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.
Search Results for: sunrise
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.
Up Close
Stars, sunsets, sunrises, distant mountains. This trail has been full of them—atmospheric settings abounding in a land of vast open space. Day after day your eyes are drawn to them, these obvious sights, and yet to focus only on them is to overlook that which is right in front of you.
Not That Patagonia
The rock strewn dirt road we’d arrived at just as dusk cast a pall of gray over the mountainside was more than just a home for the night. It was now our yellow brick road—albeit a less brightly colored one—leading us to a distant town stop that we could not see, an Oz of a far less fantastical sort.
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.
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.
Desert Solitaire
To watch the desert sunrise or sunset is, in some sense, to witness it for the first time. An expanse of land brought to life with color beneath an equally expansive sky, only to have the sunset slowly steal those very same colors in exchange for an ocean of stars. Blackness yielding to layers of gray before deep hues of blue, red and orange bleed away
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.
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.
On the Trail Again
At 6:15am, the sunrise is still just an idea. One that hasn't been born into reality yet. In the dark, I reach out to light the stove for coffee. Atop is a pot that I've pre-filled with water the night before. Through holes in the windscreen below, the blue flame of the stove glows and dances in the subtle breeze, the whole thing taking on the look of a tiny metallic jack-o-lantern.
Destination: Pie Town
Contrary to popular opinion—including my own—it is sometimes very much indeed about the destination, the journey be damned. When the journey is along yet another hot and dusty road for miles on end, it's not hard to see why the old adage might begin to lose some of its shine.
The Checkerboard
The massive expanse we've been walking through these past three days since Atlantic City is an unusual one. Neither forested wilderness nor arable farmland, but an arid and windswept region that pries apart the Continental Divide from nearly the border of Colorado to the foot of the Wind River Range.
The Folly of FKTs
The 100-meter dash is not for the slow-footed. It is the domain of the rocket ships of the human race and the winners are bestowed the title of world’s fastest man or woman. One simple question though: Why?
Wind of Change
As if bemused by the accelerating pace of our hectic lives, the natural rhythm of the world moves ever onward, inexorably slowly, one season slipping into another almost without our notice. It's one of the many small joys of trail life—the rare attentiveness to even subtle changes in the world around us that might otherwise go unnoticed.
A Birthday Ode to Ace
Four years ago, I wrote this post sick to my stomach over a tearful goodbye as Ace went home to our house in Seattle and back to work while I continued on my hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. Rereading it now, I can still feel my insides turning over seeing how broken hearted she was to say goodbye for what we both knew would be a long time.
A History of PUDs
It's the dirtiest of words out here: PUDs. Pointless Ups and Downs. It behooves you not to complain too much when you've signed up of your own volition to walk from one side of the country to the other, but PUDs are like the proverbial thorn in your side, the pebble in your shoe, the tiny thorn entangled deep in the fibers of your sock that you just can't shake…
Rocky Mountain High
The sound was enough to wake me from a dead sleep. The confusion that followed was the kind that comes only when your brain, in its sleep-induced fog, strains to make sense of the unexpected. It was the sound of machinery, but it couldn't be. Not way out here.
The Silence and the Fury
The same chorus of white noise from the brook not 10 feet from our tent that had played us a lullaby last night played us back into consciousness this morning. Leaving our campsite deep within the forest, it was time to make our way up onto a vast plateau and the blast zone that constitutes the entire northern half of the mountain.
Wonderland
“This is the part I hate.” I can still hear him saying it. The smile on his face minutes later, waving goodbye from the front door, is the truly indelible part. The sweeter half of an otherwise bittersweet memory, as Emily and I pulled down the street heading home to Vermont from our Thanksgiving visit. It was the last time I saw him alive.
Liquid Sunshine
Well, it started out promising anyway. Bright stars and the Milky Way had illuminated the night sky as I cinched up the sleeping bag around me last night, and although a layer of clouds had moved into the valley below us by morning, the red flare of the rising sun seemed to be a harbinger of another nice day in the North Cascades.
Stehekin
The snow of yesterday evening and the cold that came with it lingered all through the night, with an occasional new dusting adding to the blanket of white that now clung to everything. By the small hours of the morning, however, the sky was filled with nothing but stars, setting the stage for a beautiful sunrise.
