Guest blog entry from Landform

My brother Matthew joined me for a huge section of the trail (basically all of the High Sierra). Having a brother who is a teacher and has summers off is the best!! Below is his account. Though he neglected to mention how awesome it is to hike with someone whose sense of direction is as keen as mine. 

So I got to hike about 250 miles over 3+ weeks in the Sierra Nevada mountains this summer.  I did all 210 of the John Muir Trail and then some.  I got to the summits of Mount Whitney and Half Dome.  I went over more passes than I have toes and defended my blood supply against marauding waves of mosquitoes.  It was amazing times with amazing people and I loved pretty much every second of it.  Being out in the wilderness for days at a time takes your mind back to simpler things.

The cast of characters (with trail names) was as follows: my sister Jen ("Cache Money" because she carried so much water in the desert that she was like her own water cache), her boyfriend Justin ("Lance-a-Lot" because he had a penchant for lancing blisters  (if you haven't seen The Blister, read about it earlier in this blog)), and my girlfriend Alicia ("Appletini" - no real reason, it just works).  They called me Landform because I couldn't seem to shut up about which valley or drainage or plateau we were in at the moment or what that mountain is called or how much elevation we had gained that day or where the next outflow is...ok, I'll zip it.  What can I say, I really enjoy maps.  

My daily routine evolved into something like this something like this:  

• Wake up before sun in some moderate pain from the previous day's hiking.  .  
• Coffee makes pain go away.  Begin battling mosquitoes.  
• Poop?  Hope mosquitoes don't find me.
• Walk 2 or 3 miles or until I got grouchy from hunger.  
• Eat instant oatmeal (or preferably grits) from the packet.  
• Walk 4 or 5 more miles, start thinking about lakes for lunch (not to eat).  
  
• Lake!  Find flat rock to chill on. Remove shoes/socks and prop feet onto backpack.  
• Lunch: wraps.  Pretty much always wraps.  
• Fend off sister who already wants to get back on the trail.
• Relaaaaax.  
• Jump into lake.  It's probably cold but it feels so good.  
  
• Dry out in sun.  
• Relax more.  
• Continue walking 3-4 more miles listening to music (July 4 was Aaron Copland day) or a podcast (BS Report or Savage Lovecast).
• Copious goos and Clif Bars.
• Afternoon hands and face - find a stream and get the dust off. 
• Walk final miles.  Get excited for camp.  We would do 10-15 miles per day.
  
• Take off shoes by another river or a lake.  Maybe go swimming again.
• Eat some food that tastes amazing on the trail.  Cache Money dehydrated the crap out of a bunch of veggies and they made things taste good.
• End of day beverage: whiskey-hot chocolate  
  
• Sleep outside under stars if there is flat granite.  Or get into tent.
• Read for approximately 1.5 minutes, then fall into a very deep sleep.
• Have weird and exciting dreams and then do it again.

Here are some true things I took away from the trail

First, it's gotta be in there somewhere.  I despise losing things.  The great thing about thru-hiking is that as long as you don't leave something on a rock (more on what happens when you do leave something on a rock later), then you have it with you.  There's no car to leave it in.  You didn't leave it at work.  It's in your pack and that's that.  It's a great feeling.

Next, all trails lead to somewhere.  I'm all in favor of getting off of the beaten path, but along the JMT, the beaten path goes pretty much everywhere you need.  The trail itself has the most footprints.  And branches off of the trail have all been up-voted to match their utility.  A well trod side path leads to somewhere useful (water! overlook! camp site!).  A more modest path usually leads to something less useful (trickle of water, less good camp site).  No path tends to leads nowhere (tangled bramble, dry creek bed).     

Next, the permit situation was a little bleak for a second there when we didn't win the Whitney Portal lottery.  But a little digging around turned up the fact that one can enter at Horseshoe Meadows (20 miles south of Whitney) with no fees and no quotas.  And once you have a permit to get into the wilderness you can pretty go wherever you like.  So to summarize: I showed up at the Lone Pine permit office one day and spent $0 on my permit and then spent 20+ days walking to Yosemite.  And it was totally legit.  In fact, the ranger at the bottom of Half Dome even said he would have accepted that permit to go to the top of that thing.  America!

Last, GPS is some crazy shit.  I sorta fell in love with Half-Mile's PCT app.  This thing locates you relative to the PCT (right now in Berkeley I am 136 miles southwest of PCT mile 1102) and then tells you how far ahead all things are both in distance and in elevation.  For example, from PCT mile 1102 I would be 1.8 miles, 54 feet of climbing and 394 feet descending to the outlet of Susie Lake in Desolation Wilderness.  At that point I am also 1,158 miles from the end of the PCT.  They call me Landform.

That's all for now.  But if Jen lets me I want to post another one going over the most interesting/nice/ridiculous people we met out there.

Signing Off,

Landform