Seattle, WA

How did you get your trail name?
"I mean, I don't know. Just look at me!"

If you could have anything right now, what would it be?
"Grilled cheese. Definitely grilled cheese. I might try to make some tonight with my chips the cheese I have left..."

"I feel like I'm here for self-sufficiency. I don't know, I'm really out here for experiences and surprises. It's so easy to forget how cool this country is, but it's beautiful and I want to see it."

August 9, 2016

The long days were beginning to add up and my knees especially were unhappy about the previous day. I was slow breaking camp in the morning but was still up and at 'em fairly early. Forrester Pass was the only thing on the agenda for the morning and I was once again glad to starting the day with a climb to ward off the chill. I thought back to the photo of Strider had sent us of him standing at the top of Forrester pass 6 weeks earlier when it was fully covered in snow with no trail to follow. Things would be quite different for me.

I took a break at the top, hoping to maybe see Yak and Newton again before each of our trips ended. While I was up there a group of retired couples arrived from the south. I took some photos for them and they did the same for me. I ended up sticking around to talk with them for a while. Eventually we all began to get chilly and continued on.

After almost 5 months on the trail I finally got my permit checked by a ranger on the way down. I can't say it was rewarding per se, but I did feel better about carrying the paper. The terrain become consistently dry and desert-ey and I could tell I was getting close to the Lone Pine <-> Kennedy Meadows section I had completed 1.5 weeks before.

I arrived at Crabtree campground, the base of the Whitney Spur Trail, mid afternoon. My plan for the following day was an aggressive one and I was hoping the ranger would cut me some slack and let me camp closer to the summit then my PCT permit allowed me. My permit did not allow me to go down the eastern side of Whitney through the Whitney Portal back to Lone Pine. Instead I would be getting up at 2:00am, summitting Whitney for the sunrise, descending back to Crabtree, and then completing the 19 miles back down and around to Horseshoe Meadows. It would be just over a 36 mile day including the tallest peak in the continental US.

The ranger was out on patrol so I decided just to go for it. I hiked in up to Guitar Lake. That was quite crowded and I had heard of additional sites with water further up and decided to keep going. I settled on a flat spot tucked right up against a large boulder for protection from the wind. This was the highest I had ever camped.

My camp site

I was a little concerned about logistics for the next day. There was a good chance I would arrive at Horseshoe Meadows too late to hitch a ride into town. I had asked Rickets to cancel the GPS plan and yesterday had been the last day of the last cycle. Fortunately for me, Delorme's system had screwed up and it had rolled over anyway. I sent a text off to my mother giving her my credit card information and asking her to reserve a room at the hostel and to arrange a pickup for me. Huge thanks to her for taking my last minute request and making some calls.

The van driver she talked to had some interesting news: Horseshoe Meadows might very well be on fire. The next call was to the sheriff who confirmed that there was indeed a live fire at Horseshoe Meadows and that the section of trail I had planned on doing would be closed. Man was I glad to have found that out tonight and not halfway into the next day. Especially as I did not have enough food to take an alternate trail back down to Lone Pine.

My last day on trail had just become a whole lot easier. Despite not having the correct permit to exit through Whitney Portal, I didn't exactly have a choice. After a pre-dawn summit I would just have 9 miles of downhill to the portal. From there it would be easy to get a ride into town. Feeling much better about the state of things I headed to bed.

August 7, 2016

My body woke me up at 5:00am and I was able to enjoy some pretty spectacular light over the barren rocky pass. The gray light, gray rocks, lack of vegetation, and dim light gave everything an extra-terrestrial look. I made my way down past more stepped lakes, passing camps still asleep.

Tents Below

The first group I encountered was a father, daughter and niece/cousin trio. I talked with them for a while before they stopped for a break at the rock monster. I still had plenty of downhill ahead of me before the climb up to Matther Pass and I pressed on, still riding the high that a naturally-woken early morning always seems to bring.

Rock Monster

I stopped for a break shortly after the trail began climbing again. We were following a creek for the moment and I had wanted to take a moment to soak my feet and enjoy the cold water before the long, dry, sun-exposed climb.

The first section of climb is known as the Golden Staircase. It is as steep as a staircase and the sun on the exposed rock certainly has a golden quality to it. I was trying to pace myself but it was very difficult to gauge and I kept rounding corners to find myself facing another quarter mile of climb. I finally reached the top of the staircase and was looking forward to a break at the pass.

