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John Muir Trail: The Evening I Almost Quit

Published by Ray Rippel on November 9, 2012 3

john muir trail sierra nevadaThe day I hiked to Rosemarie Meadow was not a particularly strenuous one. It was day eight, so I had already gotten my trail legs. True, I camped the night before near Mono Creek, which meant I had the infamous fifty-two switchbacks, up Bear Ridge, to ascend, but I knocked those off early in the morning while the trail was in the shade. I felt strong all the way up.

Not long after I got to the top of the ridge the terrain actually started to descend. When I began to parallel Bear Creek the trail began another ascent, but a gentle one. There was no good reason for me fail to get to my planned camping spot, a couple of miles past Rosemarie Meadow.

But, when I trudged into the meadow at around 4:00 p.m., I was totally spent. I knew I needed to stop.

As I began to set up camp my head pounded and I was nauseated. I was weak, lethargic and—for the first time on the trail—was not entirely sure I could finish the hike.

The idea of abandoning the thru-hike was devastating, which made me feel even worse. Somehow, I had gotten into a vicious circle, spiraling down to place I did NOT want to go.

I crawled into the sleeping bag well before sunset, and then, inexplicably, awoke about two hours later feeling great! What a miracle.

Except that it wasn’t at all inexplicable or miraculous. I knew exactly what happened.

On the switchbacks, that morning, I had encountered a couple of rabbits—and I don’t mean the kind with big, floppy ears. These two young women looked to be in the early twenties, and they were heading the same direction I was, fast.

On the way up, we kept passing each other. First, they sped by me. Then, just a few minutes later, I passed them as they took a break on the side of the trail. Later, break over, they zipped by again. Then, apparently one of them decided to re-pack her backpack, because I passed them, again.

Here they came a third time, striding past with a friendly, “Hello, again.” Finally, I passed them for the last time as they took a third break, this time sharing what looked like some tasty cheese and crackers.

At that point, I was determined to get to the top of the ridge before they passed me again, and I did. In fact, I never saw them again on the trail. Either they passed while I had stepped off the trail for a moment and I hadn’t noticed, or they went elsewhere.

Psychology on the trail can be funny; why did I suddenly need to stay ahead of them? I have no idea, but by deciding, early, that I was going to step out fast and make time I somehow “programmed” myself for the rest of the day. I skipped breaks, didn’t eat much at lunch, and decided to wait for a couple of hours in the afternoon to refill my water when I ran out. All of those proved to be very bad ideas.

The source of the miraculous recovery, later that evening, was simply the water I drank and the food I ate before going to sleep. It just took my body a couple of hours to absorb the nutrients and liquid.

I learned a lesson that day: while hiking the John Muir Trail your body is an engine, and you have to keep it fueled and lubricated, even if you aren’t particularly hungry or thirsty.

Good hiking, Ray

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John Muir Trail: Taking Care of Your Wheels

Published by Ray Rippel on October 5, 2012 6

A few posts back I discussed hiking footwear. I made the case in that post that choosing the right boot or trail-runner is essential.

But even more important is taking care of what you wrap that footwear around: your feet! Here are ten best practices to keep you blister—and injury—free for the entire thru-hike of the John Muir Trial.

1. Reduce the pressure and wear on the soles of the feet. You do that three ways (in order of importance): reduce your body weight, reduce your pack weight, and use trekking poles.

2. Keep water from streams, puddles, snow, rain and dew off your feet. I know the trail-runner crowd will disagree, but waterproof boots and short gaiters combined with taking your boots and socks off when you cross deep water (and then thoroughly drying your feet afterward) have worked for me, without fail. Carry a pair of waterproof pants to don when it starts raining.

3. Wick sweat away from your feet. A fresh pair of high quality socks (no cotton) each day will help keep your feet dry. I carry two pair so that I can slip a relatively clean set on each morning, after laundering them and drying them on the top of my backpack. Some folks have great success with wearing two pairs: a thin inner sock and a thick outer one.

4. Soak your feet for ten minutes each night in cold water. Fortunately, cold water is seldom difficult to find!

5. Once you’re done for the day, and at lunch, either wear camp shoes or significantly loosen your footwear so that your feet can swell.

6. When you take a break get off your feet! Even better, raise them higher than your rear end for a few minutes.

7. Before rising in the morning, do these two stretches: straighten your legs and bring your toes up (towards your knees) as far as possible and hold. After three sets of these, do the same stretch with your knees bent. This will stretch your Achilles tendon and plantar fascia before you take your first step of the day.

