Coming Full Circle

In the beginning, before I found rock climbing, skiing and mountaineering, I was into backpacking. That's where it began. In fact, you could say that the backpack was my gateway drug to all those other things. It got me deeper into the woods; further from the pavement; closer to home.

My first backpack, purchased in 1974, was a Kelty Tioga. It was state-of-the art, the cat’s meow: aluminum external frame; fully padded, one-piece waist belt; built to last and carry heavy loads. Some of my fondest memories are from those early ventures into the High Sierra: long-distance excursions where one goes a week without hearing automobiles or other modern-world trappings. Time would slow down. We hiked, ate and slept to the rhythm of the day; traversed lush meadows; shouted out from high passes; swam in alpine lakes; slept under the stars (on the summit of Mt. Whitney, even). But before long, my interests would veer towards climbing and mountaineering where the objective was the almighty ascent. If I went into the mountains, it was to hump a heavy load up to a base camp, climb for a few days, and then haul it back out. Backpacking purely for the sake of backpacking became a thing of the past.  

Until now.

Terry and I had, from time to time, broached the idea of hiking the John Muir Trail, that iconic trek that plies down the spine of the Sierra Nevada range from Yosemite Valley to Mt. Whitney. But it was always idle talk, as in: “Yeah, we definitely need to do it someday.” No serious discussion ever gained traction until last fall, when it was clear that Terry’s knee rehab was on track and full recovery was expected by spring. The timing seemed opportune. Let’s see what that new ACL can do.

I pulled the trigger in January, securing a wilderness permit for July—which was no easy feat. As it turns out, everybody and their uncle wants to hike the JMT these days. The spike in popularity seems to stem in part from Cheryl Strayed’s 2012 bestseller, Wild, and film adaptations of that book and another on Bill Bryson’s A Walk In The Woods. Seemingly overnight, backpacking is vogue. And obtaining a JMT permit is like winning the lottery—a 10% chance if you want to start in Yosemite mid-summer and hike the traditional southbound direction. Which exemplifies some of the new trail lingo we had to learn: southbound hikers are “SOBOs” and northbound are “NOBOs”. We will be NOBOs.

 And so preparations began.

Backpacking sure has changed over the years. Again, new lingo: “ultra-light”; “thru-hiking”; “base weight”. In the Old Days, my pack would weigh 60 pounds for seven days in the Sierras. Nowadays the target weight is half that number. They talk in ounces today, where we wrestled with pounds (the only thing we measured in ounces was how much weed to bring on the trip). Now I know how those Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers can cover 20+ miles per day: they travel light. A recent day hike with our good friends, Mary Jo and Gary, underscored this mantra. They do a lot of backpacking and have done the JMT and sections of the PCT and AT, so we hit them up with all sorts of questions during our jaunt up to Mt. Baden-Powell.

“Your boots and pack are too heavy,” Mary Jo pointed out right away.

This was true. My mountain pack has spare capacity to carry 20 pounds of climbing gear, and my boots are sturdy enough to take crampons if needed—perfect for mountaineering, but not so perfect for three weeks on the JMT. Hence I picked up a new pack and lighter boots, shaving off nearly four pounds. Ter cut her base weight even more. And the quest to shed continues.

Along with the ongoing procurement of gear, we’ve been hitting the trail several times a week with fully-loaded packs to try things out. Ter returned the first pair of boots she bought after trail-testing them on one of our hikes. You can’t walk around an REI store and truly know if the boots fit: you’ve got to put a few miles on them in the hills with a full load on your back. And then there’s the food. The dining room is currently a supply staging area with meals organized and parsed out into segments of the trip. We have three supply buckets to fill and get shipped out before we leave. Our resupply points will be Kearsarge Pass, Muir Trail Ranch and Reds Meadow.

My longest-ever backpacking trip was forty years ago and it was around 10-11 days long. The JMT will be double that. Start to finish, we will hike 215 miles over eight passes of 11,000 feet or higher (Forester is 13,000). But according to Yvonne, another friend and backpacking aficionado: “Once your food re-supplies are squared away, everything else is a walk in the park.” Yep. Many miles of walking. Soon Terry and I will be heading into the woods, where it all started.