This is the second in a series of posts documenting Reuben’s John Muir Trail backpacking trip from July 13-26, 2008. Each day will have its own post–reposted from a handwritten journal kept on the trail and paired with photos from each day.
The John Muir Trail (JMT) is a long-distance trail in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, running 211 miles (340 km) from the Happy Isles trailhead in Yosemite Valley south to the summit of Mount Whitney on the border of Sequoia National Park and Inyo National Forest. It is named for naturalist John Muir. The elevation of the John Muir Trail seldom dips below 8,000 feet (2,400 m), it crosses six passes in excess of 11,000 feet (3,400 m) with a total cumulative elevation gain of just over 46,000 feet (14,000 m) and descends just over 38,000 feet (12,000 m).
When we woke up this morning everything was still wet. It hadn’t rained much the night before, but the woods were still dripping with condensation from the day before, making for a lot of night noise. Packing up camp while wet is never very fun, especially on the first day, when you are still trying to figure out who takes care of what in the morning with a party of three people and lots of shared equipment and food. It took us over an hour to begin hiking, even after we decided to just eat a snack for breakfast and stop later for more of a morning meal.
Today is Kim’s birthday. Happy birthday, Kim! Sorry we can’t give you a call!
When we began hiking, we continued uphill for close to 1,200 feet before we reached Sunrise High Sierra Camp. We were pretty glad we did not press on the night before, as there were no suitable camping sites between where we stayed and closer to the top of the climb, 3 miles later. Sunrise High Sierra Camp is part of a system of group campsites in the Sierras. You can pay to camp in the tent-cabins set up there, and the organizers will bring in group gear on pack-mules and prepare your food. There are composting toilets available as well. A nice oasis in the wilderness set on a beautiful meadow and surrounded by an amazing view (especially at sunrise!). Nick and I camped here on our last trip to Yosemite. That year the camp was not running since the season had been shortened due to heavy snowfall. This year, the camp was operational and there were quite a lot of people there. Luckily it was still early in the morning when we got there, we were just stopping for breakfast, and most people at the camp were just beginning to get up. We ate our breakfast, filled our water, said hello to those walking by, and made our way back onto the trail.
Nick and Jess at the foot of Long Meadow, near Sunrise High Sierra Camp
Echo Peaks
Cathedral Peak
We walked through Long Meadow with the morning sun on us. A nice break from the rain the day before. We climbed for a bit and were rewarded with a really nice view of Echo Peaks and the Matthes Crest to our right. We were all pretty sore from the day before, so we took lots of short breaks. Our newly blistered feet were hurting, and I was getting some pain in my knees after we began descending a bit towards Tuolumne Meadows (a small camping community off of Tioga Road). Our resupply box was waiting for us there, and we ended up hiking a bit on Tioga Road to get to the post office — a hot and tired trek as we were all well ready for lunch and a long break.
When we got to Tuolumne, Nick headed off to buy new socks since he had brought old ones with him, and Jess and I found the post office — which was closed for lunch. We dropped our packs in an unused campsite and I lay down for a rest. I was exhausted. I lay there for a bit, my appetite surpressed from the workout and altitude as Nick and Jess grabbed some iced coffee and our resupply box when the post office finally opened. I redressed my blisters with moleskin and ductape to hold everything on — a solution that fared well for the rest of the trip.
Our first resupply box! (Notice our bear containers on the right — have to fit all of our food in those!)
We dug through our resupply and split the food up. It was fun going through a package that Nick and Jess had prepared months earlier before they left for South America. We set all of our food out and figured out what we would eat first, which stuff was the most bulky and heavy. Jess made some Indian food as I set up our wet tent to dry in the sun. Then we started hearing thunder again, and storm clouds moved in. We enjoyed an ice cream cone and some coffee — our last bit of civilization for quite a few days — and started packing up quickly, just as it started raining! As we headed out of the campground area, we ducked into the women’s bathroom to put on our rain gear. We tried to wait a bit of the storm out there, and we watched it absolutely POUR with grape-sized hail for about a half hour.
When we finally decided we had to get going despite the rain, we had a hard time even walking around. Water was flowing everywhere, the river we were hiking along was incredibly swollen, and we had to do lots of little detours to avoid flowing and standing water. We hiked in the rain for another couple of hours, encountering a few hikers, some of which were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail which runs from Mexico to Canada and shares quite a few miles with the JMT.
The rain tapered off just as we were getting too tired to continue. Nick’s knee had also been giving him trouble, the rain had worn on us all, and we were definitely ready to stop for the day. We found an alright campsite about 6 miles short of our planned goal for the day. We were even more off schedule now and I was getting worried about how the rest of the trip would go. We figured we could add the remaining distance on to some of our shorter days ahead.
The mosquitoes at camp were pretty bad, the weather had gotten quite cold, and being wet didn’t help. We ate dinner and got into the tent with the sun still up. We were really tired, but also wanted to get an early start on the day tomorrow — when we would climb over our first pass, 7 miles and 2,200 feet above where we slept.
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Daily Stats
Began hiking at 6:30am
Mileage: 17.5 (28km)
Estimated Ascent: 2,000 Feet
Estimated pack weight: 36 pounds (after resupply)
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And the adventure continues……
this is also where we put our bottle of jim beam into the “hiker box” at the post office – a box of free stuff from and for backpackers. it was too heavy to lug up and down miles. it was our first meeting with our friend Clockwork Orange (trail name) who took the jim beam out of the hikers box and who we would meet several times on our trip.