[Opus]

(Note: this trip spans August 6 - 28th. I'm breaking up the report into segments covering the time between food resupplies to make it easier to write and read. I'll have the other parts soon.) I'm not sure when I decided I wanted to hike the John Muir Trail. Maybe it was spurred by the 600 miles I hiked on the Appalachian Trail last year with Cerveza, but it all started to come together back in the winter. I called the Yosemite rangers in early March, the earliest allowed, to secure my permit. It's highly regulated and competition is fierce for reservations. Already permits for every day in July were gone. The earliest I could start was August 8th. I was disappointed, but then when the snow refused to melt this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. For those not familiar, the northern terminus of the JMT is at Happy Isles in Yosemite National Park and the southern terminus is at the top of Mt Whitney, 211 miles to the south. Many hikers hike southbound because that includes a permit to climb Whitney, which itself is hard to get. I opted to also go southbound. At the last minute Lauren decided to jump aboard the trip, abandoning her Stevens to Snoqualmie PCT plans due to the lingering snow. And to make it a true relay race, Lindsey planned to join in for the final 50 miles, finding me on trail! Off we went early morning August 6th to Yosemite. We flew into Oakland and picked up a one-way rental car to Merced. Service was awful from Budget Rental, and the Chevy HHR wasn't that much better. But it was cheap at least. We had hours to kill in Merced while we waited for the YARTs bus service into the park. Not much to do here. We drove around. I mailed some gear ahead to Lone Pine (my exit point). We stayed in the air conditioning. Abused the rental by going over some raised railroad tracks a few times at good speed. We even followed a passing fire truck to see what was up before losing it behind a red light. Finally we hit our car return time and headed back to Budget. Instead, we asked to keep the car and use the night drop. Sure, the manager said. But as we drove away he frantically flagged us down and said he needed the car to re-rent and would give us an SUV for free as trade. Ok, whatever. So we tooled around in a humongous SUV for awhile longer before hopping the YARTs bus to Yosemite. Then disaster: I had lost my bag containing all my spare camera batteries, chargers, headphones, towel, and the legs to my zip off pants. I think it happened when we switched cars. Too late to do anything now. So I stewed the whole time during the 3 hour bus ride to Yosemite Village. The scenery was awesome at least but I was supremely annoyed that after months of planning, a few seconds of inattention had cost me my photography plans. Now I only had one spare lithium battery and no way to replace it. Damn. We arrived at Curry Village in Yosemite Valley at dark and walked off in search of food. What we were met with was a mob of tourons, campers, and kids. This is a national park? One would swear we were at a mall food court! We stood in line for a pizza, waiting about half an hour to even order, watching for any empty tables amid the crowds. One opened up and as we dropped our packs to sit down some tourons snagged it quickly, saying "oops, didn't see you there...". Jerks. Pizza finally secured we walked off towards some distant tables, stepping around the group of hippies who had setup directly in the center of the gravel walkway, and finally had food. The pizza was at least pretty good.

Rainier and wing

Crappy Chevy rental car

And then they gave us an SUV for some reason

And then we went to the playground

Waiting in the crazy long line for food at Yosemite

Food, finally!

Now we just had to find our way to the reserved campground. No easy task in the dark, on foot, in a place that clearly caters to cars. Eventually we made it to our site at North Pines ... to find a giant truck parked in it. A couple was at our picnic table, giant tent setup, their two dogs nearby. We loudly groused, gave them the stinkeye, and setup our tiny backpacking tents behind the site. We were too tired to bother with them. In the morning we gave them more cold shoulder and stinkeye and they took off by 8am. We rounded up our stuff and hopped the park shuttle out to get our permits. As luck would have it I was able to get a second permit just days before the trip! The ranger who issued it went over the regulations and was hilarious. Special instructions on where to poop were included. Lots of the soil around is just sand, don't go there, "otherwise you might as well be pooping in a giant litterbox." We wandered the rest of the day, replaced some broken sunglasses, took a dayhike out to Mirror Lake, dodged tourons, and finally had passable burger and good beer back at Curry Village. We also picked up a little stuffed deer and dubbed him Elliot, the mascot for our trip. Finally, we turned in at the walk-in backpackers campground, ready to depart in the morning.

Crazy lunar-lander tent in neighboring site

Our tiny backpacking tents, by comparison

Tourons at Mirror Lake

Crossing the river near Mirror Lake

Packed Yosemite shuttle busses

Elliot needs a drink after dealing with all the tourons

We caught the earliest shuttle out to Happy Isles. Our driver was an older woman with a great deadpan sense of humor. She informed us the NPS pays deer to be in the park, but only female deer. They give them a couple of bucks. But in the name of gender equality they also give the males so doe. We were the only ones to laugh. Finally on trail after a day of travel and another day of touron city, it felt good to be walking. We had the obligatory photo at the trailhead sign and were off! The trail started by climbing steeply to the junction with the Mist Trail, below Vernal Falls. We stayed on the JMT, bypassing this, and happily left more tourons behind. Awhile longer and we were crossing the bridge over Nevada Falls. Signs everywhere reminded us not to swim above the falls. The stark warning even said "if you go over the falls, you will die." An accident on the Mist Trail a few weeks before had swept three people over Vernal Falls to their deaths. We had a break here and stared at the huge faces of Half Dome and the other amazing granite features. Really impressive! It was quite warm and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We continued further and were soon hiking through Little Yosemite Valley. A beautiful meadow, slowly moving clear river, and nice trees under blue skies and calm weather. Amazing! We moved on a little ways before stopping for lunch. As we ate, a coyote meandered past, stopped to stare at us, then walked off unconcerned. We pushed on further past the Half Dome Trail junction and settled on a spot along Sunrise Creek, a little more than 8 miles in and around 8000 ft. Camping along the trail is dispersed, no designated sites, so one just looks for a level impacted spot and calls it home. Our site was a decent way off trail, along the creek, and really nice. We called it a day early, about 2 pm, and had lots of time to kill. Feet were soaked in the cold creek, laundry aired, and I was able to call my parents and arrange for spare camera gear to be overnighted to Tuolumne Meadows. Later in the evening we walked up trail and scrambled a weird solitary rock formation to watch sunset. A fire was burning just outside the park, making for some distant haze. We returned to our site a little after dark and turned in. Overnight the temperature dropped but didn't get too cold. The stars were amazing!

