Four years ago I read the book Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Her story touched my soul. I told my sister about the book, and after
reading it she felt the same. This was
the beginning of our dream to hike the John Muir Trail.
we grew up on the outskirts of the trail with our father, a miner, who worked
the area and loved to explore the mountains. What a better way for us to
explore the same mountains, honor our father, and embrace our inner “wild” than
to hike in the High Sierra, the range of light.
Every morning since the New Year I read the John MuirTrail Guide by Elizabeth Wenk. To make this dream a reality we had to
secure a permit at the end of January through a confusing lottery system put in
place to limit the amount of hikers in the back-country. We won our date and entrance location: the
beautiful Tuolumne Meadows, our Dad’s favorite place to hike due to it’s unique
beauty and geological evidence of glacier activity.
The John Muir Trail totals 210.4 miles. It has 10 passes
that are above 10,000 feet, it is meant to be scenic (and therefore long), has
many snow-covered areas that can impede progress, and therefore takes an obsessive
amount of planning, visualizing and physical preparation.
There are many times in my life that I am grateful for being
in the profession that I am. Co-owning and operating City Fitness Gym
gives me a daily workout boost. In addition to my normal workouts that include
yoga, pole fitness, step aerobics and hiking, I added more squats, assisted
pull-ups, and higher intensity core exercises. Hiking up and down mountains is
a very different challenge than a 5-mile hike through a city park. In addition to the elevation challenge, the
trail is not manicured and can be quite unstable, and you are carrying your
supplies at all times.
In researching a hike of this magnitude, it was advised to
keep our packs at 35 pounds or less. Because we had done some backpacking in
the past, we already had what we thought was appropriate equipment. We just
needed to add a few items and some provisions. We were required to carry a bear
canister (which prevents bears from smelling your food), which added weight and
took up precious cargo space. Other items included rope, tent, stove, propane,
cup, spoon, matches, lighter, sleeping bag and air mattress, buff, bandannas,
camp shirt, underwear, long underwear, rain jacket, rain pants, puffy down
jacket, socks, gloves, fleece hat, sun hat, sun glasses, eye glasses, knife,
compass, whistle, map, wilderness first aid kit and emergency handbook, sun
screen, tooth paste and tooth brush, wipes, water treatment tablets, and of
course bear spray. Our food included
coffee, chocolate, trail mix, protein bars, mac-n-cheese, tofu jerky, shot
blocks, refried beans, string cheese, tortillas, miso soup, oatmeal, peanut
butter, butter, olive oil, ramen noodles, protein powder. Much to our chagrin,
the packs ended up weighing 45 pounds including water.
As we were entering the trail 17 miles in, we planned to
hike 10 miles a day to complete the trail including the mileage to exit the
mountains to Whitney Portal. We allowed 25 days including time for rest days
and emergency weather conditions. So much for the best-laid plans…
Day one: We hiked through beautiful Tuolumne Meadows
enjoying a gradual climb along the river up Lyell Canyon. Little did we know this would be our only
easy day. Our first interaction was
with a very cute ranger who checked our permit. Of course, he told us it was
illegal to use bear spray in Yosemite National Park, which happens to be the
bears’ favorite hangout! We kept the
spray, crossing our fingers that the bears would allow us safe passage.
With 1500 through-hiking attempts each year, it is common to
engage with other hikers throughout your trip. Some you may see once at a
watering hole, some in passing. Others may keep a similar pace, and you may see
them frequently throughout your trek. On our second day, we stopped to re-fill
our water bottles at a bridge crossing at the end of the canyon where hikers
frequently gather. There, we met a group of hikers from all over the world. One
hiker, Adam from North Carolina, was hiking alone as the rest of his party quit.
He recognized my sister, as he had
lived previously in Bakersfield, from eating at the counter of the 24thStreet Café where she works as a
waitress. At the same time I met an
18-year-old woman who just graduated from National Cathedral School, which
happens to be here in DC, and worked out at City Fitness with
her aunt. It IS a small world after all.
From there, we started our climb to Donohue Pass, the first
of many passes to come. We felt every one of the 45 pounds on our backs. A hard
lesson learned on the trail was that our backpacking equipment from previous
trips was not exactly right for this longer distance. Most hikers are now using
ultra-light versions of what we were carrying. One thing we were happy not to
have skimped on was our bear canister. On our third night, we set camp at
Garnet Lake, on the edge of Yosemite, an area where there were other campers,
and a bear paid us a visit. We could hear it sniffing and snorting around the
perimeter of our tent. We lay perfectly still except to whisper, “Is that a
bear?” It did not smell any food, and
thankfully no food = no problem. It moved on to our neighbor’s tent to be
scared off by a flashlight. A very
frightening experience was safely out of the way.
