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JMT 2007 Page Two
"Starting to think trip plan is too ambitious..."
My trip plan for Day Three had me starting south of Donohue Pass, going over Island Pass, and then ending up in the Vicinity of Red's Meadow. Since I had camped north of Donohue Pass, I was obviously still a bit behind on my trip plan. Looking at my slip of paper which showed the topographical ups-and-downs of the Muir Trail, I could see that I was in for some ups and downs today:
But looking at my detailed maps, it was even more up & downy: from 10,300 up to 11,000, down to 9,600, up to 10,200, down to 9,800, up to 10,100, down to 9,700, up to 10,100, down to 8,700, up to 9,600, and down to 7,700; yep, I was in for a roller-coaster sort of day.
I got to the top of Donohue Pass and listened for a bit to a couple of hikers on a five-day loop, who were in turn talking to a Pacific Crest Trail hiker. I noticed that we were all pretty dirty, especially on our legs, due to the dusty trails. The PCT guy had a button on his hat which proclaimed he was "Temporarily Out of Order", which I presumed was probably his trail name. The PCT folks have their own strange little sub-culture, and one of their identifiers is that they mostly don't refer to themselves by their given names but by some sort of descriptor given to them by other PCT hikers: Quake, Metro-Gnome, Avalanche, etc.
The south side of Donohue Pass was treeless and granitic and from a distance not too appealing. But up close there were actually a lot of pretty little streams, busy little mammals, numerous butterflies, and lots of flowers. I found lupine and columbine and paintbrush to be the most numerous blooms. The paintbrush, Castilleia pinetorum I think, were a bit different than I was used to seeing further to the south, with prominent yellow accents.
Coming over the gentle rise of Island Pass, I could now see the bulk of Banner Peak and Mount Ritter looming up to the southwest. I hiked along and admired their remnant glaciers and snowfields.
After not too much more walking, I was on the approach to Thousand Island Lake, which surely must have one of the most mellifluous names of any Sierra lake. It did indeed have a LOT of islands:
I'd seen many descriptions about this region, but still there were surprises and new things to admire. One of the most intriguing to me was the geology; the Ritter Range off to the west was an obvious example of an accreted terrane, with its black rocks on top of the lighter Sierra granite. But as I approached the outlet of Thousand Island Lake, a truly enormous pair of dikes hove into view. It was hard for me to imagine how those dikes could have formed, but there they were. Very very cool. And already a mental tendency which would see fuller expression in the days ahead was peeping through: seeing a natural feature and making a pun or wordplay about it. I imagined shouting out "My God, look at those two Enormous Dikes!" and being reprimanded by my other self who would say something like "You know, it's probably more polite to call them "plus-sized lesbians"", with the rejoinder being "Not dykes, you fool, DIKES!" (No disrespect intended, by the way; I'm just one of those people who gets great amusement out of two such disparate things as intrusive rock formations and a specific sexual proclivity having effectively the same name...)
Somewhere I'd read that the crossing of the outlet of Thousand Island Lake could be a bit sporting. In fact, on training hikes taken in the previous months I'd sought out stream crossings which would (and did) challenge me. This crossing was a complete non-challenge, though, with a truly great log crossing. I found along the way that when in National Forest areas the stream crossings were all ingeniously and elegantly dealt with. National Park areas tended to be a bit less "improved" but still in general were quite safe and convenient. No complaints from me; I love appropriate technology.
After the log bridge crossing the number of hikers again dwindled, as the PCT branches off to the east where it intersects a variety of other trails while the Muir Trail takes a more isolated direction. In short order I passed by Emerald and Ruby lakes and made my way down to Garnet Lake, a lovely smaller version of 1000 Is. Lake. I gratefully pulled off my shoes, filled my water bladder, and soaked my feet.
The trail led upwards once again. I was finding that my technique of munching on trail mix as I walked that had worked so well on my training hikes was not agreeing with me on this trip. Was it the heat, or the extra pounds of my pack, or something else? In any case, trying to choke down trail mix became increasingly nauseating until I finally just gave it a rest.
