11,249 feet. Not ninety minutes ago, it had basked in the first rays of morning light before anywhere else, the sun spilling down from Mount Hood’s summit until it wakened the glaciers and, eventually, the forests below. Towering some 6,000 feet into the dizzyingly empty space above our heads, it’s a height difference that human minds aren’t fully equipped to understand. Judging with only your eyes, it might as well be 60,000 feet.
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Ghosts of the Columbia
Close your eyes and picture the Pacific Northwest. Tell me what you see. Gray skies? An unshakeable mist? Maybe bright green sword ferns, super-sized trees, and fountains of Starbucks coffee on every Seattle street corner?
Tumanguya
The buzzing on my wrist comes as no surprise. In those brief moments drifting in limbo between asleep and awake, I struggle to register what exactly it is floating above my head. Beyond the soft armor of mosquito mesh surrounding me, and through the tarp stretched taut above, an amorphous shape of white bends into unrecognizable shapes and patterns, like sunlight seen from beneath the surface of water.
The Second Time Around
As with most evenings on this trail, I am cozy in my hammock before 8:00pm. Sweet Pea would be proud. This is the second time I’m doing this hike (the first time was in 2015). And with each passing mile, I can’t help but think how little has changed and how much has changed, all at the same time.
The Glacier and the Avalanche
It’s easy to love John Muir, or at least the idea of him. That’s the appeal of idealists. Soaring rhetoric and a righteous cause in the proper hands can bring a groundswell of change that compounds like an avalanche. But it is a rare idealist who is able to effect change in the world. John Muir was certainly one of them.
The Golden Staircase
The confluence of two creeks, a mere stone’s throw from our proverbial bedroom window, seemed not to care that morning had broken. Nature’s white noise machine chugged along, ignorant of day and time. The alarm on my wrist was more particular about exactly what time it was, and its buzzing was as inescapable as the reality it brought with it. Everything ahead of us was in one and only one direction: up.
Uncharted Territory
To wake with the realization that you’re not on the trail you’re supposed to be, might normally be cause for alarm. But in this case, it was by design.
A Tale of Two Winters
The Sierra Nevada—literally, “the snowy mountains”—has recently begun to challenge its very name. In the past twenty years or more, the cyclical nature of snow and sun in these mountains has become anything but cyclical.
Troubled Horizon
When dawn broke, it started by touching only the tops of the mountains surrounding our camp, before spilling down the flanks of granite to where we lie in our hammocks. It was nature opening the blinds.
A Banner Day
From our perch on a hidden bench above the trail, the same soundtrack that had lulled us to sleep was now the first to greet us. There’s something a little comforting about it. That while you’ve been asleep, the gears of nature have kept turning, almost completely unchanged. That everything is, by all appearances, exactly the way you’d left it the day before.
The Other Side of Yosemite
The Sierra must be seen to be fully believed. And Yosemite is the beating heart of that Sierra. Of the more than 4 million annual visitors to Yosemite National Park, the vast majority never leave Yosemite Valley, however. With highlights known the world over—El Capitan, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, Glacier Point—you can hardly blame them.
Out of the Cathedral
There was no way around it. This was gonna hurt. For a trail that runs 211 miles, ending on the summit of the highest point in the Continental U.S., you don’t expect the first day to be the one with the longest and largest climb. And yet, that’s exactly how the John Muir Trail introduces you to the scenery of the High Sierra: by exacting a pound of flesh.
On the Trail with Ulysses
Writing, like sleep, has never come easily to me. There’s a restlessness to it. Perhaps, because the search for the right words is a struggle that haunts every writer—the burden of imperfect communication. Then again, perhaps it’s because nearly all of my writing happens in the unlikeliest of places…
The Residentially Challenged Life
Ever since June 2020, when Mountain Man and I embarked on our hike of the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) we have been what some may call “location independent,” “nomadic”, “wanderers”, or even “homeless.”
We prefer to call ourselves “residentially challenged.”
Adventure Consulting
What is ”adventure consulting”? At Stone and Sky, it encompasses 3 things: People on the trail and readers of the Stone and Sky blog may know me best as ”Mountain Man”, due to more than 10,000 miles of hiking experience on long-distance trails alone. The other sides of me you might know less about? Writer....
Shortcuts in the Wild
Automation is having, shall we say, a moment. Spreading its tendrils through our lives everywhere from our homes to our cars and to the supercomputers disguised as smartphones stashed in our pockets, its promises are many. More efficiency, less time wasted on the perfunctory tasks of daily routines, and more focus on the things that really matter.
Mercury Rising
I told myself to file away the morning’s chill into my memory bank for safe keeping. Like a mental block of ice, I had a feeling I would soon be in need of opening the mental freezer to find some measure of relief from the oven we’d soon be descending into.
Saguaro
The flames dance and flicker to the music of a barely perceptible breeze floating down through the Ponderosa pines. Daylight fades, and the red embers pulse and shimmer.
Wilderness of Rock
I didn’t remember having gone to sleep in the Sierra, but after rubbing the sleep both from my eyes and from my legs it sure seemed like that’s where I’d woken up. Scattered pines, lumps of stone, a trickling stream. It even had the blackened char of a recent burn clinging to the bark of surviving trees.
Sky Island
When she pulled up in her 30-year-old pickup truck, honking jubilantly as she did, I had a feeling we were in for quite a time on our resupply stopover. DD, our trail angel host for the rest of the day and night, was a spitfire force of nature. Alternately with a joint, chewing tobbaco, or a beer in her mouth—sometimes all three…
The Upside of a Pandemic
Every trail has days like today. Hell, the last 4 days. The rest of life is no different. In between the few snapshots worthy of putting on display for anyone who might care to see them, the real work takes place. Quiet. Sweat. Fatigue. Pain. Frustration. Elation. A thousand other qualities, none of which anyone gets to see but us.
