John Muir Trail

Backpack, California, EasternSierras, Murica

John Muir Trail - Part IV

We hiked the JMT Northbound starting at Cottonwood Pass and finishing at Happy Isles over 19 days with 1 day for resupply from Onion Valley.

See here for Part I.

See here for Part II.
See here for Part III.

Day 16 - Red's meadow to Garnet Lake

This day promised a lot of uphill, and I started quite early. I ended up on the path I didn't intend to get onto, the ones that goes through devil's postpile, but nevertheless I wasn't off trail. I quickly started going uphill towards Garnet lake. I had another unfortunate incident of one leg getting wet in the river by stepping onto an unstable log. Nevertheless, the trail was quite nice and I was enjoying going through the forest. We stopped at a small lake to eat lunch, and then again at Rosalie lake to admire the beauty. A short set of switchbacks brought us down to Shadow lake. From shadow lake it was a steady uphill to Garnet lake. After enjoying views of the Minarets, and Mt. Ritter and Banner from multiple places, PJ took off and I kept crawling towards the destination for the day. Although I had been to Garnet lake before, the moment I saw the lake I got really confused because I thought I had reached Thousand Island lake. Nevertheless, I kept moving and finally after a long time made my way onto our campsite. After cleaning up and having dinner, we enjoyed the views of Banner from our tent, played some cards and turned in for the night.

Devil's Postpile

Gladys Lake

Rosalie Lake

Shadow Lake

The Minarets

Garnet Lake

Day 17 - Garnet Lake to Lyell Canyon

This was going to be another long day, with two passes to cross and finally getting into Yosemite. I left early again, and quickly reached Thousand Island lake. Even though I've been there before, this had to be one of the prettiest sights on the trail. I stopped to take the vistas in, and saw PJ walking up with Gummy Bear! He had hiked out of Bishop pass after taking a fall before LeConte Canyon and he started hiking back up again from Agnews Meadow. We hiked to Island pass together, enjoying the fabulous wild flowers and the little lakes around. After that we quickly descended and crossed Rush creek and started the approach towards Donahue pass. This was one of the prettiest approaches, full of wildflowers, lakes and mountains ahead. After crawling for a few hours, I finally made it up the pass and was excited to reach Yosemite. We took a lunch break and left after seeing the storms clouds coming in. After descending for a few hours, the rain starting pouring on us. Rain turned into hail, and it became very cold. The little creeks that would have been trivial to cross now became flooded, and deep. We kept going because it was all steep downhill and there was no way we could have setup camp in the rain. We crossed several knee deep creeks, walking carefully as to not slip. After walking a couple hours in the storm, we finally reached the canyon and the rain let up a bit. However, we reached a creek which was thigh deep the first step in, and I didn't feel comfortable crossing it. We walked back to a place we had identified as a potential campsite, and tried to setup our tent as quickly as possible without getting it wet inside. We were both soaking from hip down as we only had thin plastic rain covers, and no rain pants and our hands were freezing. Our shoes and socks were soaking wet. Thankfully our packs were dry. We changed into dry clothes, setup our sleeping pad and mat, and decided to eat dry snacks for dinner since we only had enough water to drink and no clean water sources around. However, the desire to drink soup to warm drove PJ to filter some water, and we had two steaming hot cups of soup. After checking up on the Japanese couple, who were camping next to us, to make sure they were ok, we settled in for the night pondering over the character building type of day we had, what an adventure!

Garnet Lake - with Mt. Ritter and Mt. Banner

Thousand Island Lake

Panorama of Thousand Island lake

Enroute Island Pass

An inquisitive marmot enroute Donahue Pass

Panorama of Donahue Pass

Stormy view of Mt. Lyell

Lyell Canyon after a massive hailstorm

Day 18 - Lyell Canyon to Upper Cathedral Lake

We woke up the next day to a beautiful looking canyon, with clouds coming inside it and making it look magical. While having breakfast, we saw one of the folks who we've been crossing paths with, Rob, walking on the trail. He was doing the JMT with his wife and another friend, and we were wondering where they were the night before as we hadn't seen them. Turns out they had camped before the storm hit and they were well for the most past. They did have to move one of their tents in the rain since it was in the way of rain water. We were already a few miles behind our schedule, so we moved quickly. The trail through the canyon is flat and mellow, and we moved quickly. However, it was 10 miles just to get to Tuloumne meadows, and I was exhausted by the time we reached there. I considered calling it quits here and taking the bus down to the valley, but a double cheese burger cheered me up. We met up with Rob and Gummy bear and chatted with them over lunch. We had originally planned to go till Sunrise High Sierra camp, but decided to make camp at Cathedral lakes. It took me another couple hours to go from Tuloumne Meadows to Cathedral lakes. This was the first time we saw smoke from the Ferguson fire. It lit the sky pink which made it look beautiful. I relaxed by the lake for a bit, before spending the last night on the trail.

Lyell Canyon at dawn

Lyell Canyon

They should probably just call this Lyell Meadows

Cathedral Lake glowing in the smoke from the Ferguson Fire

Day 19 - Upper Cathedral lake to Happy Isles

This was going to be our longest mileage day, and I left quickly after breakfast. I made good pace and reached Sunrise High Sierra camp where I waited for PJ to join it. It was mostly downhill from there, and I whined on whatever little uphills we had to do. We soon came onto a view of the valley, with a view of half dome. There was a huge burnt area that we walked through. Soon we reached the half dome trail intersection, and we continued moving down the (now brutal) downhill. We kept taking little breaks, and drinking lots of water. We stopped briefly on top of Nevada falls and decided to continue on JMT and not the Mist Trail. In hindsight, not sure if that was wise. JMT from Nevada falls has these 2 inch steps cut into the rock, which when combined with sand, makes them very slippery. That made me afraid of falling and consequently I took longer than expected for the last 2 miles. I was glad to hit the road at the Vernal falls bridge since I could again walk at a regular pace. Soon we reached the sign at the beginning of the Mist trail, which I'd been looking forward to and dreaming of for the last couple hours, signifying the end of JMT and our adventure.

What a journey, I couldn't believe I had actually thru hiked JMT, I didn't know I had it in me! We caught the bus to the visitor center and changed into clean clothes we had left in the car. We stopped briefly at the Merced river to clean up and started our drive back home. Craving some normal food, we stopped at an Indian restaurant in Manteca, and came back home by 10.30 p.m. I showered for an hour, cleaning the grime off and did what I was most looking forward to, sleeping in my own bed and dreaming about the adventure we had just had!