Category: JMT

Upper Le Conte Canyon to near Muir Trail Ranch

Today, for once, we’re up early and on the trail quickly.

Keith is a non-competitive, anti-sports, band kid who grew up to be an engineer and as a result he’s a pretty mellow person. But occasionally he’ll get this weird competitive drive and today that drive is directed at one thing: beating Limpy Perkins to the summit of Muir Pass. Maybe his ego is a little bruised from being repeatedly passed by a hiker with an injury? Or maybe he just wants a win today? Whatever the reason I’m happy to go along with it and hopefully be able to make some miles before it gets too hot.

Even at 11,000 feet it’s warm this morning and we’re hiking in just shorts and t-shirts. Later we’ll learn that all of Southern California is in the middle of a heat wave, but in the moment I’m just glad it’s not freezing up here.

The approach to Muir pass is officially my favorite climb so far. The trail follows a creek that tumbles down the mountain in a series of short waterfalls linking bright lakes which glitter cheerfully as we pass. Soon we’re winding our way across gentle snow fields, already warm and slushy in the early sunlight. This is definitely type one fun, easy adventure, beautifully calm, and before long we’re cresting the pass and are greeted by the Muir Trail Hut. Hello cute little hut with your irregular walls!

Inside the hut we meet Fitz! He’s another hiker that we’ve been leapfrogging for a few days now, and whom I already dislike a little because we saw him camping behind a clear “no camping sign.” Luckily for Fitz he’s pleasant to talk to and entertains us with details about his MYTH (Multi-Year Thru Hike) of the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail). This basically means that Fitz started his hike of the PCT at the boarder of Mexico and hikes as much as he can in a two week span each year before going home. At this rate it will take him about 10-11 years to complete the entire trail.

While we snack and chat with Fitz a group of older hikers gather outside the hut and talk about “back in my day” and “how the hut used to be.” From their conversation I can gather that the hut is basically the same, perhaps a little better cared for now, and that hiking stories, like fishing stories, only get more outlandish and embellished with time. Before I know it the group is departing down the pass without so much as having stepped in the hut! Is that weird? I think it’s weird.

Fitz heads out shortly after the group, and after a little while Keith and I follow suit.

The north side of Muir pass is a gradual descent past a handful of alpine lakes. So blue contrasted with the glittering white of the snow and solemn grey of the granite peaks. While I stop and tape a hot spot on my foot I am passed by Limpy Perkins. There she is! I know she’ll soon pass Keith, and that he’ll be happy that we at least met our/his goal of beating her to the pass.

When I catch up to Keith I can tell he’s excited to tell me about a plan he’s hatched. “What if” he starts “we hiked all the way down to the San Joaquin River today?”

“Yeah?” I respond lamely. Admittedly I don’t really even know what that would even mean for our hike. More miles? Less miles? Good? Snacks?

We settle on snacks while Keith bulls on undeterred by my unenthusiastic confusion. Hiking down to the San Joaquin river would mean combining two days into one, doing close to 20 miles of hiking, and getting into our resupply at VVR one day sooner. Since we’ll be descending for much of  today this is probably the easiest big day opportunity we’ll have.

I’m in! I’m so so in. I start preparing for Big Hiking. We sit down to wolf calories, and I mix two coffee packets into some cold water and chug that which tastes terrible but I’m just here for the caffeine and calories. If I wanted to eat delicious food every day I wouldn’t backpack.

The first mile I have this weird anxiety about hiking this far. My legs have been really tight today and I’m nervous I won’t be able to make it all the way to camp. Conversely I really want to get to our resupply faster so I can stop rationing food. Eventually the calories kick in and the caffeine anxiety ebbs and my legs churn into high gear. The earth passing below my feet.

We wind down into a deep green valley where we are shaded by thick pine trees. This is another blessing as we’re both running low on sunscreen. All afternoon we traverse through bare sections where  avalanches ripped through during the winter. Even in August there are clear signs of the crazy snow year that the Sierras had.

The afternoon is punctuated by little breaks to snack and stretch. Never sitting too long lest our legs tighten up and we have to go through the entire process of warming up all over again. Halfway through the day the rain begins and we don our gear and keep moving. All around us little tents pop up like brightly colored mushrooms in the trees.

We’re getting close to our campground now. A few miles left, two miles left. Stopping to chat with an elated SoBo JMT hiker who tells us about how he scored big at MTR by raiding the hiker box for his resupply. One more mile to go and there are campgrounds everywhere.

Finally at the bridge, at the river, our big day is done! Except it’s not.

The one tiny campsite at the bridge over the San Joaquin is taken by a woman whom I’m sure is a lovely person but in the moment I kind of hate her.