Elliot gears up to hit the trail

Official start of the JMT!

Nevada Falls and domes

Elliot at Nevada Falls

That's a pine cone!

First camp near Sunrise Creek

Cooling water

Fire

I was up early, as usual, and had the responsibility to wake up night-owl Lauren. The typical exchange goes: "Morning, Lauren!" "Ungghhh....". We were on trail about 9am, aiming for Cathedral Lakes about 10 miles distant. The trail started off level and fairly easy. A slow climb carried up above 9000 ft over the next few miles. We were glad it was gentle since temperatures were in the high 70s, feeling much warmer under the cloudless blue sky. A few hours later we reached the meadows of Sunrise High Sierra Camp. Gorgeous! A huge green meadow, clear water creek snaking through it, and many flowers. A towering spire of a peak poked out from the far end. We marveled at the place ... then began swatting mosquitoes. As we approached the camp, our lunch spot, they only increased. We covered up with long sleeves, covered that up with bug spray, then broke out the headnets. The bugs were horrendous! The camp workers were still assembling their canvas tents and getting ready to open for the year - all while wearing headnets themselves. This would be one of their latest openings ever. We wished them well, ate a quick lunch, and got out of dodge to avoid the bugs. The meadow kept going for miles and the scenery just became more amazing! We climbed up to near 10,000 ft over a small pass and enjoyed great views of towering Cathedral Peak. Think Prusik Peak - supersized. A few hundred feet below was pretty Cathedral Lake. We descended a few miles further and took the spur trail to lower Cathedral Lake, our home for the night. The bugs were not too bad here if we stayed in the breeze on the rock slabs. The water wasn't too cold and the intense sun allowed a swim. That felt great since neither of had showered since leaving home. At this point Lauren had some pedicure work to perform. Her big toenail was falling off! It was now hinged like the lid of a trunk, swinging open and closed, but refused to fall off completely. Gross. It stubbornly hung on despite her efforts to remove it. The fire smoke made for a nice sunset and the lake calmed down for some nice reflections. It was chilly again overnight but not bad. We awoke to blue skies again, along with a perfectly calm lake, and great reflections. Already it was warm. We made our way out of the lake and climbed back up to the JMT. As we hiked down towards Tuolumne Meadows we had to step aside for many pack-trains ascending to work on the high camp. Most had one cowboy on a horse with four mules trailing, each laden with tools and luggage. At the end of one came a solitary cowboy on his horse, tugging along one particularly stubborn mule. "C'mon Calvin!", he'd yell. Lauren identified with Calvin. Down we dropped, finally hearing cars, and we knew we were close to tourons again. The trail looped behind the car campground and we saw our first bear! Actually, we'd walked right past it and a car camped pointed it out. We finally left the trail and walked through the campground. Our destination was the Tuolumne Meadows store, post office, and burger grill. All three were housed in a small plywood and canvas tent-like building crawling with hikers, thru-hikers, and tourons.

Workers assembling the camp

Meadows and spikey peak

Hiking towards Cathedral Peak

Cathedral Lake

Inflating a sleeping pad at 10k feet is hard!

Escaping the bugs

Sun!

Cathedral Peak

Calm Cathedral Lake

Passing pack train and mules

Bear near Tuolumne Meadows

Bear trap

CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE PHOTOS ON FLICKR Continued here in Part 2: Tuolumne Meadows to Mammoth Lakes.

[Middle E]

[GaliWalker]

Memories... 1- Waiting in that long line for the pizza, and having to use a flash light to find my tent in Curry Village. 2- The bugs, those gawd-awful blood-sucking demons at Cathedral Lakes; I had to leave Cathedral Lakes, and ended up climbing above Medlicott Dome to escape! ...many thanks! Looking forward to the rest; should be a good one.

[silence]

we only day hiked to cathedral .. the next day it snowed when we went up to sunrise lakes .. the following year we backpacked to just below clouds rest so we could be there early .. the next day it snowed and we had to make a quick exit over tioga pass b4 they closed it (which they did) so we could do whitney .. every time we go to the sierras it's snows on us .. kearsarge lakes .. snow .. the minarets ...snow so this year we went early .. but ended up getting debilitating blisters after 8 mi (while breaking in new boots) on the lyle canyon hike to mt lyle and had to turn back .. still you gotta love the sierras .. looking forward to the rest of your trip

[Moose]

Great trip report. Can't wait to read the rest!

[anyludes]

Awesome. Thanks. I am "dreaming" of doing this trip next Summer with my teenager & is fun to read.

[Samsquanch]

Impressive, looking forward to reading more and seeing more pictures.

[oregoncrna]

I can't wait to read the rest. The JMT is on my list for when I turn 40. I can't wait!

[Opus]

Part 2 us up, and can be read at this link.