jmt2007pagefour

JMT 2007 Page Four

"The struggle to walk enough miles, eat enough food, get enough sleep..."

Day Seven and my plan was to go over 12.000-foot Muir Pass, descend into Le Conte Canyon, and camp near Grouse Meadows for a 20-mile day. My pack was starting to get more compact; I realized with a bit of a jolt I'd walked more than half-way and there were only five days left until my pickup date. The prominent peak called The Hermit was rose-tinged in the early-morning light. A few clouds indicated there was some new moisture and probably a weather change in the air.

With the clouds, the sunlight was less intense and the temperature cooler. I wended my solitary way, expecting to see people camping around Evolution Lake. But I saw no one, or at least, no humans. Did see a mommy Marmot and her two youngsters. The young marmots were very energetic, very curious, and very appealing in that rounded & fluffy baby-animal sort of way. I kept trying to get a closeup of the most-curious of the two youngsters; it would pop its head up, I'd press the shutter on my camera, "eep-eep" for focus achieved and zoom!, the young'un would vanish. We did this little farce a few times until I wised up and temporarily turned off sounds on my camera. And finally got the shot:

Evolution Lake was unruffled in the morning light, its surface only disturbed by hundreds of feeding trout; lots of rising fish but no fishermen.

Walking a bit further up the trail, I was startled by a small bird which was having trouble flying. As I slowly crept up on it, I could see why it was having so much difficulty: it was just a downy chick with no flight feathers. No sight of a parent anywhere around, but I hoped its parent was nearby.

Eat an energy bar, take a drink, walking along in the quiet. Above timberline now the life-forms became smaller but no less interesting. On some parts of this section of trail there were so many tiny butterflies I felt it necessary to carefully watch my feet and walking-stick tip placement so as not to crush one of them.

I'd seen a few polliwogs in some of the creeks earlier in the hike, but here in Evolution Basin I actually saw several adult Yellow-Legged Frogs (Rana muscosa), always a good sign of a healthy ecosystem. And the little ground-hugging plants, like the Pussy Paws (Calyptridium umbellatum) shown here were very vigorous too.

I stopped by the shore of Wanda Lake at about 11,400 feet and took a bit of a break. The panorama shot at the top of Page One of this trip description shows Muir Pass on the left, Wanda Lake in the foreground, and the ridges and glaciers of Mount Goddard on the right. The clouds were getting a bit thicker and it was obviously raining off to the west so I didn't dawdle too long. John Muir fathered two daughters, and the two large lakes on either side of Muir Pass are named after them: Wanda and Helen.

In 1971 I'd walked through this area with a friend. Atop Muir Pass there had been at least fifty people, and some of them had been watching a group of 10 or 15 climbers ascending Black Giant peak, a 13,300-foot imposing mass to the southeast of the pass. But now as I ascended the final few steps to the top I saw no one. The landscape had changed very little from what I remembered. On the left is a scan of an Instamatic photo I took back then, and on the right is a photo from this trip. Even the residual snow-patch seems to be about the same size and shape, though the clouds this time were a bit more threatening.

As I walked up to the beehive-shaped Muir Hut I could see one person through the window. Rapping on the door, I let myself in. One lone hiker was inside, silently perusing his maps. I took a couple of photos and then broke out my treat: a can of smoked oysters. In 1971 I'd brought a salami along and cut it open on top of Muir Pass. Compared to the "Freeze-Dried" crap I'd been eating for the previous few days in '71, that salami was incredibly delicious. I'd decided to re-enact that event with the oysters and yes, indeed, they too were delicious. From my journal, slightly edited: Saw zero hikers until top of Muir Pass a bit after noon, where there was one PCTer and 4-yrs ago ATer w/ trail name "Happy", so-named I guess as his demeanor was mildly morose and his style of speech deliberate. Said he was an Industrial Engineering graduate and expected to do CDT next year ("take a crappy job at a ski resort and save a bit of cash" was his plan). I shared my can of smoked oysters w/ him and told of the last time for me on Muir Pass, how great was the salami, how we raved about it on return, and how my friend Larry on hearing this decided to bring nothing BUT salami on another group camping trip ("No cooking!"), which he was SO sick of in short order that we had to go home early since nobody else would trade their food for that greasy salami. This story actually made "Happy" laugh. I tried a couple of puns on him as I left and he looked befuddled; explained the first one ("don't take this freedom & hiking for GRANITE") but he didn't seem to even detect the second one ("I told my wife that pun and it BOULDER over"). Ah, well.