Luckily for us there are several tributaries that we’ll cross in the next mile.

Unluckily for us, all these creeks are dry, and so we just keep hiking and hiking into the gloaming. The sun does a pink and orange sherbet light show above us, and we talk about how we’re both so grateful to be out here. Hiking late isn’t so bad when there are great sunsets to look at.

When we finally get to a viable campground we see 7 or more tents glowing in the dark. And Fitz is here! It would seem we were not the only people to miss the last chance to get water, and now we’re all down here gathered together.

As the last people in camp we sit around eating potato soup by the red light of our headlamps while all around us the other hikers get ready for bed. One by one the glowing tents turn into dark tents as headlamps are clicked off until it’s just the two of us silently slurping soup.

We go to sleep against the white noise of the river rushing past our tent.

Palisades Lake to upper Le Conte Canyon

One full week on the trail. In planning, I never really imagined what this would feel like. I knew where we’d be, but only in vague terms and locations on a map. Palisades lake was just another day on the trail, someplace I’d never been, and something less important than figuring out the million little details that come with planning a thru hike.

But what it feels like in the moment is something all together different.

Trail life is so remarkably easier in some ways than what Keith and I have started to refer to as “the real world.” Since we’ve left I’ve read no e-mails, social media is irrelevant, I haven’t had to put gas in my car, and the only social interactions I’ve had are either incredibly brief, or are with the one human who I like spending most of my time with anyway.

Conversely, it takes 5-10 minutes of waddling around camp every morning before the tendons in my legs and feet warm up enough for me to walk comfortably, and already I’m starting to fantasize about what types of foods I’m going to eat once we get into town. Mostly I want things like salad, grilled chicken, fresh strawberries. Anything, really, that hasn’t been dehydrated and vacuumed into a plastic bag. But we still have four days including today before we have any option to get fresh anything, so I ignore my salad cravings and try not to eat too many of my M&M’s for breakfast.

We start our day walking into the lush green valley that we can see spread out below our campsite. The novel thing about today is that there will be no passes to climb. We’ll simply walk on calm, flat, mellow, nicely graded trails that are soft! The kind of sigh-inducing soft of fallen pine needles and dirt, the kind of soft that I didn’t know I wanted until I spend the previous six days walking almost entirely on granite.

I know that after this trip is all said and done people will ask me how it was. And even only seven days in I have no idea what I’m going to say. The truth about thru hiking, and backpacking more broadly, is that you’re in some moderate form of discomfort all of the time. Too cold, too hot, runny nose, itchy, sore, hungry, bloated, chafe, thirsty, tired and a hundred more feelings. And then it’s hard you guys. Climbing up mountains is hard, down is hard, exercising every day for 6-10 hours is just as hard as I thought it was going to be. I knew all of this was going to happen, and yet I cannot stop from remarking on it. The low-level suffering of a thru hike is remarkable.

These are the things I think about as I drift through the forest today following the little brown path that will lead me all the way to Yosemite.

Our day is punctuated with snack and water breaks, the last one coming at the Le Conte ranger station where we eat snickers bars while sitting in wooden chairs. Maybe that’s a better illustration of what thru hiking is like: sitting in an unpadded wooden chair will be the most comfortable I am all day until I get to roll onto my glorious sleeping pad, surrounded by my ultra fluffy down quilt and sleep. Thru hiking is the least glamorous, most romantic thing I’ve ever done, and I’m totally in love with it.

My revery at Le Conte is interrupted when several weekend hikers come by to ask if we are the ranger (we’re not), if we know where the ranger is (we don’t), and if we knew why the helicopters were circling this area yesterday and today (again, we don’t). I can sense they’re disappointed in our lack of knowledge, and more disappointed when we can’t get properly excited about the idea of a rescue taking place near by. Shortly after the weekend hikers depart so do we.

Later Keith will tell me that he resents people like that. Only interested when things go wrong, wanting to know the intimate details of some strangers bad day, curious without the ability to be helpful. I have to agree with him.

The sun is dipping behind the ridge of the valley we’re walking through and I know we must be getting close to camp. The problem is that each campsite we pass is full of people, or it’s not really a campsite at all – set up too close to water or the trail. We keep climbing up towards Muir pass, frustrated at others for camping where they so clearly shouldn’t. Frustrated at myself for holding myself to a high standard, why can’t I just be a jerk who ignores the rules like everyone else? But then, where would I garner my elevated sense of superiority from? We keep hiking.

The trees are gone, and now it’s only rocks and uneven patches of dirt as the sun begins to set in earnest. We’re starting to get frustrated when we pass another hiker: It’s Limpy Perkins!

