Offtopic: John Muir Trail...and Weight

It is the last day before the July 4 break—Cadence is off on July 2 and 5, and I'm taking a day off on 6th too—so as is traditional before a break, I go off-topic. Before Memorial Day, I wrote about Kilimanjaro in my post "Pole Pole" to the Top of Kilimanjaro. I also mentioned that I'd been to the top of Mount Whitney, the highest point the lower 48 states, where the John Muir Trail officially terminates. For all practical purposes, it actually terminates at Whitney Portal where the car parks are.

The John Muir Trail

By the way, John Muir was born in Dunbar, famous these days for Belhaven. It is logically south of Edinburgh, but the way the coastline goes around there, it is actually due east of Edinburgh. Since I lived in Edinburgh for nearly seven years, I've visited it several times. The house is now a museum. He died in Los Angeles (I've been there, too!).

The JMT, as it is usually known, is 213 miles long. It is about 46,000' of ascent in the direction we did it. It is actually different in the two directions since Mount Whitney is just over 14,000 feet and Yosemite Valley is 4000'. We actually met the person who held the then-record for doing the trail. Due to the difference in altitudes, record attempts start from the top of Mount Whitney and go North. The record is now under three days! However, most recreational hikers do it north to south. Here's the profile of the trail:

I did the JMT in the early 2000s with my then-girlfriend. Because I couldn't get two weeks off, working for a startup at the time, we actually did it in two separate weeks in two separate summers. The first year we did Tuolomne Meadows and then came out over Bishop Pass. The second year we went back in at Bishop Pass and hiked to Mount Whitney. We had already done Tuolomne Meadows (actually Tanaya Lake) to Yosemite (over both Clouds' Rest and Half Dome) so we didn't feel the need to slog up to Tuolomne from Yosemite Valley past scenery that we'd already seen.

But a lot of the scenery we had never seen was stunning. Doing the trail is a spiritual experience as well as a physical one. In the middle of the trail is the most isolated point, when you are more than a day or two from any trailhead so the only people you meet are doing the trail. You forget what day of the week it is on the trail, so it is a surprise to discover it is a weekend, you are near a trailhead, and suddenly there are crowds of people around. That middle section, near Evolution Lake and John Muir Pass is one of the most beautiful, not least because you get a feeling of solitude. If someone camps close enough that you can hear them, it feels like your privacy is being invaded.

Here's is a picture to give you some idea of the grandeur of the trail. I actually have no idea precisely where this is, I think coming down from Seldon Pass.

Equipment

Rather than give you an illustrated travelogue, since we are all techies here, let me tell you a bit about hiking technology today. The days of carrying 50 pound rucksacks and wearing 10 pound boots are long in the past. In the late 1990s, there was a revolution in both equipment and attitude to weight. People would cut the labels out of their clothes and the handles off their toothbrushes to save weight. We never went that far. But here is some advice on the most important stuff. To give you an idea of how low you can go: without food or water, my pack weighed less than ten pounds.

Bear Barrel, Food, and Water

You need a bear barrel to keep your food in so that the bears do not steal it. The old plastic ones are too heavy. Get one of the hi-tech ones made out of carbon fiber and aircraft aluminum. It will be both lighter and holds more. The way it works is that the lid you can see in the picture goes on top, and with a coin you turn the screws to lock the lid on. The bears cannot get in, and they won't bother trying since they know they cannot get in.

For food, you are going to eat dehydrated food. We had a sort of granola pre-mixed with milk powder for breakfast every day, with instant coffee. Commercial dehydrated meals for lunch and dinner. Don't believe the "portion count" on them though, since they are based on a normal 2,000 calorie per day number since the government won't allow anything else. You will be consuming at least twice that if you are hiking 16-22 miles per day. One trick is to take a bottle of olive oil. Oil is 9 calories per gram versus ~5 calories per gram for dehydrated food...and it will make the food taste a lot better. You cannot get away with less than about 1.5 pounds of food per day. That means you can't carry all the food you will need for the whole trail, and it wouldn't fit in your bear barrels anyway, even if you wanted to carry ~30 pounds of food. We were doing a week at a time, but if you do the whole trail in one trip, you will need to have a plan for how to resupply somewhere in the middle.

For water, we used iodine tablets instead of carrying a pump, though I gather these are almost impossible to get hold of anymore. So you probably need to carry a heavier pump. You don't actually need much water on the trail since there are regular streams and lakes. We each had a liter bottle. We also had one of those collapsible really light water bottles to fill up at the last stream before we were going to camp so we had water for cooking and washing, if we were not camping near a lake. Often, due to overuse, you are not allowed to camp right near the lakes.