Onward. A few more photos, change socks, crush my now-empty oyster can, and I began the rocky descent of the east side of Muir Pass. It was quite the moonscape, lots of jumbled rock and little else. It started to spit occasional drops of rain. Just as I was about to stop and put on raingear, up the trail came the second hiker of the day, a park ranger. Again from my journal: Met a ranger, I think on his weekend as he said he was headed to Darwin Canyon, who advised me the weather was predicted to be similar for another day or so. Also mentioned passes to east further south were closed due to fires. Just was starting to rain as he dashed off. "Be safe & stay warm!" he said and I had no time to tell him that staying warm had been rather an undesirable constant for me so far this trip. So I donned my raingear, including my pack cover, and walked on. The rain never got very heavy and then it quit altogether after about 20 minutes. Met two other couples, one couple doing the PCT and the others doing a five-day loop; the woman PCTer had a ragged plastic poncho for her raingear and some sort of wooden stick (wind instrument? walking stick?) protruding out of her pack. Definitely looked like characters.

The long rocky descent started to moderate as I approached Big Pete Meadow, the canyon taking on the classical rounded "U" shape of a glaciated valley. Sure did appreciate the clouds; this was like I'd expected the hiking to be all along, very comfortable and clement. The sunlight was dim enough that I could operate in "visor-up" mode, which looked goofy but definitely gave me a better view of my surroundings. I talked to another hiker near Little Pete Meadow who told me more details on the fire(s), which closed roads, trailheads, and caused the evacuation of Independence. The closed trailheads included Onion Valley, which was my most-likely bail-out if I fell too far behind on my trail mileage. I was relieved that neither he nor the ranger from earlier in the day said anything about the Muir Trail having any sort of closures.

I got to the area of Grouse Meadows a bit before 7 PM and for once was not able to just pick any campsite I wanted. I'd decided that there was probably a nice site just on the southern edge of the main meadow, and there was, but it was already occupied. I walked a short distance further to the vicinity of where Palisade Creek joins the Middle Fork Kings and found a truly great little site nicely situated on a knoll where the breeze was just strong enough to discourage all the mosquitoes (which had been fairly thick back at the meadows.) Food, hot chocolate, tea, and hadn't felt rushed or stressed at any point on that day's walking, perhaps for the first time on the trip so far. Still hadn't arrived at camp soon enough to have time for serious washing, though I had been rinsing out socks and washing off strategic body-parts like legs, arms, and face for the past couple of days during rest stops. Definitely a Good Day.

That night I was awakened at about 1:30 AM by the pitter and pop of raindrops on my tent. I deployed its front "beak" to provide a vestibule area and to prevent rain from possibly blowing in through the screen door, and went back to sleep. It apparently didn't rain too much, as the ground was dry in the morning. No worries. zzzzZZZZ...

Yawn. Time to get up already? If I made any journal articles in the evening I'd find myself only getting about six or at most seven hours of sleep a night. The struggle to walk enough miles, eat enough food, get enough sleep seemed to be an inevitable part of trying to do so many miles a day in this mountainous terrain. Still, it was Day Eight, July 11th, and my goal for the day was Lake Marjorie, 19.5 miles away, with Mather Pass in between. Saw a few hikers milling around in their camp by Palisade Creek, and then passed and was re-passed by a young couple who seemed to fit a "type" I'd noticed several times along the trail (for instance, notice the hiking couple just ahead of me in a couple of the Lyell Canyon photos.) Journal description: the guy is in the lead; he's wearing a large elaborate internal-frame pack (like a Gregory), eyes intently focused on the trail about 3 feet ahead, hiking poles churning, a look of determination on his face. Behind is his small gracile female, her gaze turned upwards, constantly glancing left & right, occasionally darting out her digital cam and capturing a quick shot, then scurrying tic-tic-tic w/ her hiking poles a-blur to catch up w/ her male. Now just because the male was in the lead that didn't mean he was in charge: it certainly looked like the female was having more fun and, in a gentle way, running the show. VERY interesting social dynamic, in any case.

