Boots and Marmots: The Demise of My 2011 JMT thru-hike.

In the summer of 2011, I decided to finally hike the John Muir Trail.  I had wanted to for a long time, ever since my family and I encountered JMT thru-hikers on my first backpacking trip in Yosemite.  I was familiar with it's layout, location, and length (211 miles) because I had hiked sections during previous summers, so I felt confident I could hike it solo in about 3 weeks time.

I found it apt that Dr. Godfrey said my first blog story was full of "recklessness," because I do tend to be more impulsive, deciding on plans and changing them on a whim, and I get myself into harry situations quite often because of that.  This trip was no different.  Instead of beginning the trail in Yosemite or at the Whitney Portal, the official start/ end points, I arranged to get dropped off at Road's End in Kings Canyon National Park, about a 2 hour drive east of Fresno.  Many trailheads into the Sierra Nevada backcountry begin at Road's End, and I wanted to get to the Whitney Portal on the other side of the Sierras by taking a route I'd never been on before.

The snowpack that summer was measured at 150% above normal at many high altitude sites, including many portions of the JMT, so I knew it would be quite an adventure, especially on the less traveled Bubbs Creek trail leading to the junction I intended to use while heading southeast toward the Whitney Portal.  When I got to the area where Avalanche Pass was suppose to be, it was completely snowed over and only a few protruding pine trees were visible.  I only had a map and compass, not a GPS device, so I decided to backtrack since there were no footprints.  No one had been through the area yet (late May).

As I trudged along heading toward a familiar junction leading onto the JMT, I was exhilarated, relieved to finally be back in the wilderness, where time seems to pass slower and survival as well as the surrounding natural wonders supersede all else.  After I reached the junction later that day, I continued on to camp near a pass I wanted to climb that night, but the threat of collapsing snow bridges caused me to stop and camp at a high altitude, a decision that began the demise of my hike.  Sometime that night, marmots chewed the ends and heels of my boots, and when I put them on the next morning (they were practically frozen, and so were my feet), I hiked with what amounted to little blades gnawing on my feet.  I didn't feel the damage being done until later that morning.

Needless to say, by noon, similar to my first blog, I was in a predicament.  To keep this blog down to it's suggested length, I ended up making it to the eastern end of the Sierras and hiked my way out on the Kearsarge Pass trail near the town of Independence.  When I was nearing the trailhead, a man and his son caught up to me and I asked him if he could give me a ride into Independence, which he agreed to.  From Independence, I caught a shuttle to Yosemite and eventually got picked up in Merced.  A cool story I want to end this on is sometime before I got dropped off in Independence, my camera fell between the man's jeep seats and I thought it was gone forever (I realized I didn't have it in Yosemite).

For the heck of it, I decided to create a Craigslist post in the San Diego area inquiring about a hitchhiker's lost camera, and I posted similar threads on the Whitney Portal Store and Whitney Zone message boards.  What happened?  I received an email a couple days later by a Whitney Portal Store message board member (an Inyo National Forest Park Ranger) with a link in it to a Fresno Bee article about a lost camera.  The guy remembered I said I was from Fresno and called the Bee!  Marek Warszawski, a sports writer and the Out There outdoors columnists wrote an article to see if they could find the owner, and when I emailed him and got it back, he wrote a follow up blog about it, explaining that I used my middle name with the guy at the Road's End permit station, that's why they couldn't locate me.  I was going to post the links but they are nonexistant now, but the point is to emphasis the fact I stated in my first blog post that it is a sort of culture of backpackers, and the generosity and camaraderie is unbelievable.

http://journeytojmt.blogspot.com/

http://jmtbook.com/?cat=3