Patterns in the shallows

The top of the stair was not the top of the pass. I came around a bend to find myself at the bottom of another valley. I began to understand what Matther Pass was all about and mentally prepared to face however many more false summits and valleys it had to offer. At least this one had a nice lake to look at.

The way ahead

I stopped for a late lunch at the top with what turned out to be a fairly large group of people. None of the groups seemed particularly interested in talking with anyone outside of their circle, however, so I kept to myself and enjoyed the light breeze. I took the break to examine my food standing and was a little dismayed to see that things would actually be a little bit tight. Not tight enough to be worried but tight enough I would have to ration. But hey, this was the last stretch - I could pig out when I got back into Lone Pine.

Deer in shadow

The barren rock gave way to dry sparse forest on the way down. I bottomed out soon enough and began the next climb. It had been a long day and I was not feeling an end-of-day push. I arrived at Marjorie Lake and set up camp near a British couple. I decided to jump in before the sun went down and took a few extra minutes to rinse out my clothing. I climbed out not a moment too soon as the sun dropped below the ridge on the opposite side of the lake. It was going to be a chilly night!

August 6, 2016

Even without an alarm set, and despite the late night, I woke early. Not wanting to disturb Isaac, I carried my stuff down the shore a ways before beginning my morning routine. I had hoped Isaac would be up before I set off so I could say goodbye, but there was no sign of movement from his tent.

Sunrise over the lake

I had a 2 hour descent down to Muir Trail Ranch. I didn't know what to expect of MTR having heard many mixed reviews about their friendliness towards hikers. The first thing I did when I arrived was to plug in electronics, conscious of any chance to charge up. Once that was taken care of I began wandering around to check the place out.

It did seem that the back packing crowd had monopolized much of this camp, originally meant for horseback travel. The staff seemed to have taken this as an inevitability, however, and had adapted. I have no data to back this claim with, but I would imagine that the demand for horseback travel experiences has decreased over the last two decades. MTR had begun supplementing their income by trucking in resupply buckets for hikers and trucking out their trash. Not nearly as romantic as horseback tours of the high Sierras, but they seemed to be doing alright.

Speaking of resupply buckets, those were next on my list to check out. I had heard from a few hikers that you could do a complete resupply from MTR's spare food but hadn't wanted to chance it. I absolutely could have and felt a pang of regret about the full resupply I had carried the last two days from Red's Meadow. I still had a ways to go, however, and I didn't care to become food-limited as I was already time-limited. I stocked up on snacks and a grabbed a few extra ramen - whatever would fit in my bear canister.

Swimming hole (actually 5+' deep)

Colby Meadow

The rest of the day was a long climb up through Evolution Valley and Colby Meadow. I stopped for an afternoon swim along the way. Swim is perhaps not quite the right word - I jumped in just long enough to get the salt off and to rinse out my hair before getting out of the snow-runoff Evolution Creek. The flies were out biting with a vengeance so I cut my stop short, ate a quick snack, and continued the climb.

The end of day held lots of alpine lakes separated by short climbs. I didn't see any other hikers during the afternoon and hiked alone through the barren raw terrain. It was pretty amazing being at this altitude, looking around, and being on roughly the same level as the surrounding peaks.

I arrived at Muir Pass and decided to call it a day. An octagonal stone shelter stood at the top and I was not about to pass up staying in it. There wasn't much sound at the pass to begin with, but even the wind was muted inside the shelter. It was strangely lonely. I set my ramen to soaking and curled up in my bag.

August 5, 2016

I said my goodbyes in the morning and set off. The first part of my day held a climb up to Silver Pass, a nice descent down along a valley, and a big climb up and over a volcanic knob. I stopped for my first break at 2:00pm, just on the other side of the knob. I was definitely back on the hiking grind.

I descended from the knob and immediately began the last climb up to Selden Pass. My plan had been to camp on the north side of the pass at one of the lakes. However, upon arriving at the first of these lakes I met a young man, Isaac, and began talking with him. He studied botany at Berkeley and knew a ton about the flora we walked through. I did not know, for instance, that the valleys of the high Sierras were a unique biome due to their altitude and geographic isolation and that there were a number of species found only here.

Isaac was also a great foil with which to reflect on my hiking style. A common problem with thruhikers is that they develop tunnel vision focusing only completing mileage. They may appreciate the scenery on either side of the trail, but they do not take the time to enjoy it. Isaac looked at each ridge and peak as a potential side trip. Each lake or cluster of plantlife was a chance to examine and marvel at the forces of nature at work. I like to consider myself above (or at least self-aware about) many of the thruhiker attributes I criticize, and yet here I was grinding out mileage through the most beautiful part of the trail. Sure, it was for a good reason, but I had chosen finishing the entire section quickly over coming back for it another time.