Limpy was a girl we met on our second day, and whom we’ve been leapfrogging ever sense. She told us earlier that she’d injured her achilles tendon (hence Limpy) and was considering getting off the trail at her next available opportunity in a few days (but she’s just so damn cheerful – hence Perkins). Now we see that she’s lost her trekking poles, and has had to erect her tent using a big stick. I feel bad for her, but her camp spot is barely big enough for one tent, and so we march on. Goodbye potential trail friend!

Finally we find a spot atop a big flat rock and set up camp. Technically we’re a little too close to the trail, but at this point we are so close to the pass that we don’t want to keep hiking, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see another person come through this late.

As we’re getting ready for dinner we see our first SoBo PCT hiker! So much for no more hikers coming through.

Marjory Lake to Palisades Lakes

In our rush to get up and over Pinchot pass last night I had forgotten to mention to Keith that I’d been carrying three extra breakfasts for him. But at breakfast today I certainly remember and am not terribly gracious when I point out this fact. The whole “Extra Breakfast Kerfuffle of 2017” isn’t his fault, it’s not really anyones fault, it’s just a mistake. But that doesn’t keep me from being an unnecessary jerk about the whole thing and huffing out of camp. Smooth move, Kieffer.

I hammer down the trails this morning, carelessly crossing a creek and as a result foregoing any chance I had to keep my feet dry today. I don’t stop hiking until I’m well into the forest a few miles from camp. At which point I’m forced to confront that I’m being an asshole to Keith over a mistake that I made, and that if I keep this pace up I’ll leave him in the dust which isn’t really cool since the permit has my name on it and we need to stick together. So I put my big girl under-roos on, park myself on a rock, and promptly apologize to Keith when he arrives. Adulting! I’m learning!

The rest of the morning we descend down into the deep forest that grows along the South Fork of the Kings River. There is so much oxygen down here! And it’s so much warmer! And today we’ll cross our first ever official JMT foot bridge. Which, I recognize sounds really lame, but it’s actually really cool since it’s a suspension bridge, far sketchier than I thought it would be, and feels vaguely like a Disney ride in that it’s probably safe but there is really no evidence of that.

Climbing alongside the Kings River is like walking through a natural water park. The bright aquamarine water spills through slot canyons pouring white into round pools carved by eons of continuous water flow. The trail stays far above the water to give you an excellent view of this natural show. This also makes it impossible to get water from the river, as one slip down the steep banks would end in being swept down stream and like 50/50 odds of dying. Even though it’s late in the season, the unusually high snow year means that the rivers are still flowing high and fast.

By the time we finally find a tributary stream we can gather water at, we’re both well and fully bonked, and disappointed in how little milage we’ve covered. We take our break alongside a perfect little mountain creek in the company of a group of hikers my parents age.

One woman is talking about her dislike of Trump and her corresponding liberal political views, which results in the kind of long gaping conversation pauses indicative of people who don’t want to talk politics in nature. I both understand and resent her hiking partners for taking the silent approach. It’s hard to see affluent older white men who are so uncomfortable speaking up about politics, or perhaps even secretly approving of our president that they opt for silence instead of trying to engage and understand conflicting view points. Or perhaps they are so cowardly about their own beliefs that they’re uncomfortable speaking about them. Either way, I’m glad when they all pack up and move on, and after a while we do the same.

The rest of the long climb to the pass Keith entertains us with his never ending litany of puns. I think if he could, Keith would speak in nothing but puns, luckily for all of us he’s never managed to figure that out. Today’s offerings revolve around the fact that Mather sounds a lot like rather – and you can probably see where this is going, but by half way up the pass we’re laughing and trying not to asphyxiate in the thin air while we dream up 80’s style photoshoots for the pass, all of which will be captioned with the phrase “there’s no place I’d Mather be.” Actually, I’m not sure that any sane person would view that as the logical outcome of such a terrible pun. But maybe those sane people don’t use all their vacation days to go exercise in nature for thee weeks either.

By the time we’re actually on the pass we’ve lost much of our photoshoot-mojo. This, combined with the presence of a handful of lady hikers means that we only take about three pictures before our self consciousness get’s the better of us. Just before we leave to descend there is the Sacred Exchanging of Beta, a vital ritual that happens when you get a chance to talk with people who have just left the area you’re about to enter. We tell them they’ll have no snow until the south side of Pinchot pass, which is largely mellow and uneventful. Then they tell us that we’re heading towards a sketchy snow patch on the north side of Mather, but that there is a well marked rock scramble around it and you’d be an idiot to cross the snow where the trail is.