8. Be careful where you step, particularly going downhill. Ankle sprains occur more often when we walk faster—like when we descend. Once again, trekking poles really help.

9. Re-adjust your footwear before you continue on after reaching the top of a pass. For me, that often means tightening the toe box a bit.

10. Factor in the surface when calculating your miles for the day. Long stretches of soft dirt is where you want to step it out. Occasionally, you’ll encounter what appears to be trenches filled with fist-sized rocks; slow down and live to hike another day.

Take care of your feet and they’ll take care of you!

Good hiking, Ray

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John Muir Trail: Down versus Synthetic Sleeping Bags

Published by Ray Rippel on September 21, 2012 4

If you’ve read “Planning Your Thru-Hike of the John Muir Trail”, you know that I recommend hiking later in the season. As I put it in the book:

“The window of opportunity to hike the trail is chronologically bounded on both sides in white, and the white is snow.  The high mountain passes are the problem, and since many of them are over 11,000 feet, it’s not unusual to find substantial accumulations well into July.  If the snows have been particularly heavy the winter before, the passes can be difficult even in early August.  (The year 2011 was just such a year.)

“When the snow begins to melt you’re faced with a couple of different problems: lots of swollen streams, with deep, rapidly flowing water, and an abundance of mosquitoes.

“Unless you are an experienced hiker in these conditions, I strongly recommend against starting your hike early in the summer.

“There is a weather nirvana, however, where the streams flow gently and the mosquitoes are conveniently dead (murdered in their sleep, during nights of near freezing weather).  That place is: September.”

john muir trail, down, backpacking, sierra nevadaThe same cold weather that eliminates those buzzing pests also requires a warmer sleeping bag, particularly if you are a cold sleeper, like I am. Either a down-filled or a synthetic-filled sleeping bag, appropriately rated (for me, that means getting a bag with a rating about 15 degrees lower than I expect to encounter), will keep you warm. So what are the differences?

The differences are these: price, water-resistance, weight and bulk.

Price: down bags are a tad pricey, no doubt about it. You can find them under $100, but a good one that will pack small and keep you warm at Guitar Lake in September will be closer to $200. Want the very best? Marmot has a zero-degree bag that weighs less than three pounds for only $500!

Water-resistance: you would think that a sleeping bag stuffed with fine feathers plucked from the skin of waterfowl would be just what you want in a damp environment. Not true! Down sleeping bags lose almost all of their insulating capabilities when wet, and they take a very long time (and the right conditions) to dry. If you are caught in the rain, far from a bail-out point, and your only way to keep warm is with a wet, down sleeping bag, you are in trouble. I hope you can start a fire in the rain, because hypothermia is not too far away.

During the day, you can keep a down bag dry pretty easily—just put it in a waterproof bag. At night, make sure your tent is properly pitched in order to keep water away from the down.

Synthetic bags won’t keep you comfortably warm if they’re wet, either, but they will keep you alive.

Weight and bulk: besides keeping you comfy while you sleep, the real advantage of down is that it is light, and can be stuffed into impossibly small bags. The down weighs little, and its compressibility is nothing less than amazing. The synthetics are getting better, but still can’t compete on this point alone.

What did I do? I took a down bag (carried in a waterproof bag) and I slept in a tent that was a proven rain-shedder. That strategy worked well, for me. If you are going to try to save a bunch of weight by taking a less weather-resistant tent, or if you intend to sleep under a simple tarp, I wouldn’t run the risk of using down; spend some of that weight you saved on shelter and use it for a synthetic sleeping bag.

Good hiking, Ray

UPDATE: Can you have your cake and eat it, too? Perhaps you can with water-resistant down!

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Hiking Half Dome

Published by Ray Rippel on September 7, 2012 8

One of the decisions you’ll need to make during your John Muir Trail thru-hike is whether or not to take a detour and hike to the top of Half Dome. If you haven’t already decided, here are a few thoughts.

First, a bit in the way of description for those who may not be aware of what is involved. If you’re not an experienced climber, the only way to the top of this most famous Yosemite landmark is via the northeast shoulder of the mountain. Along that route are twin cables, running up the steep granite face, to the flat (and surprisingly large) top of the dome.

Although the cables are installed all year long; they are not “set-up” until the spring. Once the snow accumulation is gone, Rangers suspend them several feet off the ground, on metal stanchions mounted into the granite. Wooden boards are laid across the bottoms of the stanchions to brace against as you climb. The stanchions and boards are removed for the winter, usually sometime in October.

