along the shore. After the Golden Staircase, it's a long walk to Mather Pass. From Palisade Lake to Mather Pass plus a lunch break took us almost 4 hours. Upper Basin is stark and beautiful. There were coyotes singing west of our camp. We saw one the next day. We ran out of brandy, ending our routine of a sip or two every evening. I took my first Aleve of the trip here. We were both very tired. Pinchot Pass hides until you're almost up it. After passing my favorite, the unnamed lake before Lake Marjorie, and Lake Marjorie, we walked along without seeing a pass anywhere ahead. We kept wondering where it was and when we would get there. The Rae Lakes area was stunning and not at all crowded. We were there on Labor Day, so perhaps the crowds were already on the freeways heading home.

JMT Days 17-20 Big Pete Meadow to Rae Lakes

Big and Little Pete Meadows at the head of Le Conte Canyon are about 1 ...

Updated: Jul 06, 2008 6:42pm PST

JMT Days 4-7 - Tuolumne Meadows to Red's Meadow : This is a very beautiful part of the JMT with seven lakes along the trail. It's an easy hike to do without worrying about cars. YARTS has stops in Mammoth Lakes and Tuolumne Meadows, so you can leave your car at one end and take YARTS back at the end of the hike. Morning misadventure. As we walked away from Tuolumne Meadows, Jerry realized he didn't have his sunglasses. He remembered putting them in his pocket while in the store, so we walked back to the store. No luck. Bummer, they were really good ones. We bought two cheap replacements and headed out again. At the edge of the campground, we stopped to peel off layers. The sunglasses appeared in the leg of Jerry's rain pants. He had missed his pocket and dropped them down the pant leg. Fantastic! We walked back to the store to return one of the replacements. We kept one pair, just in case. Things happen for a reason. The Bowlder family was at the store. BowlderMan and BowlderSon had just finished about half the JMT and said there were no mosquitoes, so we sent our DEET home with them. Minor misadventures. Somewhere in this section, Jerry lost one of his zip-off pant legs and my watch battery died. We left the other pant leg and my watch in the Red's Meadow hiker box. I preferred to replace my watch rather than wear it not working for two weeks. Town adventure. From Devil's Postpile, we took the NPS shuttle, free biker shuttle, and free trolley to Mammoth Lakes. We bought warmer long underwear for Jerry since I had convinced him he should bring ultra-lightweight ones and he was cold. We went to the laundromat where we stripped in the rest room and did laundry wearing nothing but our Marmot Precips. On the way back to the trail, we ate scrumptious panninis at the Side Door near the shuttle stop. Folks we met in this section. Daniel with the 'Hecho en Mexico' T-shirt, a hiker and climber doing the JMT and peak bagging along the way. Nancy, solo JMT hiker from Toronto. Larry and Leeann from central WA, long distance hikers who shuttle themselves with two vehicles. The Boston Boys, East Coasters who backpack the Sierra pretty much every year. Patrick, who sprained his ankle near Gladys Lake and was recuperating at Red's Meadow. Red's Meadow was great. Good food, good company, and better-than-good showers!

JMT Days 4-7 - Tuolumne Meadows to Red's Meadow

This is a very beautiful part of the JMT with seven lakes along the tr ...