As if to illustrate this point a man summits the pass, he’s sporting several bright spots of road (snow) rash from falling on the snow because he decided to attempt to cross where the trail was, lost his footing and slid/fell. This is exactly my fear and 100% not an experience I’m looking to emulate. It’s quickly apparent that he’s mostly fine, if not a little shaken, and we depart the pass being since we are able to offer no additional help than another pair of staring eyes.

The rock scramble on the descent is fine. The snow crossing is clearly a bad choice – as evidenced by the absence of any foot prints aside from falling guy. In general getting down Mather is so relaxed and the detours so logical that I’m actually a little mad at the Aussies for scaring the crap out of us two days earlier. Keith wisely points out that maybe taking snow crossing advice from people who live in a country almost completely without snow is in poor form. Add to that the rogue, 70lb unpredictable animal that is hiking with a child, and you can see how almost any snow crossing would be sketchy. Lesson learned.

We’re camped along Palisade Lake for the night, and while I set up the tent Keith goes to filter water and then yes, fish. I relax in the tent and read until the failing light forces me out of my warm cocoon to call Keith in for dinner. Tonight he has caught one – barely big enough to bother eating – fish. A trout of some sort which I promptly name Trevor, and then promptly regret giving our dinner a name.

A little backstory, dear reader. Before we left for the JMT Keith and I made a deal that if he caught a fish worth eating, and killed it, I’d do the dirty work of gutting, cleaning, and filleting it. Honestly, when I agreed to this, I thought he’d never catch a fish let alone one that’s big enough to eat. But a deal is a deal and that’s how I found myself squatting next to a creek, in the near dark, gutting a fish with a Swiss Army Knife grateful for the fish gutting PDF that Keith made me download. In the end, dispatching of Trevor’s entrails is not as gross as I thought it would be, and if you’re going to eat meat I think you have to be willing to know where your food comes from and what it’s like to butcher it. And what it’s like really isn’s so bad once you’ve cut the head off and it’s stopped staring at you.

Then, sleep. Next to a beautiful lake that reminds me of all the incredible things we’ve seen on this trail, and which I’ll almost certainly be unable to fully capture with words.

 

 

 

Lower Rae Lakes to Marjory Lake

I’m pretty sure today is officially the longest I’ve ever been on a backpacking trip. From today until the end, each day is both metaphorically, and literally new territory.

Today we will climb all day long, before dropping down just a little bit to our campground for the night. Though our morning campsite is lovely, and today is bound to be long and hard, I’m ready to get on the trail. This is largely because our camp mates are loud and annoying in the special way that only frat boys can be, and I have zero desire to spend more time around them than is purely necessary.

The first half of the day is spent ascending through trees, and as a result I take almost no pictures. I’ve never quite figured out to take a nice picture of the forest on an iPhone, how to capture that soft light that filters through the trees and illuminates everything. Somehow, when photographed, that same light looks dull and flat and I always end up deleting the pictures.

We take our lunch break at Twin Lakes which rests right at the edge of tree line, backed by steep granite cliffs. Keith bounds around the lake, his recent success with fishing has kindled some sort of dormant hunter gatherer instinct and he’s itching to put his new found skills to the test.

My first priority of the day is washing my hair which has grown increasingly gross, oily, and itchy. Unfortunately the only real option is to dump cold, non-soapy lake water on my head again and again until I feel somewhat clean. So that’s what I do, it’s a sensation somewhere between refreshing and brain freeze. After I sit in the sun, snacking and listening to podcasts when I come to the realization that I’ve been carrying three of Keith’s breakfasts. Well damn. I’ve been worrying that I’ll run out of food, and now it’s almost certain that I will. This was such a big conversation between Keith and I before we started. How much food was too much, how much is too little and un safe, why does food weigh so damn much? On and on until we settled on about 1.5lbs of food per person per day. It all feels impossible to know and even after all our stressing I apparently wasn’t that attentive while packing. At least my pack is a little lighter now.

The wind is picking up, and the sun is getting lower in the sky, urging us to make miles before we’re stuck hiking in the dark. The benefit is that the climb towards Pinchot pass  is bathed in the most wonderful afternoon light that spills over the rolling hills of dry grass and rock outcroppings.

Conversation is sparse. So it’s time for podcasts! I listen to the delightful Nicole Antoinette interview Oiselle’s Sally Bergsen where I find myself nodding along vigorously with all their smart insights. Sally talks about the power of feminism in business, being the underdog, and building a brand. After Sally I listen to a podcast about a guy riding his bike across America which randomly brings me to tears. It’s not even that good of an episode, but here I am in some sort of emotional quagmire that I cannot understand. I’m not usually one to cry, stoic to a fault, but here I hike on the side of a 12,000ft pass with my face dripping. Hiking long distances does weird things to your emotions it would seem.

