Day 1: A Walk In The Park

Brrr, what a shockingly cold morning! Waaay colder than anticipated, somewhere in the mid-30's guesstimated from Jo's little thermometer. Both Misty & Jo were uncomfortable during the night so our first stop after our morning coffee was the Tuolumne Outfitter store to pick up a sleeping bag for Jo, which she had not brought (!) and a jacket for Misty.

By 9:40 am the sun had warmed things up nicely and we headed out through the campground on our first day of the JMT! Eric walked with us to the start of the trail, where we gave big hugs in thank yous and received best wishes in return. He will spend a few more days in this area & Mammoth, and promised to be just a phone call away in case we needed him. What a star!

The trail was easy and quite level, and paralleled Tuolumne River the rest of the morning. The scenery was breathtaking: some times we were threading through the trees with a babbling brook beside us, other times we were in a wide open meadow with a sauntering stream meandering past.  We were in good spirits with lots of happy chatter.

At noon we stopped for a nice interlude by the water, soaking our feet in the water, and having a quick snack while we purified some drinking water.

And so the day went: hike an hour or so, then have a break by the river to admire the views and extoll on the beauty of the day. The temperature was perfect, a refreshing breeze blew all day, the views were unending. We stopped and said hello to 2 dozen or so hikers coming northbound, many of whom were PCT-ers, working their way up from Mexico. We also leapfrogged a family of four the whole day. The father Ed, and older daughter Shannon will actually be hiking the whole JMT, so I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of them.

At 2pm we stopped for lunch, creekside of course, and Jo entertained us by dropping to her skivvies and leaping in for a bird bath, with all the accompanying shrieking one would expect from bathing in glacial snow melt. Misty & I dutifully soaked our feet, hoping that would keep any swelling or blisters at bay; we carefully dried our toes, reshod ourselves, then packs on and away we went - only to discover a wet stream crossing 10 yards down the trail! Not being bothered to take our shoes back off again we opted for our first log crossing. It was a team effort to get all 3 of us across dry and in one piece but we succeeded!

And so on we went, merrily ticking off the miles until about the 8.6m mark when we reached the end of Lyell Canyon and the trail started to climb up towards our first pass. We had to get to a higher elevation to avoid the mosquitos that were always hovering just at the edge of the breeze but we all had very heavy packs on and the day was getting late and we were tired. We trudged up almost a mile of stony steep switchbacks to reach our campground at the bridge at Lyell Forks and we agreed we could absolutely go no further. 'Twas about a 10 mile day all told.

(we camped near the treeline pretty much straight up from the bend in the creek in the pic)

It took a bit of looking to find two narrow campsites large enough for our tents amongst the rocky outcroppings under the tall pine trees and we had just enough time to set up camp, collect water and cook up our dinner before the sun set and it was time for us to crawl into our tents.