Isaac and I camped at a lake about a mile down the other side of Selden Pass. He had found a chicken mushroom earlier and had offered me some along with some of his gnocchi and miso packets. A delicious dinner treat. We ate at the edge of the lake and continued talking until after dark.

August 4, 2016

Katy had to head back into town to pick up her replacement retainer. Looking at the map it was decided that she would take a access to back to the JMT and Sadie and I would meet her at that junction. She got on the bus into town and Sadie and I started hiking.

Burn area

The morning brought us through a burn area before it began climbing. The last day of hiking had been a steady drop down to Red's and that meant a climb back out. Both recent graduates, Sadie and I spent most of the morning talking about career path and what the next steps were for each of us. Eventually conversation died down as we each mulled over our own thoughts and we hiked onward in relative silence.

We arrived at the trail junction where we were to meet Katy early afternoon. She had not arrived yet so we plopped down to wait for her. Sadie had a Kindle with her and read. I laid down for a nap. We heard Katy before we saw her. She was belting songs as she headed down the trail. We gave her a moment for a break before continuing on towards camp.

Camp ended up being a shared campsite with a church youth group. Each group mostly kept to themselves until one of the chaperones, an older gentleman, came over to talk with us. We ended up talking for almost an hour about quite a lot and were joined by his daughter, in her last year of the program.

Dusk settled and the father and daughter returned to their camp. I had told Katy and Sadie that I would be picking up my pace to make it home earlier, but hadn't decided when I would be leaving them. I had spent some of the morning running the numbers and arrived at the conclusion that it had to be the next day. Part of it was timing for getting home in time, and part of it was based on how much food I could feasibly carry over the longer carries ahead of me. We celebrated the last evening together with freeze-dried apple cobbler.

August 3, 2016

The next day held a town run into Mammoth. Katy and I took the bus down from Red's, Sadie having opted to hang out at Red's for the day. She needed to see an orthodontist for an emergency retainer repair but didn't have an appointment yet, everywhere having been closed the night before when we got in. I just needed to resupply and hit up the post office and could do that once she had an appointment. We headed to Mammoth Brewery for food a drink while she made some calls.

Her appointment wasn't until around 3:00pm so we ended up hanging out at the brewery for a few hours before she left to head over to her appointment. I took care of shipping some gear back and calling my family. I updated my mom on the latest developments with my plans and when I thought she might be home. Talking through things with her I realized that Katy and Sadie's itinerary wouldn't give me very much time at home with my sister before she left for her first year of college. It also meant I would definitely miss her performing in a summer opera. I made the decision that it was more important to be home with her before she left than to take the rest of the trail slow. Time to pick up the pace.

Katy's appointment took longer than expected and what was originally going to just be a morning in town turned into a full zero day. We caught the bus back up to Red's early evening, met up with Sadie, grabbed dinner at the restaurant, and squeezed into camp for another night.

August 2, 2016

Getting lost and arriving at reds

We were up early enough to enjoy the sun rising over the rock ledges on the eastern side of the lake. The ladies' morning routine wasn't streamlined for efficiency and mileage so for the first time in a long while I took my time with breakfast and breaking camp. That was the whole point of waiting up and joining Katy and Sadie - to slow down and smell the roses.

Today was mostly downhill towards Red's Meadow Resort and the morning held a series of stepped lakes as beautiful as Ruby and Thousand Island the past evening. The morning sun and freshness of the day only added to the experience.

We ran into Bob, the whiskey man from Tuolumne Meadows, at the outlet of one of the lakes. From how quickly he threw has pack back on and kept going we got the impression that he wasn't about to let himself get outpaced by two girls. He left behind a pungent smell of herb. We took the opportunity to stop and fill up on water ourselves.

Hydrate or Diedrate

The trail seemed to follow the outlet down a small waterfall to a camp area with a number of crisscrossing paths. We thought we might have lost the trail amid the mess but picked it up on the other side and continued to drop roughly following the lake outlet. This section of trail was not messing around! I could not imagine taking stock up or down something so steep.