Daily we woke up naturally at sunrise, had coffee, breakfast
and packed up our camp. I was surprised
how long a mountain mile really is. We
hiked up switch –backs, down switch- backs over varied terrain; shale, rolling
round rocks, granite slabs, pumice, big stone steps, and wet slippery rocks and
many water crossings, even past a waterfall going down a cliff. It took us all day to travel between 7 and
14 miles, climbing up, up, up to 10,000 feet and higher, over a pass and down
the other side trying our best to get below 9000 before dark where we could
camp near water and make a nice warm fire. Many days we were running away from
the inclement weather, doing our best to get over the pass before the afternoon
thunderstorm, rain, sleet, hail or snow arrived.
It was so great to spend three whole weeks with my sister
Shara, laughing and enjoying the expected muscle pain and soreness but well
worth it to see Mother Nature at her best.
We made new friends; Fiona, from North Carolina who founded an active ladies of the JMT facebook group, and Legia from the bay area that gave me my trail
name, Squaw who stops to talks a lot.
I loved hearing about where everyone I met was from, why he or she was
on the trail and where he or she was headed.
The funniest line I got from many tired hikers when I asked where they
were going…Canada is all they replied.
Those skinny PCT hikers could be spotted a mile away! And the joke when asking how far it is to
here or there, ‘Mile, Mile and a half.” never got old. We meet people from Australia, New Zealand,
Germany, Canada, and Mexico and all over the United States. It was refreshing
to see many young people on the trail and a hand full of women my age inspired
by the book Wild.
Despite our best planning, food became an issue on the
trail. It is hard to pack with enough variety; we packed a lot of similarly
flavored white foods. In addition to getting a taste aversion to them, food
trash had to be packed in the lower portion of the bear canister causing quite
a smell each time we opened it. It is also impossible to carry enough
provisions for your whole trip in a light enough pack, so there are re-supply
stations along the way. These allowed us to refill our food stores and to have
moments of what you might call “normalcy” in our eating. Often, there are free
giveaway items left out and we found a few treasures. We even shipped ourselves
a bottle of hooch. We did not know until we picked it up that it was illegal to
send it in the mail. Oops…but it helped us make friends.
About 80 miles in we made it to the Muir Trail Ranch and our
second re-supply. We had run out of
food and seeing our bucket was a sight for sore eyes. We rummaged through all leftover buckets, finding homemade
strawberry jam, whole-wheat tortillas and luxury items like grapefruit scented
wipes and apricot face wash! That
afternoon we set up our camp early at the ranch in a common area, jumped in the
San Joaquin river, soaked in the natural hot springs and shared our contraband Bowen’sWhiskey with our fellows campers around the camp
fire.
The next four days we made our way with up the very hot
Piute Canyon toward Evolution Basin, a place behind our childhood home where
there are 10,000-year-old glaciers.
This beautiful, rugged, in an “other worldly way” place was my favorite.
Clear, clean ice blue water flows out of granite, down green tarns, into high
mountain lakes, one stacked on top of the other surrounded by boulder fields
all the way to Muir Pass.
The weather began a turn for the worse and we decided to
change our plans. At this point, our
energy was drained, our food supplies were almost depleted, and two hikers had
joined our party and one was having major knee trouble. We did not want to risk
going another 80 miles over 5 more passes over 12,000 feet, so we decided to
exit over Bishop Pass saving the goal of Mt. Whitney for a future trip. This
was the toughest day of all. Starting
at 7 am we hiked 7 miles up steep switchbacks in weather that changed every
half hour. We made it to Bishop pass
12,000 feet at 4:00p.m. totally exhausted and out of food. We hiked another 7 miles down very steep
switch- backs then up and down past 5 lakes until we reached the parking lot at
8:00p.m.
We planned to hitch a ride to Bishop but saw no one around.
Earlier that day we meet a packer with his mules who told us we could use the
phone at the pack station a mile/mile and a half down the road from the parking
lot. We left our friends and backpacks,
only taking our bear spray, as it was getting dark and headed to find help. As
we walked we noticed headlights coming down the road so we stuck out our thumbs
and a sweet family, forgiving our stench, gave us a ride. They had talked with our friends who asked
them to be on the look out for us.
They did not have room in their car for all four of us but surprised us
by going back to pick up our friends and packs and hauling them to the pack
station.
The phone did not work!
So Squaw who stops and talks a lot was appointed the task of
asking a guest in one of the log cabins to give us a ride to where we could get
cell phone reception and call my local family to pick us up. Instead, the kind man with a very big truck
and his teenage son took us the whole 30 miles to town and dropped us off at a
restaurant. Thank god for small and
large miracles. As he was driving the
sky opened up and it rained cats and dogs.
Thanks to these warm hearted souls we made it out of the WILD and to our
small hometown safe and warm.
Life is meant to be enjoyed, feet on the ground, spiraling
up to our higher self to vibrate at a higher frequency. We learned to respect
nature in both its beauty and its harshness. I have a deeper appreciation for
fries and milk shakes, as that meal I had waiting for my niece Holly to pick us
up tasted amazing. Our warm and comfortable bed in Mammoth Lakes was so
soothing. And we awakened the next day to sunshine and fresh food including a
kale and brussel sprout salad with an ice-cold beer at Mammoth Brewing Company. A great ending to a wonderful adventure!
