The Dirty Details

Some, and indeed probably most of those reading this don't know much if anything about the John Muir Trail. Californians and hikers will know it by name, but most are limited to an awareness that it's a long distance hiking trail in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and consider my brother and I to be 'crazy' for giving it a try.

So I thought a brief-ish overview of the trail will help those following in Dad's footsteps alongside us. 

Disclaimer: this journal isn't designed to function as a resource to plan your own Muir Trail hike. It may help others in the future, as I know online journals from thru-hikers have been an invaluable resource for us. But all the details and numbers are approximated solely for reference, and it's really meant to be followed along and enjoyed. 

With all that in mind, let's start with some history. The John Muir Trail is a 211 mile hiking trail in the Sierra Nevada, named to honor renowned naturalist, and founding-member and Sierra Club President John Muir. It was constructed to accommodate stock animals - that's right, cattle, mules, horses, etc.

Muir man than I'll ever be.

The Northern Terminus (or start/end point) is the Happy Isles trailhead in the Yosemite Valley, the Southern Terminus is the summit of Mt. Whitney. The summit of Whitney is the highest point in the contiguous United States (the Lower 48) at 14,505 feet. Hiking the final miles from the summit to Whitney Portal (and back to reality) will bring us to a grand total of 220 miles. 

Thru-hikers either go south-bound ('SoBo') beginning in Yosemite, or north-bound ('NoBo') from the Whitney zone. Dad hiked south-bound, which is the most popular direction and our choice. The only trailhead that may be harder to get a permit at than Happy Isles is Mt. Whitney Portal. More on permits later.

220 Miles

Over the course of our hike, we'll gain a grand total of approximately 47,000 feet of elevation, and we'll lose a grand total of approximately 36,000 feet of elevation. As our itinerary currently stands, the most elevation we'll hike up in a single day is approximately 4,000 feet, and the most we'll hike down in a single day is approximately 6,500 feet, when we exit at Whitney Portal.

JMT Elevation Profile, courtesy of the Pacific Crest Trail Association

We'll ascend and cross 9 mountain passes (11 if you include the summit of Whitney, and puny Island Pass), some significantly more challenging than the others. We'll do our best to stay off these passes in the afternoons, since unpredictable and potentially dangerous Sierra thunderstorms tend to form during the mid to late day. We've set ourselves up strategically and plan to camp near enough to the base of each pass to cross each one by mid to late morning the following day.

We'll take 20 days to hike the JMT. One of those days will be a ZERO day at Muir Trail Ranch, a remote stock ranch up in the mountains that offers accommodations and services to JMT hikers. We won't hike that day, and we'll stay in a tent cabin, shower, do laundry, and eat real food. Daily mileage will vary quite a bit, and while we have a detailed plan and itinerary, thru-hikers agree that flexibility is key. 

Carrying all of our food and provisions for a 20 day adventure from day 1 would be 'crazy.' We'll resupply 3 times: day 3 at the Tuolumne Meadows U.S. Post Office in Yosemite National Park; day 6 at Reds Meadow Resort in Mammoth; and day 10 at Muir Trail Ranch. Our resupply caches will be shipped ahead of time in large, protective, heavy-duty buckets that will contain our food, batteries, toilet paper, and anything else we can legally ship and resupply. Assuming everything goes to plan, our properly-labelled packages will be waiting for us at each location when we arrive. The system isn't perfect, and sometimes thru-hikers are forced to improvise when their package doesn't turn up. A solo hiker in summer 2014 actually found her Muir Trail Ranch resupply bucket arrived EMPTY, a first even for the people who run the Ranch.

A common resupply bucket

Some folks can't handle the weight of a 10-day food supply, and resupply again after Muir Trail Ranch, but that requires either hiking off-trail, enlisting a pack-train, or convincing someone to hike in a package for you. Our final resupply will be at the Ranch, leaving us with 9 days worth of food, and leaden packs as we approach the hike's most remote regions and aggressive passes.

A Wilderness Permit is required to hike the John Muir Trail. A reservation is available by lottery or by walk-up on a 'first-come, first-served' basis. Obviously they can be difficult to acquire. We can apply for our reservation exactly 168 days before the day we want to begin the hike. In compliance with the Wilderness Act, primarily to ensure backcountry visitors truly feel immersed in the wilderness, the number of permits out of Happy Isles is highly limited. We may have to try a few times, but we'll keep applying until we get the permit we want. 

Regulations require us to carry bear-proof canisters to store our consumables and smellables. These are designed more to protect the bears than to protect us: once a bear gets into a human food supply, its a death sentence, as the bear will almost certainly become a nuisance to humans from then on, and the Parks Department will eventually be forced to kill the animal. Hanging your food in a bear bag is illegal in Yosemite and other places, since bears are crafty creatures, and the smarter ones will figure out your carefully hung edible-puzzle. At the end of the day, the canister is the best way to protect your food, and to protect wild animals by keeping them wild.