Before long, the stream we were following joined up with a larger creek and we turned to follow alongside. The trail got thinner and thinner over the next half mile and I began to get a little worried. I stopped to pull out my phone for a GPS check. We were 1.5 miles off the trail. Oops. Taking stock, we realized the trail we had begun following down along the lake outlet was not the JMT at all. Fortunately, there was a marked trail on the other side of the creek we were currently following that also lead to Red's Meadow. Unfortunately, it meant we would be putting up 1.5 times the planned mileage for the day. Based on the the rapidly thinning trail we currently stood on it seemed like a mistake made with some frequency by JMT'ers.

Unfortunately for us, the creek ran through a channel it had carved deep in the rock and we would have to climb down the sheer walls, cross the torrent, and then scramble back up the wall on the other side. This is the narrative depicted in this post's feature photo (at the top). In reality, the channel was only 5-6 feet deep and there were plenty of places to hop on rocks across.

View from the middle

Confident in our heading we continued south along the east side of the creek. This section of trail offered no cover from the sun and the heat began to get to us as we traveled further down in the valley. We stopped for a lunch break under the shade of a large tree. Short naps were taken before we rallied and continued on.

The valley leveled out and taller trees appeared beside the trail giving us some much appreciated shade. Time was a little tighter than planned but not tight enough that we couldn't stop for a dip to cool off and splash around a bit.

Caution: swimming holes in photo are deeper than they appear

We rejoined the JMT just before the junction with the Devil's Postpile side trail. Blisters and joints were beginning to complain about the long day but we decided to check out the rock formation anyway because the body would heal but we would probably not be back at Red's Meadow any time soon.

Red's Meadow was just past the Postpile and we arrived just in time to get a hot dinner at the grill before they closed up shop for the night. Next stop was the walk-in backpackers campground. This campground turned out to be two drive in pads reserved for backpackers. There were close to 50 of us camping there and it was a tight squeeze with more trickling in throughout the evening. This was definitely a night where I was happy to have brought ear plugs with me.

August 1, 2016

I've always found that starting your day with a climb is the best way to combat the morning chill. On the way up to Donohue Pass we met Bright Side and Wit, two PCT section hikers from Alaska. They had been working on the trail piece by piece over the years and were getting close to wrapping it up. Both were very nice although Bright Side was definitely the more talkative of the two.

We stopped for a break at the top to celebrate the first pass of the JMT. It was bare, rocky, and very exposed but cool and breezy enough that heat wasn't a problem. There were a few hikers hanging out at the top and we met Bigfoot and Caribou, friends of Bright Side and Wit joining them for this section.

Part way down the descent we came across section hikers Jay and Cole. Cole had broken or sprained his foot and they had been camped out there for a day hoping it would get better enough to walk out on. They had decided to call it in while we had been at the top of the pass and a helicopter was making its first pass as approached the campsite. The crew shouted something down to Jay and Cole which we couldn't make out before turning and flying away. Thinking the air crew had decided Cole would need to wait for a ground crew, I began mentally running through all my WFR training half hoping I this might be a chance to put it into action (and feeling guilty for hoping that).

It turned out that helicopter would be back shortly and Cole did not need immediate medical attention. After double checking that they were set on water we continued on. We caught up to Bigfoot and Caribou and I slowed down to talk with them for a while. They were both trained as materials engineers and in the process of transitioning towards short-term contract jobs and retirement. Like their Alaskan friends, they were both very engaging.

We caught up to Katy and Sadie at a creek crossing where the ladies had stopped for a break. Bigfoot and Caribou continued on while we snacked. Nourished and hydrated we continued on towards Island Pass. Day 2 aches and pains began making their appearances as we went over the pass but fortunately we were nearing the end of the day.

We descended down to Thousand Island Lake. While I'm unsure about the counting there, I was very sure that it was a good spot for a swim. Katy and Sadie took the opportunity to get a nice foot soak in while we figured out our next move. The plan had been to camp here but it was still early and we were hoping to catch up to, and camp with, Bright Side, Wit, Caribou, and Bigfoot. We decided to continue another 15 minutes to Ruby Lake and call it a day there, camping down by the water.

July 31, 2016

Still recovering from the overnight ride, we slept in and had a lazy morning at the campground. The ladies went over their gear and pack organization once more before we broke camp. We arrived at the trailhead at 9:00am.

Sadie's plan for their hike gave us a pretty flat and relaxed first day. We would be following a small creek up through Lyell Canyon all day. The weather was perfect and we took it slow with lots of breaks to combat any potential blisters. We stopped early afternoon for a quick dunk in the creek and lunch.

Perfect swimming hole

Early afternoon the trail began to climb up towards Bishop Pass. We saved the majority of the climb for the following morning and set up camp at Lyell Fork.