The slope, in places, exceeds sixty degrees. I have never seen a photo that does the true nature of the climb justice. Many people, when they first approach the bottom, turn around and leave—deciding that the incline is a bit more than they had signed up for. (Truthfully, I was almost one of them.)

Gloves (to protect your hands from the cables) and shoes with flat, sticky soles help considerably.

The top is amazing, and, in my opinion, well worth the trouble. One doesn’t often look down on El Capitan, and the views of the valley floor are incredible. Don’t miss the opportunity to get on your belly and scoot to the very edge for the view straight down. (Just make sure that no more than your head is hanging over!)

But should you do it during your John Muir Trail thru-hike?

If it takes a ton of money or travel time for you to get to Yosemite National Park, and you don’t expect to be able to return to the park in the next year or so, go ahead. Scaling the cables is an amazing adventure. It’s scary, but relatively safe, and it provides a tremendous payoff for just half-a-day of delay. (I say it is relatively safe, but there have been a few fatalities over the decades of use. There is little room for error on the cables. Should you slip and let go, the odds are against you.)

I also believe that the cables are the “firefall” of the twenty-first century. (More on the firefall, if you have never heard of it.) In other words, I think the days of the cables are numbered. They have always been a thorn in the side of a certain element within the National Park Service, and in recent years they have instituted a permitting system to regulate access. In short, if you don’t do it when you have the chance, you may not get the chance again, after the government’s mighty thumb rubs out the option to do so.

Should you decide to try, there are a couple of problems of which you should be aware:

  • You will probably have to enter the wilderness on a Little Yosemite Valley permit. Unless you plan on getting up early enough (and are fast enough) to hike to the top of Half Dome, hike back down, and then hike all the way out of Little Yosemite Valley, you will not be able to enter the wilderness on a “pass-through” permit. (There is nothing wrong with entering on a LYV permit, but this means you’ll be competing for a smaller number of permits.)
  • You will need to either haul your entire backpack up the cables, or leave it somewhere in the wilderness. Remember, until you hike past the Half Dome trail, the trail winds through areas frequented by day hikers. Someone may be tempted to pilfer something out of your pack. The more likely and determined thief, however, would be one of the many, many bears that frequent Little Yosemite Valley and have come to associate brightly colored bags with tasty, tasty treats. There is no surer way to end a John Muir Trail thru-hike, on the very first day, than to find your backpack, tent and other supplies ripped apart and littering the spot where you hid it.

One last comment on permits: the current policy, although I could find it written nowhere, is that if you have a wilderness permit to hike the JMT you automatically get a Half Dome permit. Be sure to ask the Ranger when you get your JMT permit, though, to either annotate it on that permit, or to give you a different permit for Half Dome.

Update on the permits to climb Half Dome via the cables (as of April 2013): the NPS has cut the number of permits from 400 per day to 300 per day, and Wilderness Permit holders no longer automatically get to climb it. One must annotate Half Dome on the reservation request, or get it added to a walk-up permit. There are only 75 set aside for WP holders, so there is no guarantee that you will get your permit.

Ultimately, my advice is this: if you can arrange to do the Half Dome hike at another time, skip it during your JMT thru-hike. If this is going to be your only chance, don’t miss it!

Good hiking, Ray

John Muir Trail Sierra Nevada Yosemite

The top of Half Dome is larger than you might imagine!

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Odds & Ends

Published by Ray Rippel on August 3, 2012 4

Cat Bites Man

There has never been a confirmed mountain lion attack anywhere on the John Muir Trail, and there has never been an attack on a sleeping camper anywhere in California. As of early last month, only one of those two records still hold.

On Saturday, June 30th, a 63-year-old solo hiker was camping near a tributary of the Yuba River, where it runs through Nevada County. (This area is more than 150 miles north of the most northern point in the John Muir Trail.) At about 1:00 a.m., the next morning, he was awakened by a mountain lion as it clawed and bit its way into his sleeping bag.

john muir trail

California Fish and Game Photo

The attack went on for nearly two minutes before, inexplicably, the animal stopped. It retreated about fifteen feet, turned to assess the situation and stare down its prey, and left the area.

The hiker was able to self-rescue, and eventually drove himself to the Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital in Grass Valley. His injuries included some nasty lacerations to the head, arms and back.