Updated: Jul 05, 2008 4:37pm PST

JMT Days 1-3, Happy Isles to Tuolumne Meadows : Thru-hiking the JMT was our 25th anniversary trip, especially meaningful because our first date was a backpacking trip to Kibby Lake in Yosemite in 1978. We bailed from our first trip because of a torrential downpour, courtesy of Hurricane Norman and poor planning --- we only brought a tube tent. Water was flowing through our tent all night. Everything struck us as funny. We laughed so hard on that trip. It was the same on this trip! Thank goodness, we can laugh because the trip had some misadventures, which started before we even got on the trail. Thanks to BowlderMan, we had an elaborate shuttle plan - drive to the Mammoth Lakes airport, rent a car, caravan to Whitney Portal and leave our car, drive back to the airport and have the rental car lady drive us to our hotel where YARTS would pick us up in the morning and drive us to Yosemite Valley. I lost the hotel info, so we didn't know which hotel. There are only two hotels in town that that have YARTS pick-up. We went to one and I called the other. Both assured us that we did not have a reservation. Fortunately, Mammoth Mountain Inn had a vacancy, so we stayed there. That night, we went out to dinner, drank a pitcher of beer, and listened to live music. Mammoth Lakes is a great town! Our misadventures continued on Day 1 in Yosemite Valley, where we learned the Happy Isles TH was closed because of a fire! We got a permit to leave from Tuolumne Meadows the next day and hung out at Happy Isles. Fortunately, the trail re-opened at 3 PM so we could start from Happy Isles. Our misadventures continued on Day 3 when we arrived at the Tuolumne Meadows post office and learned that our resupply had gone to the town of Tuolumne, not Tuolumne Meadows. No problem, the Tuolumne Meadows store has a great supply of backpacking foods. We enjoyed fig newtons for breakfast for the next four days and sampled some very good Backpacker's Pantry meals. Our tent pole misadventures began in Tuolumne Meadows when our new carbon fiber tent poles broke for the first time. This time, we were able to repair the break with the tent pole repair sleeve.

JMT Days 1-3, Happy Isles to Tuolumne Meadows

Thru-hiking the JMT was our 25th anniversary trip, especially meaningf ...

Updated: Jul 01, 2008 10:57pm PST

JMT Days 14-16 Muir Trail Ranch to Big Pete Meadow : Muir Trail Ranch is the the midpoint of the trail. For southbound hikers, it's the last resupply. When we left Muir Ranch, we were loaded down with an 11-day supply of food. We took our time and got used to our heavier packs. The last mile went up steeply - a struggle, although the views made up for it. We set up camp right after crossing Evolution Creek, behind a big log beside the trail. We were too tired to care. Jerry said it was his hardest day. In the morning, I climbed the rocks behind our camp. There's a beautiful plateau up there, lots of great camp sites, big enough for a Sierrapalooza group. Evolution Valley, Evolution Lake, Sapphire Lake, Wanda Lake. So beautiful. When we woke up at Sapphire Lake, we were in the clouds. The final tent pole misadventure. The tent pole broke again after we set up the tent at Sapphire Lake. We couldn't salvage it, so we removed it and used trekking poles to prop the sides of the tent up and out. Thunderstorms!!! Four thunderstorms rolled through, one after the other, the morning we woke up at Sapphire Lake. The wind almost laid the tent flat. We braced ourselves back to back in the tent, and each supported a trekking pole in its new role as tent pole. It took all my strength to keep my pole upright. The thunder and lightening were virtually simultaneous as each storm swept over us. Rain misadventure. The weather cleared long enough for us to get to Muir Hut, then started again and continued all day and into the night. We had intended to stop at Big Pete Meadow, but every tent site was a pond. We kept going until we found a hillock with grasses. It was still raining, and we had a lot of damp gear despite using our pack covers. What to do? Since our first ascent of Whitney when a hiker in trouble needed an emergency blanket and mine was in the car at Whitney Portal, I have carried an emergency blanket in my first aid kit. We spread it out covering the bottom of the tent. Wet stuff went under it, dry stuff on top. That night, we shared our one dry sleeping bag. Cozy and cooperative. 'Honey, let's turn over now, okay?' No photos of this camp. I didn't even look at the camera until the next day. I thought it might have gotten wet, which can be death to a camera, but it was fine. Thoughts at the end of the day: "Wish we had more brandy." "Looking forward to drying things out. Hope there is no more wind. (Did I mean rain and write wind?)" Folks we met in this section. Patt, one of the Muir Ranch ladies, who knew and liked Wind Walker's and Snow Nymph's photography. Cool. An 8th grade science teacher/summer horse packer out of Florence Lake - good stories about LA Power and Light, tree blazes, and a long-ago plan for Piute Lake and other lakes.

