My triumphant return to the world of distance hiking
Before I get into talking about my next hike, I want to take a second to thank Hyperlite Mountain Gear, and Bedrock Sandals for helping me get my dream gear, and for continuing to support the distance hiking community! Special shout out to my JMT hiking partner/ OG AT trail family member James Meehan (Uphill), who took the reigns on logistics research/ planning when I was dealing with life and work chaos. This trip wouldn't have been nearly as organized without you Uphill, and I can't wait until we're back on the trail together!
The John Muir Trail
As soon as I finished my Appalachian Trail thru hike I knew
I needed to be back in the mountains, sleeping in my tent, and living out of my
backpack again ASAP. After settling back in to normal life, and acquiring a new
job at The Frontier Project I decided it was time to start planning my next
hike. I did some research, and kept coming back to the John Muir Trail. The
John Muir Trail is notorious for being the country’s most beautiful hike. The
JMT’s northern terminus is located at Happy Isles in Yosemite, and the summit
of Mt. Whitney is its southern terminus. It’s 210 miles spent mostly in the
High Sierra backcountry and wilderness, and this all sounded perfect to me.
…until I actually started planning
Looking back, I did very little pre-hike planning for my AT
thru hike. I spent a fair amount of time doing gear research, and figuring out
transportation and housing in Atlanta, and transportation to Springer Mountain,
but that was it. Saying I was caught off guard by the amount of planning the
John Muir Trail requires would be an understatement.
The almost impossible permit application process
I knew that the John Muir Trail was very highly regulated,
and that I would have to apply for a permit, but how hard could that be? It was
actually unbelievably difficult. Fun fact: 90-95% of all JMT permit
applications are denied. Hikers have to apply exactly 168 from their desired
start date, and applications must be sent in via fax between the hours of 12:01
am- 7:30 am Pacific Time. I hadn’t even started applying yet and it was already
ridiculous. Before the JMT application
process I had used a fax maybe 10 times. More importantly, where do you even
find a fax machine nowadays? I accepted the fact that I’d be making early
morning trips to Kinko’s, and started filling out applications. Which was also
ridiculously difficult. The Yosemite website presents you with a JMT
application form, and tells you where to fax it, but that’s it.
I didn’t know any of this information! I didn’t know where
to go for any of this information! Fortunately, Google and Bearfoot Theory exist,
and were there to guide me through the application process. Uphill also did a
fair amount of independent research and gathered entry and exit trail heads for
us. So we began faxing in applications, and on our 5th try Uphill’s
permit application was approved! It was a huge relief, and I was so happy
Uphill and I were some of the lucky few to get permits.
Richmond > San Francisco > Yosemite > San Diego
Getting to and from the trail ended up being easier than
expected. Uphill and I decided to fly into San Francisco the Saturday before
our start date, and to fly out of San Diego after completion. We got so lucky,
and both have family in California who will be housing us pre/ post hike
(thanks in advance Uncle Bill & Aunt Elaine)! We knew we’d need to get from
San Francisco to Yosemite, and this ended up being relatively easy as well.
Apparently many people have done this trip before, and roughly 5 minutes into
doing research I found a Trip Advisor Article on how to get to Yosemite from SF
via public transportation. Everything was starting to come together! But then I remembered one crucial element of planning that I had been avoiding.
FOOD
Part of why The John Muir Trail appealed to me was because it is so remote. There are no road crossings for roughly 160/ 210 miles, and is largely untouched wilderness. Remoteness is something I didn't experience often on the AT. I saw people all the time, crossed roads on average once a day (if not more), and could hike into town and get burgers at the end of the day if I wanted. I longed to feel like I was in nature, and that was hard when I could hear cars/ traffic while trying to fall asleep in my tent at night. Remoteness and convenience don't go hand in hand, and I knew I wouldn't find any Wal-Marts at road crossings on the JMT. Food planning was something I was familiar with after having packed many re-supply boxes for myself on the AT. Uphill and I knew how long we'd be hiking for, and we found 3 re-supply points/ detailed instructions for mailing on Barefoot Theory. Uphill acquired 5 gallon buckets for shipping (Muir Trail Ranch requires them), and made this super helpful sheet for us!
I printed out our sheet, and was off to the grocery store. Food shopping got a little more complicated with my switch to a vegan diet this past February, but wasn't as hard as I expected. I spent a fair amount of time making sure I had enough food, because I had definitely underestimated the amount of food I'd eat on the AT, and I didn't want to make that mistake again. I also had to think about food expiration dates (had to go through many tortillas to find some that would last until August), and of course calorie density to weight ratio.
I had to rush to get all of my food together upon discovering that most places on the JMT recommend shipping your food 3 weeks ahead of time to ensure it gets there on time. This is why my food selection isn't the most diverse, but I figured I could suffer through eating the same things every day for 2 weeks. After a few hours of re-packaging and organizing my food, it was ready to head to Uphill! It's currently en route to him now (thanks Dad!), and should be on it's way to California by Friday!
Relief! Anticipation! Excitement!
Hopefully all of you now understand why I've been slightly stressed about my hike! Now that most (if not all) of my planning is done I've had time to sit back and actually get excited about hiking again! Uphill and I will begin our hike exactly 3 weeks from today, and I can't wait!
More to come about gear/ what I'm taking later!
