JMT Day 8- Rest Day at Red's Meadow

July 23, 2014

Showers! Laundry! Burgers! Pie! Relaxin! WOOT! Feels so good to be clean! So nice to smell good. My B.O. was out of control!

After a wonderful hot shower, I hung out in my rain gear while I waited for my clothes to dry. A bit awkward but I don't think I'm the first person to do this!

Ninja suit

The Jackies decided to hang with us and take a rest day. It's been great to lounge around and just chill. We've been sitting by the store people watching and just relaxing. Got caught up on posting pics on Instagram. After lounging we headed back to camp to sort our resupplies. We have a TON of extra food. Again! Our appetites have come back a little but not enough to eat everything we sent ourselves. We also can't fit everything in our bear cans. We finally figured out our food and packed our cans. Then we tried to eat as much of the extra food as we could! We shared it with others too!

We chilled at the picnic table in camp all evening and into the night just chatting. And eating. We met a gal who was coming off the High Sierra Route, she had some very interesting stories to share. Snow and ice and wind and cold.

Nice to have a rest day and hang out! Red's is pretty nice, café is expensive but I suppose that's to be expected. Jackie Sue hooked me up with a pretty braid after I washed all the dirt and grease out of my hair. Took 3 full washings of shampoo.

Jackie Sue hooking me up with a sweet trail braid!

JMT Day 7- Rosalie Lake to Devil's Postpile to Red's Meadow

July 22, 2014

This entry is all verbatim from my trail journal:

Calm and peaceful morning on Rosalie Lake

"Felt like an easy day today apart from my feet hurting from the downhill, as usual. Met up with the Crew and The Jackies about an hour before Devil's Postpile and hiked and hung out with them the rest of the day. Good people, glad we met them. We checked out Devil's Postpile for a bit, which was neat! Columnar Basalt that looks like hexagon tiles! Cool! Then went the short half mile or so to Red's for burgers and milkshakes! We were all so excited for real food! And salad! And pie!

Devil's Postpile National Monument, columnar basalt

Top view, hexagonal tiles

The Crew!

We got our resupply buckets and then chilled in the sitting area outside the store for several hours: chatting and beers. We headed to the backpacker's camp which was about a half mile away and set up camp. Daveed insisted on being our Sherpa and carried both our resupply buckets and his full pack. Something he regretted when we started up the short uphill section towards camp... :)

Daveed Sherpa

Met a lot of other JMTers at camp. The 3 Amigos/Oakland Boys rolled in later in the eve- with a plastic paddle sticking out of one of their packs!! Apparently they had acquired a blow up raft and paddle at Thousand Island Lake while taking a rest day there! We all hung out at the picnic table and had fun teasing the 3 Amigos about all the other heavy and bulky items they had: a large solar powered boombox, backpacking guitar, a heavy 1973 thermarest sleeping pad that leaked, etc etc.

Really looking forward to a shower and laundry tomorrow! Relaxing, napping and eating and water also sound lovely.

The trail has been great, I feel so lucky to be here. I'm so thankful. The beauty of the Sierras just gets better and better every day. I'm having lots of fun being with Daveed every day. Our bodies are holding up well, our legs are so strong! It's just our feet that hurt every day. My big toes and balls of my feet are still numb every time I take my boots off..."

Red's Meadow camp, elevation  7,700 feet

JMT Day 6- Thousand Island Lake to Rosalie Lake

July 21, 2014

Today was a day of lakes: Emerald, Ruby, Garnet, Shadow and Rosalie!

We got a very late start today, we slept in a bit knowing we only had about 6 miles to go. The storms cleared up and we woke to a beautiful morning.

Clear and calm 

Clear blue bird skies!

Another beautiful view of Thousand Island Lake from the north shore

Not a bad spot to sit and wait for Daveed

Emerald Lake

We cruised to Garnet lake and had lunch. Garnet was so beautiful!! It was kind of a smaller version of Thousand Island Lake with amazing front and center views of Banner and Ritter peaks! Garnet Lake would go down as one of my favorite lunch spots on the entire trail!