JMT Days 14-16 Muir Trail Ranch to Big Pete Meadow

Muir Trail Ranch is the the midpoint of the trail. For southbound hik ...

Updated: Apr 02, 2008 11:04pm PST

JMT Days 11-13 Vermillion Valley Resort to Muir Trail Ranch : This is a short section from one potential resupply point to the next. We resupplied at Muir Trail Ranch. Our resupply included our Bearikade Weekender because we needed two bear canisters for the remaining 11 days. We love our Bearikades and have never regretted the expense. They weigh less, hold more, and bears can't open them. We had the first rain of the trip at Sallie Keyes Lake. We hovered in the tent, listening to an airplane making pass after pass to the south of us. We learned later that the plane was seeding the clouds for rain. Good deed. Coming down the mountain toward Muir Trail Ranch, we saw a small ditty bag behind a large log at a trail intersection. We put it on the log where it could easily be seen. About half an hour later, we came upon a large group waiting for packers. We asked if anyone might have lost a bag. Yep, and it was her medicine bag. We planned carefully for our Muir Trail Ranch resupply because it would be 11 days before we saw civilization again. We repacked freeze-dried meals in ziplock bags, counted bars, and weighed ingredients for our couscous/pine nut/dried banana breakfasts - very yummy, even after all those days. We tried fitting everything in our bear canisters before we mailed our bucket, but we didn't repack our Wheat Thins because we wanted them to stay fresh, so we had to hope they would fit. The sky opened up and the rain poured down soon after we arrived at Muir Ranch. Fortunately, there's a canopy hikers can use. Despite our careful planning, everything did NOT fit in our bear canisters. We arrived with extra bars and trail mix because we weren't eating as much as we thought we would, so we had less space, and we had underestimated the space required for the crackers. We donated trail mix, bars, and crackers to the already over-filled hiker barrels. Fireman took a lot of our food because his resupply could not be found. Fortunately, the ladies finally found it so he was able to enjoy the beer he sent himself. Misadventure. While Jerry went for a swim in the Muir Ranch warm pond, I arranged the water toys for a photo with me in the float. A backpacker showed up and jumped in the water. We didn't realize he tossed his glasses in the grass - right where I directed Jerry to stand to take the picture. Crunch! "Hey, man, I think I stepped on your glasses. I think it's bad." One lens was out of the frame and the screw that held them together was lost in the grass. The guy came half out of the water, and he could barely see. "I knew I shouldn't have put them down there. That screw has come out before." Jerry and I are staring intently at the thick grass, parting it blade by blade. Jerry feels awful because he stepped on the glasses. I feel awful because I directed him to step there. The guy feels awful because he can;t see, and it's a long way from anywhere to get another microscopic screw. We didn't give up, and we found the screw. The guy tried to reassemble his glasses while still standing in the water. I convinced him it would be better not to risk losing the screw in the pond. Sheesh, how many miracles can a guy rightly expect in one day? Another tent pole misadventure. The tent pole broke again at Muir Ranch. The two breaks did not both fit in the repair sleeve. We tried bracing the pole with sticks threaded into the sleeve, and we tried duct tape, but nothing worked. We ended up removing the small piece between the two breaks so the pole was shorter, but we could still use the repair sleeve. Folks we met in this section. A brother and sister and another guy who were sharing a Tarptent. She slept in the middle and said condensation wasn't a problem. The two guys slept on the sides and had a different opinion. Fireman, a long-distance hiker from the East, who hung out with us at Muir Trail Ranch.

JMT Days 11-13 Vermillion Valley Resort to Muir Trail Ranch

This is a short section from one potential resupply point to the next. ...

Updated: Mar 30, 2008 9:04pm PST