Bear-proof canister

Many backpackers, especially ultralight gurus, absolutely hate these things: they're heavy, really bulky and the lighter carbon-fiber models get to be pretty expensive. But there's no use complaining about it, as its a necessary and legally-required evil. Besides, they're highly effective at keeping bears and any other Sierra critters that come sniffing around at night out of your food. I plan to rent a Bearikade from Wild Ideas (not pictured), which will fit my 10 day resupply. 

So now we're caught up to today. My brother and I have been planning non-stop since September 2013. From testing our gear and trying out dehydrated meal and camp coffee recipes, to reading and absorbing as much information from as many resources as possible, we've been eating, drinking and sleeping the JMT for almost a year and a half. 

Now we're almost ready, and the dream keeps getting more and more real. There's still many things that have to fall into place before everything is confirmed, but we've made our plans, and both of us have acquired or upgraded most of the gear we're going to need up there. We'll apply to begin the hike on July 19, 2015, making our permit application date February 1, 2015. Send us some good vibes and mojo! We're going to need it.

The next time you hear from me we'll have our permit. Then we can finalize our menus, set our resupply and travel plans in stone, pick up any missing pieces of gear, and get ourselves into pre-trail shape. Wish us luck!

Breadcrumbs

Dad collected lots of small, seemingly unimportant things. He liked to keep tokens from people he'd met, things he'd done, or places he'd seen, most likely to act as reminders for when memories faded. That made the top drawer of his dresser pretty interesting to explore as a little kid. It was a chest filled with strange rings, coins, rocks (I know...), pins (mostly for merit from the U.S. Postal Service, if you knew Dad, that should explain), and a myriad of other small items he'd collected and kept throughout his life. 

After my brother brought up hiking the Muir Trail, the topic dropped off a cliff a bit. We would discuss it every now and then, but it was far from maturing into a real plan.

I'll never forget the sunny afternoon in September 2013 when Mom showed my brother and I an ordinary sheet of lined paper that would compel both of us to attempt the hike in 2015. 

My girlfriend and I were visiting family out in California; it was our last day there, and my brother had come by for a visit. We hadn't spent much time together, and it was our last chance to catch up for a bit before I flew back to New York. I opened up an old box while going through some of my things to find a disorganized cache of family photographs. It was a haphazard collection of pictures of my siblings and I as children, Mom and Dad in their youth, and everything in between. 

Young bucks on the Muir Trail in the Ansel Adams Wilderness, September 1996.

At the bottom were a bunch of framed pictures of Dad in the mountains that used to hang proudly in the hallway upstairs. One of them in particular struck me: a photograph of him sitting on a rocky out crop, his long lean legs folded underneath him, profile shadowed as he gazes across a sunlit range.

The photograph is in my first post. I'll never forget how it made me feel. I wanted to sit right there! Earn the right to enjoy that view.

When I showed my brother the picture and the John Muir Trail came up in that living room yet again, Mom produced another box. It had some of Dad's most guarded memories in it: things from his childhood, like old backpacking gear, and even some of his boy scout memorabilia. But the box was mostly filled with momentos he'd kept from his kids: Father's Day cards we'd made in school; a hilarious note from my sister apologizing for breaking her window and offering her $5 allowance to pay to fix it. These were the sorts of things he collected and kept with him. 

The most important item to come out of that box for purposes of this story was a single sheet of lined notebook paper. On that thirty eight year old brittle sheet of paper, written in pencil in Dad's flowing script, was his John Muir Trail itinerary from 1975. It's a pretty crude log, where he recorded each day's campsite, daily total mileage, and each day's ending elevation.

It's a tad inaccurate, and just a piece of notebook paper, but to us it was like a sacred document. We stared at it with wide-eyes, drank in the schedule. The daily mileage wasn't even that bad!

Dad's John Muir Trail Log

This was the flare I'd been looking for, the moment that 'we should do that,' became 'we can do that,' which rapidly turned into 'let's do it!' It was September 2013: it only made sense that we'd follow Dad forty years later, and hike the John Muir Trail in 2015 in his honor and memory. 

He also left a personal journal of his hike that I've kept. It's not necessarily a guide, a little difficult to decipher, and doesn't contain a whole lot of practical information on the trail, besides, the JMT has changed much since he walked it. It's more a glimpse into his own experience. He addressed it to us in the hopes that it might lead us to the Muir Trail, or at least to some understanding of how the experience impacted his life. 

Dad's John Muir Trail Journal

So we had an idea: to walk from the bottom of the Yosemite Valley to the summit of Mt. Whitney in summer 2015. Now we'd need a plan, lots of gear, and a ton of love and support. And a permit.