Garnet Lake

One of my favorite lunch spots on all of the trail!

The Jackies also happened to stop at Garnet for lunch! Jackie Ray went to filter water and dropped one of her bottles in the lake. Daveed jumped in after it and got it for her :)  He said he was looking for an excuse to jump in and rinse off anyways! Here is a video of his chilly swim!

http://youtu.be/ZCtBjNmaTDQ

It was hard to leave Garnet but alas, we had to carry on. I had a really hard time with the long 1000 feet of downhill to Shadow Lake. My feet were killing me and we were both dragging. When we finally got to Shadow Lake we were rewarded with a beautiful view of the clear, green lake!

Shadow Creek

The brightly colored Shadow Lake

We hoofed it straight up the switchbacks from Shadow to Rosalie Lake with no real issue. I just needed one short fruit snack break and before I knew it we were at the top!

When we arrived at Rosalie, Amelia and her crew and The Jackies were there. They had all just enjoyed a nice swim in the lake and were getting ready to make some din. We hung out with them at the lake while we filtered water and did some laundry.

We camped near a couple of really nice older gentlemen. One of them had all the "gadgets". He showed us his tiny, battery powered air pump. It blew up his sleeping pad in like a minute! I think he said it only weighed 3 ounces! He also had a Feathered Friends sleeping bag. We drooled over it as it's super duper lightweight, but also super duper expensive. And it packs down to be really small. The gentlemen had fun gawking at how many calories Daveed was trying to take in every day.

From my trail journal: Red's Meadow tomorrow for our first resupply. Really looking forward to a rest day and a shower! And laundry too, my shirt smells terrible. Lots of really pretty views today! It's so beautiful out here!

Camp at Rosalie Lake, elevation 9,352 feet

JMT Day 5- Lyell Forks to Donahue Pass to Island Pass to Thousand Island Lake

July 20, 2014

The Hail Day

"It never rains in the Sierras in the summer" <--- Not true for the month we spent in the Sierras! :)

Got a late start this morning. We started the climb up Donahue Pass (11, 073 ft) under partly cloudy skies which quickly turned to storms. The temperature dropped and it was rain and hail the whole way up the pass and the whole rest of the day! So much hail . I wanted to take a video of the hail bouncing off the ground. It was like the grass was alive with thousands of little bouncy balls!

Rain and hail clouds surrounding the pass

Starting up Donahue, just before the rain and hail started

We stopped half way up the pass to take a candy bar break and to try and get out of the wind and warm up for a bit. Even though most of the surrounding views were blocked by low lying storm clouds, we could still see back into Lyell Canyon, it was neat to see where we had come from the day before!

Candy bar break halfway up the pass, trying to seek shelter from the wind and rain

When we finally reached the top of Donahue Pass, the storm parted for about an hour, just long enough for us to dry out and warm up a bit. We took advantage of the break and ate some lunch and rested our feet.

Ninja suited and booted. Donahue Pass, elevation 11,073 ft

On the south side of the pass was our first real view of the sprawling Sierras. I had tears in my eyes as I took in the views. Wow. We were really here! We were really doing this! Surrounded by all this beauty. And we get to be here, in this beautiful Range of Light for the next 24 days. Wow. We are so lucky! As we gazed at the mountains Daveed said, pointing south at the mountains, "that's our road for the next month!!". Yes, indeed it was. What a cool thing.

"That's our road!"

Short window of sun, lunch time!

As we lunched just on the south side of Donahue Pass, Amelia and her crew passed us. And this is when we met The Jackies. We would go on to hike every day with both Jackies until Vermillion Valley Resort  and then we would hike until day 23 with Jackie Ray! As we continued down Donahue Pass, we hiked into a gorgeous meadow with beautiful little cascading falls, lush greenery and just picture perfect everything! The rain and hail started again so I wasn't able to take any pictures, but I took many, many "brain pictures". I would blink my eyes and make a shutter closing sound, imprinting the image on my brain. I promised myself I would never forget this meadow. And I can still picture it today. I took a lot of these "brain pictures" every day. I just couldn't believe all of the beautiful sights I was seeing!

