September 22, 2019
Tyndall Frog Ponds to Guitar Lake
Day Miles: 11.5 mi
Cumulative Miles: 200.5 mi

When I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, two pairs of eyes reflected the light of my headlamp. The movement looked low and prowling. But when I turned up my headlamp to full brightness, it was just a pair of deer. Yay! Not mountain lions. Still, I stowed the trekking pole I had left leaning against a tree under my vestibule, both as a potential weapon and to prevent deer from stealing it to lick the salt off the grips.

In the morning, as I was almost packed up and about to stuff my tent into its stuff sack, my camping partner Janine and I were treated to a coyote symphony/cacaphony that sounded like it was coming from Diamond Mesa. The evening before, I read in the Wenk book that it you camp on Bighorn Plateau (about a mile and a half south), you likely hear coyotes early in the morning. Janine had borrowed the book and read the same section and we agreed it was uncanny. Again, I highly recommend bringing the Wenk guide book on the JMT, it is worth the weight to enrich your experience.

Big Horn Plateau was unlike any place else on the JMT. Dry and desert-y with 360 degree views of the surrounding peaks, grand vista because they were so far away. Having exited Kings Canyon NP over Forester Pass, the scenery was very different from the previous week. I spent almost a whole hour on the plateau taking it all in, including a 20 minute yoga session with the best views ever.

I followed the trail down into beautiful foxtail pine forest, the trees growing out of sandy patches between granite boulders.

Then, I took a snack break on a rock outcropping with expansive views before the trail drops down into the Wright Creek drainage. Janine passed me and I said, “The trail is too pretty! I’m never going to get anywhere today!” I took a third break in a lovely meadow and then lunched on the banks of Whitney Creek right after Crabtree Meadow.

There is so much variety in the scenery in this stretch of trail. How does the trail know I had just complained the day before about being scenery-ed out? It makes you just want to say “screw Whitney!” and keep hiking south on the PCT.

I found a quiet and excellent campsite on the bench and tarn just above the famous Guitar Lake, which was much less marginal that I expected for my last night on the trail. Guitar Lake is the last good spot to camp west of Mt. Whitney, so it is very crowded with hikers staging sunrise climbs of Mt. Whitney. Guitar Lake is at 11,500 feet. Because of overuse and the high elevation, you must bag and carry your poop out if you are heading west to Whitney Portal from about 2 miles east of Crabtree Meadow. The problem is there’s no tree cover around Guitar Lake and campsites behind every boulder so it’s not clear where one is supposed to deploy their wag bag. Do you poop inside your tent for cover then? I discuss this problem with a group of three High Sierra Trail hikers that are the only other party to camp on the bench that night. (The High Sierra Trail cuts east-west across the Sierra and also terminates at the top of Mt. Whitney.) I offer the HST hikers some stroopwafels and they are super happy, incredulous that I have extra food, since they packed really light. I’ve had too much food this whole trip! I try to convince them to climb Mt. Whitney for sunrise. We lounge on a dip in the granite on the edge of the bench shaped like a sectional couch and watch the sun set. Then I retire to get an early night for my early start.

It will be nearly 15 miles from here to Whitney Portal and 3000 feet up and 6000 feet down. The only other time I’ve done something like that was attempting to climb Grand Teton and the 6000 feet down from the lower saddle of Grand Teton after the whole scrambling/climbing part really killed my feet. I’m expecting a sufferfest.

September 21, 2019
Center Basin Junction to Tyndall Frog Ponds
Day miles: 10.5 mi
Cumulative miles: 189 mi

When I started hiking in the morning, my glove liners were wet from stuffing my frosty tent into its stuff sack. This made my hands painfully cold for the first 15 minutes of hiking, even after I took off my wet gloves and put my spare hiking socks on my hands instead.

I climbed out of another U-shaped glacial valley, left the last of the trees and began the steady climb up to Forester Pass. According to the Wenk book, after you leave the last tree, you are still 2000 vertical feet below the top of the pass. I was leapfrogging with familiar faces I had camped with or met coming over Kearsarge Pass the day before. When the sun finally came up over the ridge, I took a yoga break and stretched on some granite slabs. Across the trail, another hiker cooked herself breakfast. Then, I continued on. I felt like I was moving slower and slower.