Clothes

You don't need nearly as much as you think. I took one pair of pants (Weatherpants). One pair of shorts. Two pairs of socks. Two pairs of underwear. Two shirts. A hat. A fleece jacket. A Patagonia padded waistcoat that is far too hot to wear except sitting around in camp.One sun hat and one warm hat. I had a pair of marathon running shoes (10oz) but most of the time I hiked in Teva sandals, which really come into their own crossing the many streams, where you just walk through without having to worry about taking your socks off to keep them dry. And that's it.

Make sure to bring something to use as a washing line so you can hang your clothes up after you wash them.

Rucksack

I used a GoLite rucksack that is basically just a bag made out of parachute material. It has no pockets. The straps are not padded but they do have pockets so you can put your spare socks in for padding The back had no frame nor padding, but it had a slot to put your sleeping pad in. This is a common trick in this equipment approach: don't take two things that are similar like pads, find a way to do both with one.

You can see my pack on the rock in the photo near the end with the umbrella.

Sleeping Bag

You can get a sleeping bag that weighs about two pounds. "But is that warm enough?" is the obvious question. At altitude in the Sierra it tends to be hot during the day and cold at night. So often the answer is "no". But you don't need more padding in your sleeping back, you already have plenty of padding in the form of a fleece and a padded waistcoat. Plus wear the warm hat in bed too. You lose a lot of heat through your head, especially if you are balding. Wear your socks, too.

Tent

We didn't use a tent but slept under a tarpaulin made of light material. We had one hiking pole to use as a tentpole and tied the other end to a tree. The tarp weighed one pound. We were in a huge thunderstorm at guitar lake on our last night on the trail and stayed completely dry.

Cooking Stove

The first year, we used a standard MSR stove you can buy in any outdoor store. The second year, I decided to go full-on light and made us a stove out of two coke cans, with some automotive exhaust sealant. It weighed about an ounce. You pour fuel in through the hold in the middle, and then there is a screw that goes in (that hole is threaded since there is a nut glued inside the stove). You'd think this would be ineffective, but the flame heats up the ring of aluminum around the outside, which heats up the fuel, which pressurizes the whole thing, and you get a hot blast of flame that takes very little time to boil water.

Use a titanium pan (very light) and it just sits on the metal honeycomb that sits inside the ring of the base.

Other Stuff

Take an umbrella/sunshade. Yes, really. If it rains, you will be a lot more comfortable. If it snows, as it did on us, you'll be even more comfortable than you would be without. And when the sun is high and there is no shade, you will not be melting under the heat.

You need a flashlight. But one of those tiny ones designed to go on a keyring is just fine.

For a camera, the first year I had a Canon G3, which was good for its era but heavy. The following year I bought a tiny Minolta camera where the optics was all inside the body and the camera would fit in an Altoids can for protection. It was much lighter of course, and digital camera technology was advancing so fast in that era that, despite its tiny lens, it took better photos. Don't think you can use your smartphone since you have no way to charge it. Of course, there is almost no coverage so you can't use your phone even in an emergency. We took one anyway, since it is useful at the end of the trail.

Getting Between the Trailheads

The JMT is 220 miles long so you are going to have a logistics challenge. My recommendation is to drive to the end of the trail and find a way to get a ride back to the start. That way, when you finish, your car is waiting for you.

The first year, we left our car at Tuolomne Meadows and then did something that almost nobody ever does: we hitchhiked back to our car. The first people who picked us up were having a fishing holiday in some cabins nearby. I thought them most unlikely as candidates to pick up two hitchhikers: a couple with a toddler in a minivan. It turned out he used to do a lot of hiking before he was married. They took us to the cabin, made us ham sandwiches, gave us each a beer, and then later drove us down to Bishop. That was the first non-dehydrated food and the first beer for over a week, so it tasted wonderful.

It only took two more rides to get back to Yosemite. The last people to pick us up were park rangers on their day off. They didn't just drive us to Tuolomne Meadows. They drove us to the backpackers' parking lot right up to my car.

The second year, we did what I recommended above. We left the car at Whitney Portal and I'd found a guy with a truck who picked us up and drove us to the trailhead at Bishop for some relatively modest amount of money. When we were done, we drove to Mammoth Lakes and found a hotel and restaurant. It happened to be German, so we found ourselves eating Wienerschnitzel that night (which, by the way, is nothing whatsoever to do with hot dogs).

Summary

Doing the John Muir Trail will be one of the most memorable experiences of your life. So go and do it. It doesn't require extensive fitness nor mountaineering experience. The equipment required is minimal (especially if you take all the above advice). Here's Evolution Lake, which is too far from any trailhead to see without staying out overnight. Not to mention that at 10,800' it is a long day up the "golden staircase" to get there.

Happy Independence Day

Have a great July 4 weekend! I am is off until Tuesday so Breakfast Bytes will not appear again until Wednesday..

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