At the summit of the pass we meet an awesome couple! They’re our age, really nice, and only later do I realize that my social skills have gone to crap in five short days and I have yet again forgotten to ask what people’s names are. Regardless, they’re going on a different trip that us. Potential new friends turn back into strangers as we depart the top of Pinchot pass in opposite directions.

For the first time since we started this trip we’re camping alone. Blissful solitude! Being able to pee without worrying about strangers looking at your butt! No hiker bro’s yell-talking after dark! Our only neighbors are an older couple camped a few hundred meters away who crawl into their tents before the sun has even set, leaving us alone to watch the sun set over the lake: laughing and talking about farts and our complete degradation of etiquette.

Bubbs Creek to Lower Rae Lakes

It’s so nice to wake up without an alarm clock, something I haven’t done in what feels like years. Keith is still snoozing, and so I attempt to extract myself from our tent as quietly as possible so that I can start morning chores – poo, gather water, make coffee and watch the sun fill the valley we’re camped in. Somewhere in there I wash my hands, promise. While I’m gathering water a doe walks within 50 feet of me, getting her early morning drink from the creek. I feel special to be sharing this little bit of creek bank with a wild creature – meanwhile the busy campsite above us is filled with the clanking of titanium pots boiling water for oatmeal, and the hiss of sleeping pads being deflated.

In the early morning light I can see that Keith and I are definitely the youngest people here, by at least 15 years. One couple looks older than my parents. I hope to still be exploring these wild places when I’m in my 70’s.

With only 10 miles on the agenda for the day we spend the morning dicking around in camp. Keith fishes in the creek and actually manages to catch a few fish! They’re too small to eat, but I frankly didn’t think he’d catch anything on his $10 fly fishing rod, so he’s already far exceeded my expectations.

We’re on the trail by 9:30am and today is the first day that I don’t feel 100% stoked to be out there. My legs are tired I’m feeling slow and stumbly as we descend along the creek. However, once we start our ascent towards Glenn Pass the endorphins kick in and I’m feeling good. Woo, body drugs!

A little into our climb we pass our first NoBo hiker! We haven’t seen anyone else going our direction, and we’d started to feel like the only ones. He says he’s struggling on the climb, and we agree – it’s hot today and the climb is steep. Unfortunately for our new found friend our struggle pace is faster than his struggle pace and so we hike on knowing that we’ll probably never see him again.

Glenn Pass also feels like a struggle because there are so many people descending past us, so we’re always playing the step aside, you go, no you go game with strangers who all look vaguely familiar. I tell Keith that we must have missed the thru hiker uniform memo – carrying a massive backpack, dressed live Steve Irwin raided an REI, and being a white 40 something dude. All day we pass guys who look like REI or LL Bean catalogue models and it’s really weird. It’s times like these when the white, hetero-normative, bro-y nature of our outdoor spaces is really obvious. Over the course of the next two weeks I’ll calculate that only about 30% of the people out here are women, and that about 10% of people are anything other than white. I don’t know how we fix those statistics, but we need to.

The top of Glenn Pass is barely big enough for more than a few people to gather at a time, so we get our picture made and then start to scurry down the back side. There is another snow crossing that I’m less than thrilled about, but at least I keep the water works at bay.

About 100 meters below the saddle we meet an Australian couple hiking the JMT with their young daughter. They’re pretty freaked out and want all the beta we can give them on Forester Pass – how much snow exactly, how close to the top, what about the south side, etc etc. We answer with an odd combo of honesty and assurance which we can see isn’t doing much to assuage their fears. They then tell us that both Muir and Mather passes have super sketchy snow crossings and that you definitely want to cross them in the morning*, but when Keith asks why they have no good reasoning.

* Note: this is objectively terrible advice. If you have to navigate a snow crossing, the best time is early to mid afternoon when the snow is soft and it’s easier to self arrest on if you take a fall.

The last three miles of the day I’m bonking – hard. But we’re so close to camp that I really don’t want to stop to deal with eating. Plus, I’m starting to get the creeping sensation that I haven’t packed enough food.

Rae Lakes welcomes us with a big, slow moving, ford where the surprisingly warm water comes above my knees. The word warm when applied to alpine bodies of water refers to anything that doesn’t make you gasp when you get in it. It’s like a natural ice bath for my aching legs.