Forward Progress
The old PCT we'd been following since Snoqualmie Pass yesterday came to an end only 6.5 miles into the morning, but not before we'd been treated to seeing the first rays of sun warm the very tips of the summits far above us. The price of this beautifully clear morning was the clear and cold starry sky of the preceding night…
Head Down, Feet Forward
When the lack of phenomenally exciting terrain and pure logistics inevitably collide from time to time, certain trail days become more about doing the miles than anything else. Today was Exhibit A of this collision. But before the clock became our master for the day, we were treated to some beautiful scenery just after sunrise as the shroud of night began to lift from the landscape to our west.
Halfway!
For me, the anticipation of today began to build only a few days ago when I realized that nearing the 1300-mile mark also meant that the halfway point of the trail would follow close behind. It's hard to fathom, really. After all, I can no better comprehend the distance of 100 miles or 500 miles any more than I can 1,325 miles.
Fire and Ice
The morning air was dead calm as I climbed through fields of sun-cupped snow. When I caught up with Beardoh and Sweet Pea, we stopped and listened to an eerie silence--no wind, no voices, no chirping birds. No sound, only light.
Water Report
The Milky Way and all the stars that studded the sky were perfectly clear as I rolled out of my tent at 3:30am, bleary-eyed from another night of little sleep. The scheduled days of the desert--waking before sunrise to beat the heat, resting for hours during the worst of the heat, and moving again in the evening--have begun to exact a toll.
Gazelle
The alarm went off at 3:30am, and with it came a change in plans. After battling a stomach bug for the last three days, Gazelle decided it would be best to rest another day in town before taking her woozy stomach out into the heat. It was a disheartening start to the day…
Farming the Wind
Any day that begins with the promise of real food and a shower at the end of it is a great day and after nearly 400 miles since my last day off in Idyllwild, I'm ready for both. Another early start to beat the heat, we took off one by one in the early morning hours just before sunrise, marching east directly toward another beautiful installment of the waking sun.
Raindrops in the Desert
The 4:30am alarm on my watch came early, but I quickly pulled my gear together and set off just before 5:00. Is it possible to hate the morning but love the sunrise? Minutes down the trail, that was the question I asked Gazelle, sensing that like me she struggled to greet the day at such an hour but enjoyed the soft glow of its pastel beauty.
Into the Wind
Midway through the night, it began. From our protected camp site on the leeward side of the mountain just 20 feet below a small saddle in the ridge, we could hear the wind begin to howl. The wind warning we saw in yesterday's weather report was coming to fruition and it would mean that our plans for the next 24 hours were about to change.
Two weeks
Today marks two weeks on the trail and even so early in the trip it's hard to wrap my mind around all the beautiful sights I've seen and all the wonderful people I've met. Other than the storm north of Mt. Laguna, today also marked the return of something that I'd seldom seen these first two weeks: clouds. Little white puffy ones.
Detour
The day began just before sunrise at 5am, hoping to finish the marathon descent from Mt. San Jacinto and cross the 5 miles of desert before the heat of the day set in. As much as I've never been a morning person (Emily can attest), I love the morning light in the moments that both precede and follow sunrise.
John Muir Trail 2015
An image gallery of photos from the John Muir Trail—the jewel of the High Sierra, running 210-miles from Mt. Whitney to Yosemite Valley. Start Point: Yosemite Valley, CAEnd Point: Mt. Whitney, CATotal Length: 211 miles
Wonderland Trail 2013
An image gallery of photos from the Wonderland Trail, a 91-mile footpath circumnavigating Mount Rainier within Mount Rainier National Park. Start Point: Longmire, WAEnd Point: Longmire, WATotal Length: 93 miles
Lonesome Lake
Spectacular terrain today beginning with an extremely steep descent from the shelter down to Kinsman Notch alongside a continuous cascade the entire way. The day ended with a long and difficult climb and descent over South and North Kinsman as the weather abruptly changed from sun to rain to thunder and back to just plain cloudy. So it is, here in the Whites.
Overmountain
Not much excitement today other than a big climb up and over Roan High Knob, the last big mountain between Erwin, TN and Damascus, VA. Feels good to have it out of the way, especially since it was the toughest climb I've seen on the trail so far, and it's the last time I'll be above 6000' all the way until New Hampshire on Mt. Washington.