JMT - 5 days and counting...

The next adventure is about to begin!  All winter Misty, Jo & I have been planning, preparing, training and obsessing about hiking the John Muir Trail and here it is, just 5 days away!!!  None of us can believe it.  That's not to say we haven't been packed and ready to go for more than a month, it's just that we're not quite packed and ready to go  :-)

All our hiking friends here in the desert have heard from our on trail chatter far more than they probably ever wanted to know about the JMT - apologies now to all you patient souls, but here's the bare bones for the unintiated :  The JMT is a 211 mile wilderness trail that extends from Yosemite National Park south to the very tippy top of Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the Continental USA.  It's a veritable roller coaster of high mountain passes that we'll summit, then descend 1000's of feet, only to go back up again, dozens and dozens of times.  And, they cleverly end the trail at the top of Whitney.  At 14,505' elevation. We do have to get back down to civilization, you know.  So add another 11 miles, 6195', and 97 knee-numbing switchbacks to the very last day of our hike.

How it All Started:  Last September Misty came across a documentary called Mile...Mile and a Half  which portrayed the incredible scenery and intense physical challenges that the filmmakers experienced during their 2011 trek of the John Muir Trail, and she decided that this was something that she wanted to do.  Something we could do.  Well, that was the "royal we".  Jo signed on immediately while it took me about 2 months to decide I wanted to do it too (what? camping? lugging all that gear? eating dehydrated food? no showers? cold weather? No way).  But I eventually came around: the only way to experience the brilliance of the hike is to endure the good and the bad.  I also didn't want to be left behind....

Here's an image from a book I bought that shows the route

After committing to do the hike the next task was to assemble the gear.  I had a choice of 2 backpacks from my previous Caminos, but everything else was bought new or used online.  The poor UPS man became an almost daily fixture at our front door!  Camp stove, sleeping bag, water filters, titanium mugs, clothes, sleeping pad, clothes, tent, clothes, etc.  I must admit, it was rather fun.

Here's the 'almost ready" gear

Then there was the food.  We decided a manageable itinerary would take us 19 days + 1 rest day to complete the hike, and we had to have all that food pre-prepared for each and every meal & snack long before we'd ever hit the trail as we had to ship 3/4's of it ahead to our 'resupply' points.  Luckily we are able to break our hike into four 3-6 day sections, and we can pick up the food we've mailed to ourselves at the end of each section so we don't have to carry it all at once.  This is a very good thing as we average about 1.5 pounds of food per day and that really adds up when it's hanging off your back!  All 3 of us dehydrated a lot of our own meals instead of relying on preservative-laden commercial stuff, and relied on a lot of great fattening carb-laden snacks to get us thru the day.  Unfortunately I never took any photos of the assembly line that our kitchen became this past winter with the dehydrator running almost constantly (hamburger, spinach, pasta, veggies, chili, spaghetti, etc.) but here's a pic of Misty's early food pile:

and each section's food & toiletries has to fit in this Bear Can

Then all was left was to practice the hiking...