We leap frogged with Amelia and her crew, who were all cold, wet and pretty miserable. We saw many people who were not prepared for the weather and we were very thankful that we had proper rain gear and that it performed well for us. We saw many who had seemingly legit rain gear, only for it to fail them, soaking them to the skin. My public service announcement is to not buy anything North Face unless you really truly test it prior to a backcountry adventure and it performs for you. A 30 minute commute in light rain does not count as testing. And even if it cost you $300, that is not a guarantee that it will keep you dry.

OK, North Face rant over.

As we continued on in the rain and hail, we started up Island Pass (10, 221 ft), which wasn't much of a pass. Yes, there was plenty of uphill, but the gain wasn't very dramatic, only about 700 feet. Nonetheless, it was still uphill. And it was still raining and hailing. Which meant the trail was flooded and we were walking upstream. It was difficult to keep our feet dry with so much water on the trail, but we did pretty well. Daveed stepped in a deep stealth puddle toward the top of Island Pass and then his shoes and feet were properly soaked. The 3 Amigos/Oakland Boys passed us by, looking absolutely miserable. One had a thin plastic poncho bought in Yosemite, the others had no rain gear at all.

When we finally arrived at Thousand Island Lake the storm started to break up. At one point Daveed exclaimed "I can sort of see my shadow!!". Thankfully the rain and hail stopped for the day, but the cold and wind stayed. We found a decent place to camp on the spongy grassy lakeshore, on the other side of the lake where everyone else had clumped together.

Banner Peak wrapped in storm clouds

Storm clouds starting to clear

Warming up!

Warming up with some hot food!

Daveed has definitely found his trail legs! He motored up and down the trail yesterday and today! He had to wait for me to catch up several times going up Donahue! He loved hiking in the hail, had a huge smile on his face all day long :) He would often stop and turn around and wag his tail at me saying "this is so much fun!!", I would laugh watching the hail bounce off the top of his head and agree that yes, this was fun! I've never seen so much hail in all my life and it was really fun to be out hiking in it-- although I think I might have felt otherwise had I not had good rain gear to keep me dry!

Thousand Island Lake camp, elevation 9,844 ft

JMT Day 4- Tuolumne Meadows to Lyell Forks

July 19, 2014

We got up early, packed it up and headed to the Grill for some breakfast. We hiked with Ethan and Haley the entire day, which was really fun. We hiked through the gloriously flat Lyell Canyon! The flat ground was so nice! And the trail was so beautiful, it followed the Tuolumne river through the entire canyon.

We got to share the PCT for awhile!

Tuolumne River as we entered Lyell Canyon

Glorious FLAT hiking all through Lyell Canyon!

Throughout the day, we saw all of the other friends from the day before and leap frogged with most of them. First we saw the Wild Boys who were enjoying some splish splash in the Tuolumne river. We kept our eyes open for a nice place to take a dip and eventually found a great spot to access the river. There was a big rock in the middle of the river that we waded out to and ate lunch. It felt wonderful to wash off all the dirt! By this time, day 4 on the trail, my legs were caked with dirt. All the pores in my legs were tiny dark circles as they were all clogged with dirt! I washed my shirt and socks too!

Lunch on the rock

Daveed and his deer friendo

Haley and Ethan

Just as we were packing up after lunch it started raining, with the thunder sounding really close by! We put on our rain gear and pack covers and hauled ass. We walked out of one storm and directly into another! We hiked in light rain for the next few hours which wasn't a big deal. All the other hikers we'd met bunched up at Lyell Forks Base Camp where we all got water and then headed up the 650 feet of gain to the next camp. We're all staged well for Donahue Pass tomorrow.

We had really pretty views all day of the canyon and as we headed up the end of the canyon we saw Donahue Pass and the surrounding peaks. We're headed up and over them tomorrow!

Donahue Pass

My trail journal notes that today was the first day that my big toes and balls of my feet went numb when I would lay down in the tent. This is something that would continue to get worse and the feeling in my toes wouldn't fully come back until about 2 months after the trail.