Our camp mates for the evening are another clueless bunch of bros. Some are camped far too close to the water, bear canisters stored unnecessarily inside the bear box, others set up camp right next to us with no introduction, they just assume it’s fine which, it mostly is, but their arrogant nature bothers me. I’m grateful that I was raised in an outdoors family, that I was brought up knowing how to behave myself outdoors, how to be kind to mama nature when I’m out and about, and how to generally not be the jerk that people write blog posts about.

Laying in our tent, protected from the mosquitos, I run over the confusing beta we received from the scared Aussies earlier today. So far both Forester and Glenn passes have had snow crossings on which I was less than comfortable. What will happen if Muir and Mather and Pinchot are worse than that? On the JMT there is no real option to bail, no real alternate trail where you could go around a pass if you’re sketched out. I resolve to deal with it when I get there, and not try and stress myself out before that moment. Of course, there is no other option in this situation either, either it will be fine or I’ll have to figure it out.

Wallace Creek to Bubbs Creek

I wake up to find an empty campground – our German bro friends having gotten an early start. Or perhaps they were eaten by bears as punishment for hanging their food so poorly and so unnecessarily.

We’re slow to break camp, something that will become a bit of a theme on this trail. But we’re finally up and moving a little after 9am. Winding through the trees in the calm morning light and almost immediately we start to see SoBo hikers. They ask about how far ahead their friends are, how the creek crossings are, and they all want to know how the summit of Mt Whitney was. “Was it amazing?” they ask. The first few times we’re presented with this question we try to answer honestly “it was cloudy, it was cold, but you’ll probably have better weather.” However, this honesty is both time consuming and the SoBo’s really don’t care so we just start answering with “yeah” and a smile before sending them on their way.

Lunch is spent relaxing on the side of Tyndall Creek. I spend an hour jumping around taking pictures of my shoes for a review I’m slated to write after the trip. Keith tells me about how Tyndall was flowing so fast six weeks ago that the local SAR (search and rescue) teams had set up a line and were helping PCT hikers navigate the waters. He tells me it’s running at less than half that level now. Keith then heads down by the  bank to try his new fly fishing set up. I’m not even sure there are fish in this creek, but I’m content to sit in the warm sun and eat snacks while he snags his lure in a bush.

The rest of the afternoon is spent climbing towards Forester Pass, the tallest point on the PCT and the second highest point on the JMT. The approach to Forester is a long and gentle climb, the trees dropping away as you wind past glittering high alpine lakes nestled amongst a granite moon-scape. Walking all the time towards what appears to be a solid granite wall, towering a thousand feet or more over your head. Keith and I try to pick out the most logical place for a pass and just epically fail.

The trail up Forester Pass climbs through a solid rock face, away from more gentle slopes, and finally through a sketchy little notch that you would 100% not hike through were it not for some nice old timey man who came and blasted a trail through here almost 100 years ago. Old timey folks were hard core AF.

As we climb, the world does a gentle Tilt-a-Whirl under my feet, and I have to slow down my pace to the step-breathe-step method. My heart is racing in my chest, and yet my legs are moving at a pace I’d call strolling. Thus is born the HIS method of walking – High Intensity Strolling – which Keith and I will employ up each of the 12,000ft tall passes that we’ll need to climb over the next few days.

The top of Forester blows my tiny human mind. To the south I can see the land which we’ve walked across for the last two days, and ahead more land, more passes, more everything that stretches on for ever and ever and ever amen. I have a real insignificant moment. Not a moment that is insignificant, but a moment in which I realize how small we are among everything, Keith, me, humans in general, we’re just hanging out on borrowed time on this incredible bright blue planet of ours, going about our little mammalian lives and adventures as though their the most important things in the world. We’re so cute. While I have an oxygen deprived moment of clarity Keith takes pictures for an older German couple and then it’s time to go.

My moment on the top of Forester does not preclude me from being scared as we are forced to cross a snow field on our descent. I’ll hike and climb on rock, and I’ll ski or snowboard on snow, but I really hate hiking and especially descending on snow. Keith scampers down like nothing, his mountaineering skills kicking in. I, conversely, sit on my butt, scooch down a little, and try not to lose it while I picture what would happen if I started an uncontrollable slide. Namely, that I’d slide to the end of the snow field about 150 feet down, where I’d then be deposited rapidly and unceremoniously onto a giant field of granite scree – which, if you’ve ever hiked on granite you know is essentially lots of tiny bits of glass and rock mushed together. In short, the fall would be not enough to kill you, but it would certainly fuck up your day and possibly end your trip. Then I start to cry a little – which really doesn’t help matters – and then, as gracefully as a giraffe on roller skates I’m off the snow. I make a mental note to sign up for an ice axe and snow travel class as soon as I’m home.

