On the Trail

How to capture 3 weeks on the John Muir Trail? At least I can give you a taste with some photos. 

Early on, walking through the glaciated valleys. The trail was pretty much always this beautiful, even as the landscape varied dramatically. 

Cedars! I love them!

I guess I *am* a tree-hugger.

One of our more creative campsites. Check out our ultralight tent - no tent poles, just hiking poles. Lisa and her mom sewed it!

There's gold in them hills?

We often started hiking before sunrise so we got to see the light as it rose up the mountains most mornings.

Our last re-supply stop at Muir Trail Ranch, joined by Steph. We wanted to demonstrate what a ridiculously large quantity of food we were going to be eating over the next 8.5 days, but it doesn't really show up in the photo. Instead, you might be wondering why Lisa and I are wearing rain gear... Ethan was washing our clothes, and we only had one set!

Rested and ready for the last, and hardest, leg! My pack weighed in at 37 pounds, fully loaded.

Don't worry, we made it out of there okay.

The famous Evolution Basin.

Many days we started in the trees, hiked up and over a pass, and hiked back down to the trees. The passes looked like this usually: lots of scree and talus (rocks). Even after acclimating for weeks, it was still hard to breath up there! A gatha (mantra) from the Thich Nhat Hanh retreat helped us with those climbs: "Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile."

At the top of one of the passes. The last week of the trip, we had 5 passes in 5 days. It felt like running a marathon that took all day, going to bed, getting up, and doing it again. Five days in a row.

A typical kitchen on the trail! 

We swam in this tarn (glacial lake) at 12,200 feet. It was so cold that I didn't feel it when I kicked a sharp rock and sliced open my toe. But there's something magically healing about so much walking... it healed quickly.

Just another evening on the JMT.

"And this is how you put on the sunscreen..." three times a day. SO MUCH SUN at this elevation. 

Steph crossing the bridge at King's River. Getting close -- only 3 days to Whitney! That night I slept under the stars, instead of in the tent, protected by an ancient Juniper tree. It was one of my best night's sleep on the whole trip.

Alpenglow!

Our last pass before Whitney, and the highest point of the trail so far. When we got here, we realized that we were really going to make it. And on top of that, right as we got to the pass, an eagle flew right over us! The next day was a "rest" -- no pass, and only 12 miles, up to Guitar Lake on the side of Whitney.

(Unfortunately, the pictures from the last couple days, including Whitney, didn't download, so maybe I'll post them when I get them from Lisa. Stay tuned.)

Thanks for reading! And thanks so much to Lisa for taking these amazing photos!

Heading out on the John Muir Trail

Here we are on August 19th in Yosemite Valley. Check out the last location on the sign: our destination (in case you can't read it, it says "Mount Whitney via the John Muir Trail: 213 miles). If you're wondering why it looks like someone dumped a bucket of water over my head, we'd doused ourselves at the fountain at the foot of the trail. It was 95 degrees or more in the Valley, even though it was already 4pm. (I thought back on that feeling many times as we walked from summer into fall and lowlands up to alpine cold.)

It had been a long day. We woke up at 3:55AM and walked two miles in the dark to the permit office in the hopes that we could be the first in line to get the coveted permits (the ranger had told us the day before that there were permits for three people) to start the trail there, instead of 30 miles along at Tuolumne Meadows. Most of Yosemite Valley was asleep. We saw 2 little lights up on Half Dome -- climbers' headlamps. A car or two passed us and we worried: what if those cars were also on the way to the wilderness permit office and we were not the first?

Indeed, as we approached the little wooden cabin we heard talking and saw the dark shapes of 5 hikers already in line. They had gotten up at 4, also, but they had a car so they were there before us. Despite our disappointment, we struck up a conversation and settled in for the long wait until the 11AM permit time to see if somehow we would be lucky. As the sun came up, more and more hikers arrived, crest-fallen as they saw how many of us were already in line. "JMT?" they would ask. Everyone would nod. This was a popular trail and not all of us were going to be able to start today.

We were lucky. Some permit holders had not showed up so the first eight of us (Lisa and I were numbers six and seven) were good to go, as long as we started today. We rushed to wrap up our trip preparation, including mailing our cellphones back to Lisa's mom's house, and finally got on the trail in the mid-afternoon, completely exhausted.

We were doing it! Finally, after years of dreaming, months of planning, and a final frenzied 48 hours of travel and packing, here we were, climbing up out of Yosemite Valley towards Vernal Falls among  hundreds of day hikers from all over the world. We stood out with our large overnight packs among the fanny-pack-wearing tourists. Some stopped and pointed to our backpacks: "Where are you headed?"
"Mount Whitney!" It was fun watching their faces as they tried to understand what that meant: how far away it was and how we could be out in the woods for so long.

Looking back as we climbed up out of Yosemite Valley the first afternoon.

Hello Again

Hi everyone! I'm back (sort of) in computer land and I want to tell you about my adventures so far. Here's where I'll post about my wanderings. It's what I would write in an old-fashioned letter to you, except an old-fashioned letter that I'm writing to a bunch of you at once (I guess that is now called "email"... which is also now old-fashioned.)

Right now I'm in Joshua Tree with my friends Steph and Ethan, enjoying the desert in the fall, where the farmer's market sells local limes -- something I will never see in Maine (or at least haven't yet, even with climate change).


Highlights of my adventures so far:

- Hiking 211 miles on the John Muir Trail
- Contemplating interbeing at the Mindfulness Retreat for Educators with Thich Nhat Hanh
- Hanging out with two-and-a-half-year-old Leon, post-tonsilectomy (his not mine)
- Waking at 3:30AM to hike Cactus to Clouds hike with Steph and Ethan - the most elevation gain of any trail in the US (!)

My next adventure is a 10 day silent meditation retreat near here. I originally thought I might be back on the East Coast in October, but it didn't end up making sense (I'm trying to break the habit of packing in plans so tightly that I end up overflowing out of the sides) so I'll be in California probably until Thanksgiving, when I head to Colorado.


You can subscribe to this blog so that when I post something new, you'll get it as an email. There should be a place at the bottom of the page for that. Let me know if you need help signing up for that.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the background photo here, it's from the John Muir Trail, LeConte Canyon.