Finally, I reached the top of Forester Pass. It was a veritable party at the top. After the cold morning, it was warm and not windy at the top! Usually it’s too windy at the top of a pass to linger for long. But this time, it was so nice that everyone was hanging out. I enjoyed my lunch.

Following a 40 minute break, I started my descent, passing a steep couloir. After a few long, rocky switchbacks, the trail mellowed out at the headwaters of Tyndall Creek. Of course, every time I come over a pass like this, I have to poop, which is a problem because tree cover always begins a ways down. This valley lacked the little islands of white bark pines I usually rely on and there were no trees until lodgepole pine habitat starts.Thankfully, I made it. Then I was only a couple miles from my planned campsite at Tyndall Frog Ponds. I scout out a beautiful lakeside camping spot and camp with a friend from Mt. Williamson Motel.

Tomorrow, there are no more big passes, just the set up for Whitney and the following day is the grand finale. It has come to the time where I wish I could stay on the trail forever. At the same time, I am ready to be finished. Shoulder season is full upon us. Nights and mornings are cold. I have hiked 16 days, but I don’t feel like I have gotten any faster or stronger. Sometimes I feel like I have been spoiled for amazing scenery and am not easily impressed anymore, but there are still small moments of indescribable beauty — a butterfly flitting downstream — that I would never notice if I weren’t out here moving so slowly, for so long.

September 20, 2019

Onion Valley to Center Basin Junction
Day Miles: 11.5 mi
Cumulative Miles: 178.5 mi

Following the lovely family-style breakfast at Mt. Williamson Motel, we were dropped off at Onion Valley around 8:40 am. The hike back up Kearsarge Pass was not as bad as I imagined it would be prior to beginning this hike. A resupply of 4 days of food is much more manageable than 8 days of food. Based on conversation with hikers coming down the trail as I was going up Kearsarge Pass, I had missed some snow flurries and a really cold night by taking a day off. I reached the top of Kearsarge Pass by noon, had lunch at the top, and took Bullfrog Lake Trail back to the John Muir Trail. (Between my first JMT attempt and this hike, I have hiked all of the “official” John Muir Trail, except for 0.6 miles between Kearsarge Pass Junction and Bullfrog Lake Junction.)

The trail climbed out of the valley along beautiful Bubbs Creek. The smooth glacially polished granite walls of East Vidette to the west contrasted with the Kearsarge Pinnacles, pointy and fragmented by freeze thaw cycles, to the east.

I made camp around 4 pm near Center Basin Junction with a couple of southbound PCT hikers I had met at breakfast, and made some classic President brand Taiwanese stewed pork instant noodles with a vacuum sealed tea egg for dinner. I had found these treasures in the hiker buckets at Mt. Williamson Motel. Went to sleep excited to climb my last big pass — Forester Pass — tomorrow!

September 18, 2019
Middle Rae Lake to Onion Valley
Day Miles: 12 mi
Cumulative Miles: 167 mi

I wake up to a frosted tent at 5:30 am and am hiking by 6:30. Today, I need to go over Glen Pass and Kearsarge Pass and make it to Onion Valley in time for a 3 pm ride down to Independence. Shortly, I come across a full roll of toilet paper in a ziplock bag laying in the middle of the trail. I take a few sheets for the day and put the toilet paper somewhere visible on the side of the trail with a rock on top of it to hold it down for the next hiker. The trail provides! (Recall the wind snatched the last of my toilet paper when I came over Pinchot Pass two days earlier.)

Glen Pass is the hardest pass I’ve climbed so far. The trail is interminable with many false summits. When I arrive at the top, I can’t tell where I am supposed to go next. Am I supposed to squeeze through these rocks? I walk along the ridge, look down, and see so many switchbacks… I have never seen so many switchbacks in my life!

I reach the junction of the JMT and the trail to Kearsarge Pass by 9:45. I’m taking the higher trail above Bullfrog Lake, and it’s exposed and dry. I should have filled up on water because the trail skirts high above the first couple alpine lakes on the other side of Kearsarge Pass too. 

I see a lumbering silhouette ahead of me on the trail. A heavy set man with a huge, antiquated external frame pack, all sorts of lumpy objects strapped to it, including a giant sleeping roll hanging from the bottom. He appears to be wearing his rain pants with a giant tear in the butt, a loose flap of fabric flapping. This is weird because the trail is exposed, with no shade and the sun is beating down, hot.