The rest of the day is spend descending to our campsite near Bubbs Creek. I’m tired from my little drama session on the snow, but that doesn’t prevent me from marveling at how inexpressibly beautiful everything is.

When we finally make it to camp we’re a little disappointed to find around 12 other people already there with their camps set up. I’m going to have to get used to hiking and camping near other people – something I take pains to avoid during the majority of my trips.

The several groups at Bubbs Creek give off a distinctly “you can’t sit with us” vibe, and so Keith and I set up our tent on the edge of the clearing and don’t try too hard to make friends. I start to get the feeling that we’re some of the youngest people on this trail – at least were substantially younger than everybody we’ve seen so far. It’s an odd feeling to have at nearly 30 years old, but out camp mates look more like they could be my parents than my friends. Ah well, nothing to be done about that.

Dinner is green chicken chili – recipe and seasoning packet courtesy of Derrick an Anna, thanks guys! – so, sufficiently filled with carbs and sodium we retreat into our tent home.

Trail Crest to Wallace Creek

4:30am comes to our chilly little campsite and I spring out of bed, eyes wide open, bushy tailed, and ready for our first full day on the trail!

No, no I’m messing with you. Keith’s Alarm woke us up, it was super dark out, but it was 4:30am. The plan was to hike a little more than two miles to the summit of Mt Whitney – the official southern terminus of the JMT – and arrive just in time for sunrise.

In the end we didn’t manage to get there before sunrise but it hardly mattered since the summit of Mt Whitney was engulfed in a cloud bank. I didn’t even bother to take any pictures because they looked identical to putting a pillow case over your head. Ah well, it’s still the tallest peak in the lower 48!

We had planned to take a leisurely breakfast on the summit, maybe a nap, generally chill out a bit.

What actually happened was we spent 20 minutes, max, on the summit. In which we: huddled for warmth with some other hikers in the summit hut, ate frozen snacks, put on every single layer we had, and awkwardly signed the trail register before booking it down to our little campground at Trail Crest and promptly taking a nap.

After our nap we started going down. If yesterday was all about climbing (5,600 vertical feet up) then today was all about going down. Down past Guitar Lake, with it’s cute family of marmots and bright blue waters. Down onto the PCT, overhanging trees and the sweet sweet oxygen of lower elevations! Down down down.

Along the way we were passed by so many south bound (SoBo) JMT hikers that it started to feel a little ridiculous. Packs of four, seven, eight (!), hikers at a time cruising up past us on their way south. Meanwhile, the only NoBo hikers we saw were those we had shared the summit with who were camped at Guitar Lake, a short six miles into our day. However, now that we were off the most popular peak in America people are courteous, and kindly step aside when necessary, and we do the same.

At the end of our day of descending we reach Wallace Creek and are rather alarmed to see that two other groups are already there – about 10 dudes in total. But there is still one campground open to us that’s not too close to the water, so we take it.

Our neighbors are a group of remarkably clueless German hiker dudes who are really really eager to hang a bear bag despite clearly having no idea how to do it, and there being a perfectly good bear box located less than 50 meters from their camp. Part of me really wants to help them do it right/save them the trouble of doing it at all and part of me really doesn’t want to be the know it all girl who tells everybody they’re wrong.

I’m not sure why I stand by when I see people clearly breaking the rules about food storage and camp site selection, but it’s something I’ll do this entire trip. Is it because I’m afraid of confrontation? Or because I feel like it won’t make any difference to correct them? Or is it a deeper societal need to fit in and be nice? Or maybe after years of hiking as a woman, you get used to clueless dudes who are just so certain of everything that I really just can’t bring myself to be the trail police for people who don’t want to hear it. Whatever the reason I leave the Germans to their terrible bag hanging job and go filter water for dinner.

Tonight is spaghetti and meat sauce over noodles and it’s bomb dot com! It’s so good! Like, I would 100% eat this meal at home – which is not an endorsement that I would ever give a purchased dehydrated meal, but some how Keith and I managed to craft up some truly tasty trail food.

After cleaning up dinner, doing some washy wash in the woods (sunscreen is gross, ok?) and storing our food properly, I’m ready for bed. And it’s not even 7pm yet.

Womp womp. God I’m such a granny.

I lay in the tent and read for a bit while Keith hangs out in his hammock. Eventually it get’s dark, and while it’s only 8:15pm I decide to pass out. Why not? It’s not like you get an award for staying up too late on the trail, and sleep is awesome.

Whitney Portal to Trail Crest

The hostel bed is uncomfortable when I wake up, but it hardly matters. We’re going on an adventure!