I soon met another archetype, the "two young slightly-befuddled guys" example. They were heading downhill and, when I asked them where they'd been and where were they off to, blurted out a somewhat-jumbled explanation that they were "leaving the trail" because their family group had suffered a casualty when one of the guys' sister "broke her knee." "WOW, how far did she fall?", I asked, since breaking your knee is not a trivial accomplishment but takes a fair amount of applied kinetic energy. "Oh, well, ya know, she didn't FALL, but her knee sure swelled up", one replied. Anyway, they explained they had to quit because they were "sick"; "Oh, got the runs or something?" I asked, and they mumbled no, but they were "sick." Homesick, perhaps; sick of walking, probably; sick of their cooking, very likely. Anyway, they said they were going out via "Road's End." "What!? Do you mean over by CEDAR GROVE?", I asked, thinking wow, THAT'S the long way around. "Oh, no, we're going out to Road's End; it's only 35 miles down this trail." Wishing them luck, I walked on up the trail, mulling over what the heck they were talking about. After about 15 minutes I had a sudden thought and whipped out my Tom Harrison map (it seemed that most JMT and PCT hikers had this map-set, a lightweight 13-map plus index pack, printed on lightweight waterproof plastic.) Sure enough, the relevant map had "32.3 to Road's End T/H" at the trail junction about three miles from where we had talked. I briefly considered running back down the trail to catch them and tell them that although the map was correct, that 32.3 miles was at least partially cross-country, poorly marked, went DOWN a long ways only to climb back UP a long ways, and a portion of the route was described as "hazardous" on the Park Service web site. Also, it would be only half the distance if you exited over Bishop Pass. But hey, I thought, the world's got a lot of surplus young men, and what's the worst thing that could happen? Evolution in action, eh?

The trail showed very light use, such that in various spots it was a little hard to follow. There also were a lot of downed trees across the trail, surprising to me in that I expected the Muir Trail to be better-maintained than it was along here. It wasn't really a problem, and it sure kept out the riff-raff (i.e., pack-trains of horses.)

Looking back along the canyon I had ascended, I admired the classic glaciated terrain while keeping a wary eye on the rapidly-moving clouds. I didn't want to get trapped up on Mather Pass at 12,000 feet by a thunderstorm, so hurried along a bit.

Up the Golden Staircase and past the Palisade Lakes, the pass came into view, rocky and barren. The trail up Palisade Creek and Mather Pass was the last portion of the John Muir Trail to be built, completed in 1938, so I had expected that the pass might be challenging. I put my watch in feet-per-minute mode and gauged my progress. 25 FPM seemed like an achievable rate most of the time, even at higher altitudes. It turned out to be a surprisingly accurate way of predicting my arrival time at the top of passes, to measure my rate of ascent, note what altitude I was at and how high the upcoming pass was, and then just do the math. At 20 FPM, 100 feet took five minutes and so 1000 feet took about 50 minutes. I mused that it was sure a lot slower ascent rate than you get with an airplane or an ultralight, or a hang glider in a thermal.

A couple of distant thunder rumbles occurred just as I neared the top of the pass. Whereas the passes to the north had been hardly worthy of the name, more like gaps, this pass was fairly dramatic, the far side a sudden revelation in just a few steps. A young couple was at the summit: I took a few pictures of them using their camera, then donned my jacket and clicked off a quick panorama. It was actually a bit chilly. Felt really good.

Climbing down the south side of the pass about 600 vertical feet to the first set of lakes below went pretty quickly. Looking back at the pass cemented my feelings: yep, that's a pass worthy of the name.

The area to the south of Mather Pass is called Upper Basin and was very pleasant and easy walking, perhaps the longest sustained relatively-level stretch since Lyell Canyon. The clouds looked a bit darker off to the north but didn't seem like they were developing towards anything other than just being nice shade, for which I was very grateful. Saw a couple of deer including a buck with a large rack, 8+ points, which was just wading across a wide stream. The walking was good; abundant flowers; critters here and there; nice trail. I found myself thinking I was really lucky to be up here seeing all this.

I crossed the South Fork Kings River, collected some stove wood while I was below the 10,000-foot level at which fires are legal, and started climbing again. I stepped off the trail to take a photo looking back at Mather Pass to the distant north:

took the shot, turned around, and noticed lying at my feet a dead baby marmot in what seemed peaceful repose:

Didn't take the time to puzzle out why it had died; a large marmot burrow was nearby, with no sign of activity, so it possibly had died because its parent had gone missing for some reason. Also, sometimes animals Just Die, from disease, birth defects, or bad luck. Natural Selection Happens.

My stated goal for the day was "...near Lake Marjorie" and that's exactly where I was. A couple of small tarns just to the north of the lake itself looked inviting. I found a really nice campsite, looked at my watch, and went "Hurray, I can wash!" as it was only about 6 PM. Spreading out all my (for the moment) worldly possessions and packing all my food in my big bear-can, I donned my raingear, scooped up my dirty clothes, and set off to do a Spot O' Wash.

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