He is laboring each step and I catch up to him quickly. His pack is so huge it takes up the entire trail. “Excuse me,” I call a couple times to try to get his attention so I can pass, but he’s concentrating so hard or suffering so much he doesn’t hear me. Finally, I manage to skitter around him, surprising him and he apologizes for not realizing I was there. He asks me if I know where the next water source is. I say I’m not sure, there might not be one until after Kearsarge Pass, and he looks distressed. But soon after I pass him, I cross a nice clear trickle of a stream over the rocky trail and wave back at him, shouting that there is water and he shouts a thanks in return.

I make it over Kearsarge Pass, get cell reception and call Mt. Williamson Motel in Independence. I get their voicemail and leave a message that I am on schedule for my ride from the trailhead and would love to stay two nights (I only reserved one) so I can take a zero.

I make it to Onion Valley Trailhead where I meet other hikers waiting for the same ride to Mt. Williamson Motel. A few people are joyously riffling through outdated resupplies in the bear boxes. They’ve even discovered a bottle of wine. (People often leave resupplies in the bear boxes with an expected arrival date. Past that date, the contents are fair game.) I’ve had too much food my entire hike so I just take the opportunity while we are waiting to spread my tent out to dry.

September 17, 2019
Small tarn at 11,000 ft south of Pinchot Pass to Middle Rae Lake
Day Miles: 11.1 mi
Cumulative Miles: 155 mi

I wake up to my wristwatch alarm at 6 am and discover my campsite is beautiful, perched above a little pond reflecting the mountains above in its glasslike surface now that things are calm. I make my dinner for breakfast. The good thing about making Mountain House meals for breakfast is I get to sit with a little hot water bottle in my sleeping bag while I wait for my food to rehydrate.

We are back to beautiful blue skies with nary a wisp of cloud. Last night my wrist was still itchy and swollen from the bee sting at VVR. To sleep through the storm, I took some Benadryl. As a side effect, the swelling in my wrist is gone. Highs and lows on the John Muir Trail.

The so-called “Golden Gate of the Sierra”, a very bouncy suspension bridge over Woods Creek

I liked this sign at the large campsite at Woods Creek Junction, just across the bridge.

In Kings Canyon NP, the JMT’s MO is to climb a hanging valley up to another hanging valley, go over a pass connecting two glacial basins, follow the headwaters of a creek down until the creek turns into cascades, descend into a valley until the creek meanders in great wide S-curves through a meadow, junction with another creek, follow that creek up, up, up… and so on. Just when you think, “Whose idea was it to build this insufferable trail that goes incessantly up one canyon and down another!” you reach Dollar Lake and discover another high alpine paradise — the Rae Lakes. Such is the JMT, like an emotionally abusive romantic partner that is just so beautiful and talented, you endure being jerked up and down.

Dollar Lake and Fin Dome, which looks like one of the Tetons came over to the Sierras for a vacation.

Rae Lakes Basin

I set up camp at Middle Rae Lake pretty early, taking it easy after yesterday’s harrowing day, and spend quite a bit of time wiping black dust from everything with my bandana. Even after that effort my hands still turn black from touching any of my gear. Once upon a time, my tent was impregnated with red dust from Southern Utah, now it’s black dust from under Pinchot Pass!

I soak my feet in the lake, wash some laundry, hang it to dry on a rocky perch by the lakeside, leisurely heat up and eat my dinner, journal… And then, when I go to wipe out my cook pot, I cannot find my bandana! It’s green, plant-based hand-tied tie-dye and made of hemp that dries quickly. I bought it over 15 years ago in Okinawa, while on the 55th Japan-America Student Conference. I’d been giving it quite a work out on this hike, and it was starting to develop holes from all the wear, but I love it and it is my everything towel! What am I going to wipe my nose with? By now, the campsite is full of other people and I make the rounds asking everyone if they have seen a green bandana fly by. When I have given up and return to the spot I was sitting and pick up everything to bring back to my tent, I find my bandana! (Smushed under my electronics bag to prevent escape.) Yay! It’s funny how losing anything on the trail incites panic, because you’ve stripped down everything you packed as much as possible and if you can’t find something, you need that thing! That one particular thing, much more than you would in normal life, where you can easily get a replacement.