After taking my last hot shower for 10 days and getting dressed in my Official JMT Hiking Outfit I head out the door to find coffee while Keith unpacks and repacks his bear canister for what feels like the 10th time in two days. The morning is filled with last minute lounging, packing and repacking and double checking all of the things and then finally it’s time to check out and we have no choice but to just go.

But first, we go in the wrong direction for about 20 miles, heading up to Manzanar Historic Site to score some sweet sweet eclipse glasses. Did I mention that we started our hike on the same day as the Super Great Extra Awesome North American Total Eclipse? Because we did. Although, from our vantage point the sun was largely behind clouds and only at 80% totality, but it was still really cool.

After our detour we head up to Whitney Portal where we’ll begin our hike. We park my car and leave a note to rangers/vandals/whomever that we are JMT hikers and that we’ll be back in three weeks and to please not break into my Subaru. As I write the note I vaguely realize that I’m also giving people an exact timeline for how long they have to break into my car, but against my nature I opt to trust humans and write the note anyway.

At the Whitney Portal store Keith and I order a burger and fries each, and I order a real soda, one with calories, which I sip slowly while the woman at the front desk moves in slow motion and eyes us as we pace around the store. Apparently normal people don’t order burgers at 10:30am and then pace around the store waiting like hungry jackals. Normal people are also unlikely to finish said burgers, and then promptly order another, and then proceed to stuff those burgers into plastic bags for trail dinner.

The counter girl tries and fails to conceal her judgement of us. Or maybe she’s not judging us and that’s just her face.

And now there is nothing to do but hike. Months of planning, and organizing, and stressing out all come down to shouldering a heavy backpack and heading up the trail.  And today, we’ll climb. Climb up to 13,600 feet where we’ll camp among the rocks and the marmots below the summit of Mt Whitney.

The trail is quiet to start and for a while we don’t see anyone. This is hardly shocking given that 11am on a Monday isn’t the best time to start a peak climb. Looking back I wish I had reveled in that quiet trail time more, because shortly we’re among every Los Angeles hiker bro you can imagine and it’s super fucking annoying. People barreling down the trail towards us, refusing to step aside (Note: uphill traffic has right of way, they just do, don’t be a dick about it.). People play music aloud from their portable boom boxes, and a train of army guys almost asphyxiate trying to out hike us.

Keith proposes a game called “Douchebag” in which you have to be the first person to shout “Douchebag!” out loud when you see an full abandoned WAG bag on the side of the trail. After a while we’re shouting “Douchebag!” so often that the game loses some of it’s fun.

* Do you know what a WAG Bag is? It’s a plastic bag filled with the human equivalent of cat litter that the Forest Service gives hikers on Mt Whitney so they can poop in them. And then – and this is the important part – you take it off the mountain with you! Why? Because there are so many people climbing this peak that if everybody took a, literal, shit on it, we’d have a hazmat zone on our hands. Pack out your WAG bag you jerk.

After several hours of hiking we hit trail camp and sit by the small lake eating our cold burgers and french fries. I stare at a WAG bag that somebody has left in the bottom of the lake. People are garbage, and once again I’m torn between my beliefs that all people should have opportunities to explore our protected lands and the fact that most people are kinda crap.

Clouds curdle overhead and it starts to rain lightly and so Keith and I pack up, filter some extra water, and begin the climb up to our campsite for the night. As we climb the other campers at Trail Camp fall away until soon they all look like M&M’s in their bright tents.

The high altitude is sucking away my energy and soon we’re reduced to slow-motion hiking. Step step. Breathe. Step. Breathe. Step step step. Gasp! The world turns into a Tilt-a-Whirl and I start to worry about how I’ll handle sleeping above 13k feet with no acclimatization. Adventure, I remind myself, you’re on an adventure.

Cresting the ridge we’re treated to an incredible sunset. Ya know what? I’m just going to go ahead and claim it as the best sunset of my life so far. It’s that good. With great rays of gold and purple light flooding the valley below our feet, igniting the lakes with a coppery fire.

In the last half mile to camp I take way too many pictures. But I just can’t help myself. When we arrive at camp we find two other hikers, both men, who are at the end of their JMT hike, having summited Mt Whitney earlier in the day. There is general chatter as Keith and I set up our tent, and only later will I realize that we never told them our names, and they never told us theirs. Maybe it doesn’t matter so much on the trail.

We all stand around in silence, staring, as the sun does it’s wonderful things until at last it’s gone and a light snow begins to fall ushering us all into our respective tents.

I fall asleep feeling ridiculously content, wrapped in my warm quilt. We’re doing it, we’re on our adventure.