By a bit after 4 PM I was soaking my feet in another lake, Shadow Lake this time. I was wondering how far I'd be able to go. Up again I went, passing by Rosalie and Gladys Lakes, which were both quite lovely if a bit too blessed with mosquitoes. My body was saying "Camp? Camp?" as the shadows grew longer. I looked at the map: seven or eight miles to Red's Meadow and it was already about 6 PM. My feet were on fire, with a 2000-foot descent ahead of me. "Push on", I decided, figuring I'd hike until around sunset and see where that put me. Change socks; rub feet; pack on left shoulder; pack on right shoulder; hip-belt off; hip-belt on; stick in left hand; stick in belt. Hey, take a photo:
Cadence: faster! Stride: longer! And as the light dwindled, I came to the intersection of the Minaret Lake trail at Johnston Meadow, walked straight ahead about 100 feet, and said "Enough!" Perfect campsite, no one else there. From my trail journal: brief note only. Feet running pretty hot, having to stop often to change socks and even that seemed not to help too much. Hiked from 7:15 to about 8 (eek!) and am at Johnston Meadow. Not easy to eat food while hiking, everything a bit nauseating. Lots of pretty country today, see pictures. Starting to think trip plan is too ambitious, but wait and see. Can always bail to Onion Valley, I suppose. Now to sleep.
The next morning, July 7, dawned clear and warm. I was about 3.6 miles behind my trip plan now, so I had made up a bit of time the previous 20-mile day. I thought there might be cell-phone coverage ahead, so got out my $19 Trac-Phone (didn't know that Target sold electronic hiker's aids, did you?) and turned it on. A mile or so down the trail "Eep-Eep!" and I had cell coverage. I talked to my spouse while violating my personal rule of never being in-motion when talking on the phone, telling her I was falling a bit behind on my trip plan. I didn't tell her that to get back on-plan that day, I was attempting to hike about 26 miles.
Once again I was within earshot of motor vehicles. To my surprise, when I came to a boundary sign for Devil's Postpile National Monument I learned that camping anywhere except in improved campgrounds within the Monument was prohibited, so if I had pushed on further the previous evening I would have been in the uncomfortable position of having to "outlaw camp." And though the Muir Trail went right down the center of the Monument, I did not see any of the formations after which it is named; I guess the trail builders wanted a different and more isolated experience along this stretch of trail, most of which had recently been burned over, adding to the isolated feel.
I followed the trail down to the crossing of the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River, spanned by a truly magnificent artfully-crafted wooden bridge. Now close to road-ends and the Red's Meadow pack station, the trails were really-really dusty. I hopped off the trail at the approach of several people riding horses and mules; the lead horse stopped and checked me out for a bit and then began to amble on, with the rest of the four-leggers carrying their two-legged burdens following behind. I was marveling at how much DUST the whole progression was generating when one of the riders gagged and shouted out "Oh, GOD, I think my horse just FARTED!" And in a moment, indeed, there was a powerful stench in the air, mixed in with the haze of dust and the cloud of blood-sucking insects which seem always to accompany large pack animals in the Sierra. Really, I thought, for the benefit of not having to move your legs, you trade dust and stink and autonomy of movement, not to mention that if you're not used to riding horses it's kind of uncomfortable just lurching around up there. Didn't seem like a good trade to me.
A trail junction promised a nearby parking lot; I scampered off the JMT, hoping to find a place to discard my trash. Sure enough, there was a big trash receptacle with both trash and recycle options. Cool, now my pack must be, hmmm, let's take a look, well, maybe three ounces lighter. I used the outhouse ("Wow, a smelly HOLE to pee in; now this is CIVILIZATION!"), took a drink of water from the drinking fountain, then got back on the JMT headed south.
Climbing up from Red's Meadow, the trail went through a multi-mile stretch where a crown fire had taken out the forest. Though there were a large number of dead snags still standing, the surroundings were actually not so bad, with lots of restorative growth going on and a fair number of little springs with accompanying streamside vegetation. Too bad that the area had had all fires suppressed until it all got blown away, but this pattern is unfortunately fairly widespread in the American West. When I was growing up, there would always be a display at the County Fair in Tulare featuring a truly hideous fiberglass rendition of that noted cartoon bear, Smokey, which would turn its head, swivel its jaw (or so I think I remember, anyway), and admonish all within earshot in a slurred and drunken-sounding voice: "Rumumbrrr, only YOUUUU can purvunt Forest Fires!" Liar; what about lightning? Our hundred-or-so year experiment in fire suppression led to an unstable situation where fires, once they inevitably start, take out the entire forest rather than just burning up the weedy undergrowth and leaving the mature trees mostly unharmed. Native Americans would light fires before the undergrowth built up too much, which helped the forest stay healthy, and also hunted the various animals like deer and bear which helped to keep the animal populations vigorous and in balance; at least that was the net result of their actions (they didn't necessarily light fires and hunt animals as an expression of environmental policy or intent.) We European latecomers seem to be learning, albeit a bit tardily, that burning the forest (and letting fires burn when they start) is a necessary part of being good stewards of the land. Unfortunately, the forests have a head-start on us that will take a long time to catch up with. And in the increasing problems with deer overpopulation and "problem bears" breaking into cars or otherwise being obnoxious, there is an animal analog. Just as you don't preserve a priceless painting by hanging it on a wall and then letting it slowly disintegrate, but instead very carefully control the environment where it hangs while periodically having experts clean, refresh, and renew the painting, so too do we need to view our lands, both flora and fauna, as something to be actively maintained and renewed rather than just benignly neglected.