The Painted Lady at dusk

September 16, 2019
Upper Palisade Lake to small tarn at 11,000 ft south of Pinchot Pass
Day Miles: 14.6 mi
Cumulative Miles: 143.9 mi

I treated myself to hot breakfast — a breakfast burrito filled with Mountain House scrambled eggs — and was on the trail by 7 AM. My firefighter friends caught up with me halfway up Mather Pass. It was so windy. The clouds were racing by overhead. I kept all my warm layers on for the whole climb. Someone was taking a timelapse on the top of Mather Pass, capturing the terrible beauty of the ominous clouds and dramatic rays of light streaming through breaks in the clouds and illuminating the walls of slick shiny granite.

View toward Mather Pass in the morning

View south of Mather Pass

I could have stayed to watch forever… if it wasn’t so cold and windy. So, after a few sips of hot coffee from my thermos, I headed quickly down the other side. I had just finished the steep and rocky decent and pulled out my iPhone to take a photo of nice flat trail following the rolling glacial moraine when I rolled my ankle, hard, and collapsed flat onto the nice flat and straight trail. I always twist my ankle when the ground is flat!

Flat, straight trail that I proceed to fall on.

I tried to pull over to eat some food in a grove of whitebark pines under the pass, but they didn’t provide much wind protection. I couldn’t find a place to pee all day where my pee didn’t spray right back at me. It was a bit better at the bottom of the valley, where the South Fork of the Kings River crosses the trail and the trail begins to climb up toward Pinchot Pass. The trail climbs up to another beautiful bench of alpine lakes. Above treeline below Pinchot Pass, the wind picked up again. Despite the sun emerging, I had to wear my Buff in balaclava mode.

Still windy in here

In the southern half of the JMT there is the least amount of mileage and elevation gain/loss between Mather and Pinchot passes. But, what brutal weather conditions.

Taboose Pass closed due to the fire I’d seen smoke from on Highway 395 before I started my hike

View from the climb up Pinchot Pass

Atop Pinchot Pass, lenticular clouds were stacked like pancakes, evincing how strong the winds were. On the descent, I had to stop and brace against my trekking poles every time a wind gust picked up to keep from falling over. And then I had to poop. This would often happen after climbing a pass, and usually I try to make it down past treeline, for cover and soil adequate for cathole digging. Whitebark pines are my friends! But this time I wasn’t going to make it. I’d already gone 14 miles over two passes, my feet were spent (especially with my ginger right ankle), and with wind whipping my face all day, I was just about over it. Where the trail rounded to the left, I took a right cross-country to a pile of boulders, behind which I dug a cathole best I could. I did my business and as I unzipped the small ziplock bag that is my shit kit, the wind swooped down and snatched my last three sheets of toilet paper and whipped them into the air and who knows where. You gotta be f-ing kidding me! Honestly, this was not a super big deal because I still had wet wipes, but at the time I was so defeated.

Lenticular clouds about Pinchot Pass

I made it down to the first groups of whitebark pines and started looking for a tentsite. I just wanted to set up my tent and get out of the wind. I finally found a site sheltered by a half-circle of trees, but I still had to stretch out prone on top of first my ground sheet and then my tent to manage to stake it down. I tied one of the guy-lines to a tree with the thought that at least my tent wouldn’t fly away with me in it and ducked inside.

I crouched upright in my tent wondering what to do next. The inside of my tent was rapidly coated with a layer of fine black dust, sieved through the no-see-um mesh around the edges of my tent. It’s all over my hands and face. No point in trying to cook dinner. I ate two Clif Bars for dinner and lay down, pulling my sleeping bag over my head. It was still bright and PCT hikers were still walking by. For the first and only time on this trip, I went somewhere else, listening to Desert Solitaire on audio book off my phone. I listened to Abbey describing desert sandstorms blowing little piles of red dust through the cracks of his trailer, and it seemed fitting.

When I woke up at 11:30 PM, it was quiet. I cautiously left my tent to re-tension it, saggy from all the violent jerking by the wind. The moon and stars were bright and close in the calm and clear night sky. I peed and went back to bed.