It's hard to know where to start. One of the items on my bucket list is to do a Thru Hike of the Appalachian Trail once we retire...2180 miles starting at Springer Mountain in Georgia in the spring and ending at Mount Katahdin in Maine in the fall. It was probably 4-5 years ago when I came across the John Muir Trail for the first time. I thought it would be a perfect vacation but then realized that it couldn't be done in a week so I forgot all about it. Then I turned 40. I got to pick a vacation for the big birthday--anywhere I wanted to go, anything I wanted to do. I had thought about an African Safari...Camper Van in New Zealand...Scuba Diving in Fiji. A co-worker had mentioned to me that she was doing a hike in Yosemite and staying at the High Sierra Camps so I thought I would look them up. I saw that the camps were along the John Muir Trail...and I never looked back. The obsession had started :) Why go to all those places when you can sleep in a tent for 3 weeks??
The John Muir Trail covers 211 miles starting in Yosemite National Park at Happy Isles Trailhead and ending on Mount Whitney--the highest peak in the continental US. The elevation at Happy Isles is 4035' while Mount Whitney is at 14505' so we decided we would North to South starting at Happy Isles. I think this is the more popular route for many reasons--your body can adjust to elevation, more supply points at the beginning so you can get your body use to the heavy pack & it's less strenuous...although Jason is still looking for the 'flat' section. It seriously is all uphill then downhill then back up...for over 200 miles.
The top map is what we carried on the trail with us so we knew the elevation profile for the day. The bottom picture makes it seem worse!
One of the very first things to do in the planning of the epic hike is to figure out where you are starting, when you are starting and how you are going to get there. So in January-February 2013 I started the planning. We had decided we wanted to do a Southbound hike starting in Happy Isles on Sunday September 1st. Yosemite National Park issues permits only 6 months in advance so the weekend of March 15th we faxed our permit. We were very lucky to get our first choice on the date we wanted. We then figured out how we were going to get there and set up a private shuttle to Tuolumne Meadows and then the Yosemite bus over to Happy Isles. We were all set...until I got the email 3 days prior that the Rim Fire closed the road. More on that later.
I had decided that since we now have a healthier lifestyle and avoid eating anything in bags, boxes, etc that I was going to make all of our food for the trail. Previous backpack trips we would take instant oatmeal for breakfast and pre-packaged freeze dried meals for dinner. Ick. We still were going to do oatmeal for breakfast but it was the real stuff not instant and contained real fruit that was dehydrated. Lunch and snacks were trail mix, Clif bars, dehyrdrated apples w/peanut butter, jerky, etc. Dinners were going to be what we normally eat but dehydrated--BBQ Spaghetti, Lasagna, Chili Mac, Chicken Enchiladas, Chicken w/Couscous.
I think my dehydrator ran for most of the summer!
Then came the fun part of re-supplies. We were going to start Sunday with 3 days of food and re-supply on Tuesday with a weeks worth and then the following Tuesday with the last 9 days. The front room turned into the planning room. Food in all sorts of different piles just to make sure that I had each day accounted for...and breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks for each of us. We also had to consider the bear can--all of our food had to fit...but we were renting our bear canisters and wouldn't get them until the week we left. So I made my own out of poster board! Good thing too...I quickly realized that the last 9 days were gonna be tough and had to re-arrange the meals and snacks so that the big bulky things were in the beginning!
This is our box of 7 days for the first re-supply and the buckets were the second re-supply for 9 days.
The Lime Green thing is the 'bear can'.
Once the food was done, the next challenge was packing the packs. Basically we had one set of hiking clothes and one set of camp clothes. Jason's wardrobe consisted of a pair of hiking pants, a hiking shirt, 3 pairs of socks, 3 pair of underwear, one t-shirt, capilene (long underwear) bottom and top, vest, down jacket, rain jacket, rain pants, hiking boots, camp shoes (to be called the clown shoes from here on out), baseball cap, wide brim hiking hat, winter knit cap and gloves. I had one hiking skirt, one hiking shirt, two quick dry tanks for hiking, 2 bras, 3 underwear, 3 hiking socks, 1 pair wool socks for camp, 1 tank top for camp, capilene bottoms and top, fleece jacket, down jacket, down pants, rain jacket, rain pants, trail runner shoes, camp shoes, hiking hat, fleece hat, winter gloves & hiking gloves. I obviously had more clothes because I HATE being cold. We would do 'laundry' pretty much every night and my backpack turned into the clothes dryer during the day.
Jason also carried in his pack: the tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, pillow, bear canister, jet boil stove w/canister, an empty liter bottle, other necessities and most importantly the cribbage board & cards! He did a hip belt with his 2 water bottles. I carried my sleeping bag/pad/pillow, bear canister, the Sawyer Squeeze, 3 two liter Sawyer Squeeze bags, the dog bowl, the 6 liter dromedary for water, extra fuel, other necessities, the lights, the maps/books/paperwork and my water was a liter bottle with a tube so I could drink as I hike. Due to the uncertainties of our start (see below) we left with 5 days of food--my pack weighed 32 lbs, Jason's weighed 39 lbs. I did have a few more things to throw in plus water so I can't say what the starting weight was at the beginning.
Even the cats enjoyed the packing...Victor had to check out the bear can even!
I had basically dedicated my whole summer to this trip. I wasn't sure if Jason would be able to take the whole time off of work and I had decided I was doing the trail either way so in July I went on a solo backpack trip in Rocky Mountain National Park. I spent countless hours dehydrating food, packing food, reading journals, looking at maps, figuring out roughly how far we would go each day.
Tuesday at 4:25pm I got the email--basically it said: Hello Wilderness Visitor, we are closing Tioga Road due to the Rim fire. Please review your permit and the attached map. Call us if needed. Of course, I didn't get the email until later Tuesday night and I basically had breakdown #1. The Yosemite bus takes Tioga Road. So 3 days before we are to leave on this trip that I have worked on ALL summer...I have to start over. Getting the permit is the very first thing you do. We could get to Tuolumne Meadows but had no hiking permit from there, no camping there and no car since we were going to be shuttled up there.
I called Wednesday and while I couldn't change our permit, I did find out that we could use our existing permit in the backpacker's camp and then get a walk-up permit. They reserve 40% of the permits ahead of time leaving 60% for walk-ups. So we were still going...not sure where we were starting or when but we will know on Saturday. Then on Thursday I called and was able to get a permit from the Sunrise Trailhead starting Sunday so I knew for sure we would be on the trail on Sunday.
All of this last minute planning caused me to get behind in the emails needing to go out, the bills that needed to be paid, the house that needed to get cleaned. I basically crashed on the couch at 2am Friday morning and set the alarm for 5am. The plan was to be on the road by 9am. It's been an exhausting summer and I can't believe that it's here. We are leaving in a few hours to start this crazy journey!!!