California Fish and Game Wardens returned to the scene, found the big cat’s tracks and the remains of a domestic cat, but were unable to find the mountain lion, even with specially trained dogs.

For more on the cougar, in general, and how its resurgence in the United States is conflicting with suburbia, I strongly recommend David Baron’s “The Beast in the Garden”.

Sleep well.

The Accidental Tourist

It is not at all unusual for a visitor to turn a corner in Yosemite Valley and see something they have never seen before. The exceptional is commonplace there.

On Tuesday, July 17th, the shoe was on the other foot: some Yosemite regulars encountered a tourist that no one could remember seeing in the past: a California brown pelican.

The female bird was found on Big Oak Flat Road and appeared to be hungry and in poor health. Apparently, pelicans are making quite a comeback in California, and some birds are venturing far outside their normal range. If she was looking for trout in the part of the Merced that flows through the valley, I can understand the problem.

The story ends happily, however. The bird was captured, without incident, and transferred to a representative from International Bird Rescue.  The organization has been overwhelmed this summer with pelicans!

Good hiking, Ray

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John Muir Trail: Alone & Off-Trail

Published by Ray Rippel on July 26, 2012 Respond

The Sierra Nevada is known as “The Gentle Wilderness” for lots of reasons, but each year visitors manage to prove that the name doesn’t always apply. About the only upsides to that unfortunate truth are the lessons we can learn from their missteps (both figurative and literal).

An event took place within Yosemite National Park, on June 28th of this year, which painfully illustrates one critical lesson: hiking alone and hiking off-trail substantially increase the danger of injury or death.

Before I get into the details, I want to emphasize that I am not asserting that hiking alone, hiking off-trail, or doing both at the same time is never the right thing to do. Some risks are worth the benefits, and individual hikers need to make that risk/benefit calculation based on their own values and judgment. This story should provide some context for those calculations.

The hiker in question was an older gentleman, in excellent shape, and with hiking experience. He left a “hike plan” with his wife in two ways: a voice mail on her cell phone and a text message to the same device. Neither worked out exactly as planned (the voice message wasn’t noticed for hours, and the text message was never received at all), but that single act of good judgment probably saved his life.

The trip he had chosen was up the Illilouette Creek drainage towards Illilouette Falls. The going was difficult. His route took him over lots of boulders, both large and small, and was increasingly steep. He reached an area near the base of the falls without incident, and without seeing another hiker for the duration of the scramble.

As he neared the falls, he decided to try a route which, almost imperceptibly, went from class 3, to class 4, to class 5. Not long after that, he lost his footing and tumbled 100 feet to a granite slab below.

Fortunately, he had the good sense to fall at place with some—not great, but some—cell phone coverage. After communicating with the rescue team, and after spending a very uncomfortable night where he fell (the rescuers did not arrive until near dark), he was evacuated and transported to a trauma center. None of his extensive injuries (including five different fractures) were life threatening, but it’s safe to say he’ll be doing no more hiking for months.

First the obvious: had he failed to leave a “hike plan” and had fallen somewhere without cell phone coverage, he very likely would have died. Since depending on a cell phone is lunacy, the big lesson is to make sure someone knows your intentions, including when you plan to leave, your route, and what you have with you.

The second lesson is a bit more subtle, particularly for less experienced hikers: it is amazing how easily you can transition from a class 3 hike to a class 5 climb, almost without noticing. There are no signs, off-trail, that announce you are leaving one kind of wilderness experience and are about to enter a new and far more perilous one.

Here are two cues that should immediately put you on high alert:

1. You start to use your hands.

2. You expose yourself to falls.

These signals are impossible to miss. The second you touch a hand to the ground, you have entered a new and more precarious phase of your hike. Even when there is no exposure to heights, it probably means that you are on uneven terrain, and you can break a leg on uneven terrain in a moment.

When it comes to exposure the rule is simple: if where you are standing is higher off the surrounding ground than you would want to jump, you need to treat it as a climb, not a hike. Remember, also, that the fall need not be vertical or even near vertical. Throughout the Sierra Nevada there are plenty of places where the incline starts benign enough, but the granite is slippery and the slope increases rapidly (anyone climbed the back of Half Dome?).

I go off trail, alone, all the time. When I do, however, the envelope of permissible situations I allow myself to get into shrinks considerably and I become twice as careful as my normal cautious self. If you’re going to push yourself or challenge your limits, take a buddy.

Good hiking, Ray

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