Camp at Lyell Forks, elevation 9657 ft

JMT Day 3- Sunrise High Sierra Camp to Tuolumne Meadows

July 18, 2014

Today was a much easier day, only 500-600 feet of vertical gain right away in the morning up Cathedral Pass, then it was mostly all downhill, all the way to Tuolumne Meadows!

Our destination lie on the other side of that peak!

Last night and this morning was the first time I really felt the elevation- I was out of breath just walking around camp! We camped at 9300 feet last night, which is 2000 feet higher than the previous night at Clouds Rest. We lost some elevation in Tuolumne and camped at 8500 feet tonight and I didn't feel the elevation at all.

The view from Cathedral Pass, 9703 ft

Looking south from Cathedral Pass

Is this real life??!

Today was the first day that my feet hurt from all the downhill hiking, this would become the norm for me every day. I came to dread the downhills because it hurt my feet and my knees so much!


We passed a lot of day hikers/tourists and also met a ton of other JMTers. It was fun to chat with them and share our experiences so far. We happened to cluster up at Tuolumne, where the trail meets the shuttle stop. We all opted to take the "Burger Shuttle" to Tuolumne Grill so we could get burgers before it closed at 5:00 pm. We got rowdy and a little slap happy on the shuttle, which had about 6 or 8 non-hikers on it, and chanted "burgers, burgers, burgers" to the amusement of the shuttle driver. We were all so happy to not be walking and about to be eating some greasy burgers! We were all dirty and smelled terrible and felt slightly bad for the other non-hikers on the shuttle...sorry we stunk up the place!

BURGER SHUTTLE!

We all feasted on burgers and ice cream cones and bought beer at the small store. We met who we would come to call "The Wild Boys", who were 3 childhood amigos, all around the age of 21. They were young, funny, fit and on a very fast schedule to finish the trail. We also met the brother and sister duo Ethan and Haley, who we had actually met on day 1, right at the trailhead sign! We took turns taking each other's pictures! We also met Thomas, the German, who was OF COURSE an engineer! He pretended to take offense when I said "of course you are, you're German!" when he told me he was an engineer :) Along with the above mentioned and more, about 10 of us in all, walked together to the nearby backpacker's camp and found tent sites to crash for the night.


We met some PCTers at the Grill, which at first I was thrilled!!! Wow! PCT hikers! I had been following so many PCTers and now here I was meeting some! Too bad they were loud, obnoxious and mostly drunk :) And one dude tried to hit on me which I shut down immediately. I understand that there aren't a lot of females out there in the backcountry, but I was having none of it! I was wondering what they were doing in Tuolumne as a lot of PCTers were in Northern California or Southern Oregon by now....then they said they were a couple weeks behind schedule. Now it all makes sense.

We camped near Haley and Ethan, who were hiking the JMT to raise money for Juvenile Diabetes and we also met Amelia and her crew. We would come to be good trail friends with Amelia and her crew in the coming days.

After some hanging out and use of the flush toilets (!!!) we called it a night and I fell asleep immediately! Hiking is tiring!

I think this is one of the only campsites I forgot to take a picture of...whoops. Elevation 8593.

JMT Day 2- Clouds Rest trail junction to Sunrise High Sierra Camp

July 17, 2014


Day 2 would go down in my journal as one of the toughest days on the trail. We heard from many, many hikers that the first 3 days on the trail are the toughest and a lot of people quit the trail after just 3 days, when they reach Tuolumne Meadows. I thought they were full of it as I couldn't believe anyone would quit after just 3 days, I mean you've only just begun! Then we started day 2. And I didn't eat anything for breakfast because I wasn't hungry. Then we continued our upward trek, up, up, up 700 vertical feet of gain in the first couple miles: GOOD MORNING!! Whelp, that was the first and last day on trail that I did not eat breakfast. I was completely out of gas within the first mile! As we continued to gain elevation, I continued to slow down...and gulp for air...and then the bugs came...and then I was out of powers. We had to stop to eat something and take a break. I ate with my bug head net on <--- the bug head net would become one of my favorite accessories on trail!! Kept the bugs out of my ears, eyes, nose and mouth and kept me sane and from having to swat at bugs constantly. Hurray for the bug head net!