Oasis
My mind floats an inch or two just above where my head is. Almost imperceptibly detached from the rest of me, it examines the trail that is about to pass beneath me. It imagines what a passerby might see if they look at me in this moment. Eyes glazed over with concentration. Sweat and salt caked to my shirt.
Nadir
Along with two other hikers, we rode along in the car of trail angel MJ, watching the comforts of Superior shrink out the back window on our way back to the trail. Another zero day gone in the blink of an eye, it was back to the work of shrinking the distance between us and Mexico.
Superstition
The last time I looked up at the sky, it was filled with nothing but stars. By the middle of the night, those same stars were nowhere to be found, as though they might never have been there at all. Was I dreaming?
Pit Stop
Strange. I don’t remember there being rocks under me. In the trance-like state between dreaming and waking, not a whole lot makes sense. Yet, as the dust from my recent slumber settled, it was starting to making quite a lot of sense. I just didn’t like what it added up to.
Desert Fire
Your eyes are not your friend. Well, part of them anyway. The eyes that soak in every shade of the flames of sunrise emanating from the eastern horizon and illuminating Roosevelt Lake far below? That part is telling you the truth. The other part that tells you that lake—the destination of our next resupply tomorrow—doesn’t look so far away? That’s the lying part.
In Search of Sameness
The stars hang motionless, quiet, flecks of salt on an endless piece of black construction paper stretched above our heads. The crickets, less quietly, perform their discordant symphony from a score known only to them. The distant hum of a plane’s jet engine racing across the sky begins as a dull thud, builds to a roar, and disappears behind the mountain.
Resistance
Aside from our plunge into the depths of the Grand Canyon and our subsequent reemergence, the trail since Utah has been largely devoid of any significant climbing—until today. In the first minutes after leaving our camp at the base of a climb, any pretense that our legs might have been under about the leisure with which we’d stroll our way to Mexico had vanished.
Mirage
Deep in the heart of the world’s largest ponderosa pine forest is not the place one might typically think of evoking imagery of the ocean. In every direction, a uniform pattern of trunks and canopies extends toward all points of the compass in such a way that it’s difficult to imagine the forest ever coming to an end. The trail snakes its way through a labyrinth of sameness that makes it feel almost disorienting.
Aspen
Some things—most things—are more than they seem. Hiding in plain sight, things we often attribute a hasty label to and understanding of harbor qualities that make them exceptional. Worthy of greater attention. Of greater appreciation. It’s as true of things as it is of people.
The Grand Staircase
One hundred miles north, far from the banks of the Bright Angel Creek on which we slept, Bryce Canyon National Park sits at the top of a geological feature few will notice. Known as The Grand Staircase, layer upon layer of sedimentary rock stretches from the high elevations of Bryce Canyon all the way to bottom of the Grand Canyon, telling the story of 600 million years of the planet’s history.
History Book
When you take your first step off the North Rim and onto the North Kaibab Trail, it is your first step into a different world. Gone are the ponderosa pine, traded for pinyons and eventually catclaw acacia, yucca, and all manner of cacti. The white Kaibab limestone yields to red sandstone which gives way to band upon band of other rock formations of varying colors and textures.
Flash
I can see the flash through my eyelids. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand....boom. From our snug little tent tucked into the trees it went on like this for an hour as I tracked the movement of the storm without so much as opening an eye, counting from lightning to thunder as it approached, passed above us, and then receded into the distance.
Border Eve
Truth be told, I’m running out of superlatives. Another day, another pass, another dazzling display of mountain pornography that almost defies description. Before we even began any of the hard work of climbing our way back into the high country, I had to rub my eyes to make sure I was seeing accurately the massive shape nestled in the grass 50 yards off the trail.
Garden Wall
Mace said it best when we had reached the crest of Piegan Pass, some 3,000 feet higher than where we’d left our camp this morning, saying: “This is why I do this. It’s places like this that get burned into your mind.” He couldn’t have been more right.
Triple Divide
Well, this is awkward, and frankly, it was bound to happen. Especially here. Just as in places like the Wind River Range, there’s hardly anything I can say about the experience of the scenery found in Glacier National Park that photos can’t already tell you. Under a sky swept clean of yesterday’s gray clouds, a deep blue backdrop conveniently arrived to make those photos all the more stunning.
Hidden Masterpiece
A person could get used to this, even in spite of the weather. The familiar pitter-patter on the roof of our tent at 4am sounded hesitant, almost apologetic, as though it knew that the clouds it brought with it would obscure nature’s masterpiece. The masterpiece we’d so looked forward to seeing.
Reunion
It feels like a long time since we’ve had a hiking day like this, absent a place to be and a schedule to keep. In truth, we did have somewhere to be but with only 11 miles of sweet, sweet National Park trail between there and here, it felt about as leisurely as things ever get out here.
A Long Trail Yelp Review
Let me start by saying I am happy to have hiked the Long Trail, grateful my feet held up, and that we both finished the trail injury-free. But (there is always a but), the Long Trail’s Yelp review will only get 3 out of 5 stars. It is highly recommended for hikers who like mud, roots, walking in trees and humidity.
Pancake Power
Pancake Power is serious power. Just ask Gazelle. She’ll tell ya. My little Canadian friend and fellow lover of pancakes would have approved of the way this day began, with coffee, eggs, sausage, and the most divine blueberry pancakes courtesy of our hosts at Nye’s Green Valley Farm B&B.