Now back in mature forest, I climbed past a string of volcanic spatter cones, somewhat unimaginatively but accurately called the Red Cones. Another new thing came onto the scene, too: increasingly-numerous blackflies. These little buggers didn't have the surgical elegance of mosquitoes with their hypodermic-like mouthparts; no, these pesky flies would land on bare skin, pertly tilt their tail in the air while lowering their mouthparts to skin level, and take a chunk of flesh out, leaving behind a millimeter-sized bloody crater. Yee-OUCH! Still, from the evolutionary viewpoint they were fascinating to me, in that they were so obviously selected to seek out the dark tops of moving/alive things... and bite them. They really loved to land on the top of the black wrist-strap of my walking stick, and definitely were attracted to my upraised knees when I was changing socks. I found, too, that when walking along I could hold my walking stick horizontally and multiple flies would land on the dorsal surface of the handle, proceeding to tilt and probe for yummy flesh. DEET seemed to only annoy them slightly, perhaps preventing them from biting quite so quickly. They could fly at a higher airspeed than mosquitoes, too, so walking faster didn't really serve to leave very many behind. Some of them even figured out ("Yee-OUCH!" again) that they could bite my scalp through the air vents in my hat if I wore my hat too snugly on my head. "Gentle Wilderness", indeed... Hmmmf. These little pests would be a feature of the next couple of trail-days and then would blessedly diminish and be gone altogether for the remainder of the trip.
The blackflies at least were a bit of a diversion from what was a relatively un-noteworthy part of the trail, contouring along the top of a ridge for miles and miles. Occasional vistas opened up to the south and east. It seemed like there was a haze/smoke layer east of the Sierra Crest that grew more prominent as the day wore on. Walk, walk, swat. Sip some water. Take another photo. Again I journeyed into The Land of The Long Shadows. My goal of making it over Silver Pass that day was obviously unachievable, with it still some seven miles away only an hour and a half before sunset; the mantra of "get as far as I get" rattled in my head.
Seven PM saw me in the vicinity of Lake Virginia, a very pretty setting with a few hikers making their camps. It's always amusing to me to watch tired (or, on the morning cusp, sleepy) hikers in camp unaware of being observed. They'll stand stock-still seemingly for minutes looking into their pack, or listlessly lounging by their half-erected tent. I had to assume that someone watching me at the end of the day would see the same behavior, though it never felt like I was just standing around but was always Busy with Something.
The Earth kept on rotating, unconcerned whether I'd get to a campsite before dark or not. It seemed like Tully Hole (not a place you'd want to say you were from, I thought) was achievable. Cadence: faster! Stride: longer! Hey, wasn't this a repeat of yesterday? With the last glimmers of alpenglow on the high peaks, I got to the Hole (quite a lovely place, despite the name) and walked right to the nicest campsite. Once again, there was nobody else in sight. From my journal: another short entry. Camped at Tully Hole, which puts me 6.1 miles behind my trip plan. Started at 7, arrived at 8. Looks like the trip will only work as planned if I kick into high gear (not sure there's any left) or start getting up sooner, or both. All in all a very good day today, wearing fewer socks helps with the feet, but still getting a lot of back pain (middle right). Lots of views, lots of dust. Many many blackflies starting near Red Cones up to just short of Purple Lake. Sleepy now, dinner appetite is a bit better but on-trail appetite about the same, choking things down. 41 degrees last night. Seemed to be diffuse smoke to north and east this evening, few clouds today but some blessed breezes.
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