Those are sour patch kids I'm eating, breakfast of champions!

As we were sittin on a rock eating our breakfast, a friendly gal came trotting by and asked if we were doing the JMT. We smiled real big and said "yep!". Then she said "can I see your permit?". Fudge. I got out our permit and she said "you came all the way here from Illouette Basin this morning?!". I tried to be vague and said that "no, we camped on "this" side of Illouette...", she asked if we stayed in Little Yosemite Valley (LYV) the night before and when we said no, she said OK, gave back the permit and wished us happy trails. I thought we were going to be in trouble as our permit had us camping south off the JMT in Illouette Basin for our first night...well, I thought that was dumb as it would've added another day to our trip, so we didn't stay there and instead camped at Clouds Rest. Really, it seems that as long as you do not stay at LYV no one really cares. LYV permits sell out instantly as a lot of people hike there, stay the night and then summit Half Dome the next morning. I thought for sure we were going to be in trouble! Great! Our second day on trail and we get....kicked off? I don't know what they would do but I was grateful the gal didn't really seem to care. Phew.

The view from the trail a few miles east of the Half Dome cutoff trail. The Sierras seriously never disappoint

As we started up the switchbacks at Sunrise Creek I hit another wall. It was so HAWT! And dry! I stopped at every single corner of every single switchback to sip water and gulp oxygen. All the corners were shaded so I would hide in the shade for as long as it took to take 3 sips of water and 3 deep breaths, then carry on. This was my cadence all the way to the top of the 1000 ft gain of the switchbacks , about 2 hours! Daveed tanked it up the switchbacks with seemingly effortless pace, stopping patiently to wait for me every so often. And this was the day that the "shade" rule came into existence: I would only stop in the shade. If Daveed stopped in the sun, I would either stop before I got to him or walk past him until I found a shade patch :) He would tease me and call me a princess, until a day or 2 later when he adopted the same rule :) We became shade dwellers during the day and sun seekers in the early mornings once we got to higher elevations.

After the Sunrise switchbacks we were rewarded for our efforts with our first views of Echo Peaks and Cathedral Peak.  We stopped to have lunch and enjoy the beautiful views. I couldn't get my boots off any faster. The sweat and heat had warped my feet into what looked like pale, wrinkly, anemic fish. I also had a small blister that started to form on the back of my heel, which would plague me the rest of the trip. It was easily dealt with by putting duct tape on the outside of my liner sock. I found that nothing would stick to my feet once they started sweating so I tried putting the tape on my liner sock and it worked beautifully. I was also able to reuse the tape; I would wear the same socks without washing for 2 days in a row. Which meant I used half as much duck tape and didn't need to carry as much with me. It also meant my feet were extra ripe smelling!!

Decent lunch spot

With tired, aching feet we chugged on until we arrived at Sunrise High Sierra Camp. A lush, spongy meadow opened in front of us with great views of Cathedral Peak. An old chatty lady approached us and informed us that there were small campsites on the hillside, a spigot for water and a pit toilet. What??!! Really??!! Water and a pit toilet?! We HAD to stop and camp here. I was super tired and practically begged Daveed to stop here to camp. He agreed to explore the hillside to find the water and pit toilet, then we ate an early dinner around 4:00. Then I was really done. Our goal for the day was Upper Cathedral Lake, which was another 2 or 3 miles away and another 800 feet of gain. I was so full and sleepy after eating. Daveed agreed and we camped where we were for the night.

The meadow at Sunrise High Sierra Camp, with views of Cathedral and Echo Peaks

"Laundry"

We heard the dinner bell ring for the campers who were staying at the staffed and very expensive Sunrise High Sierra Camp. Imagine that! Dinner served to you. Wow! All supplies are packed in daily via pack mule trains, all garbage is packed out daily via pack mule trains. A strange concept to me. But I suppose as long as people continue to pay for it, they'll continue to do it. At any rate, I appreciated the water spigot and was very psyched on the pit toilet!

Pack mule train passing us on the trail

Camp at Sunrise High Sierra Camp, elevation 9300 ft