March 21, 2008

Hi, everyone . . .

Yeah, yeah, I know last summer I promised a second missive after returning from the John Muir Trail High Sierra adventure. Certainly meant to write, even started something the week I came back. Apologies! Some folks even told me they were worried when I didn’t write. That was sweet, thank you!

Maybe this is a better time to write, it’s spring again, and this will make you think about hiking yourself this coming summer. I hope so.

Most of the reason I didn’t write was that the experience was so deep and complex that it was hard to express in any easy way, so I just figured I’d let the experiences percolate inside for awhile. Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? And now I’m about to start on an even bigger and deeper trip, so better wrap this one up before talking about the next one.

Another item was that, though that trip last summer was one of the high points of my life, I unfortunately didn’t go all the way, in fact ended up doing less than half the 200-mile trail. I was a little embarrassed by that, not sure what to make of it, since I had been sure that barring a major mishap I’d go all the way. Maybe I can finish it someday, in fact am planning to try again in 2010, if I find myself in good enough shape. Now, at least, I have a lot better idea of what it is, how to plan, what to bring, etc. etc. But this time, more than a physical hike in the mountains, it turned out to be really a journey of self-discovery.

It was also more than that, because I really did end up seeing a lot of amazing country and getting in my best shape in over a decade—had gotten way too heavy in the last couple of years, but by August I’d lost 45 pounds, been biking to work every day for months, swimming several miles every week, had done some practice climbs, and was generally feeling great. And there was, as I knew there would be, a deep spiritual dimension to the trip.

So why didn’t it work out as planned? The short answer is that I was overconfident and underprepared, usually not the best combination for success. The long answer . . . will try not to be too long here, but much, much more positive. And there are pictures, a John Muir Trail album posted up on the web, the link is below. Even if you don’t read these words, you should like seeing those pictures.

Fearing boring you, I’m not going to go into too too much detail here, tho there’s really no way to avoid a certain number of words . . . but . . . OK, in about March 2007 I decided I was really fer sure going to do this thing I’d been wanting to do since I was a kid and first heard about people doing it, take a month and hike from Yosemite Park 200+ miles south to Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48, going through some of the most spectacular country the U.S., even the world, has to offer. I’d backpacked in the Sierras many times and thought I knew what it was all about. No problem, I’ve been out backpackin more than once for 5 days at a time, up thousands of feet in a day, this is just that times 4!

Unfortunately, that’s a big NOT. It is NOT just like backpacking over Vogelsang pass and down into Yosemite Valley, taking your time & with a hot meal, a footbath, and a warm bed on the other end, times 4.

The thing started out most auspiciously, great weather, and getting a great base campsite at Tuolumne Meadows, a beautiful view of Lambert Dome across the river. Musician buddy Mat Freimark was gonna meet me there for the first 3 days of the trip, Tuolumne to Red’s Meadow, up from eight to eleven thousand feet at Donohue pass, then down to 7000 feet at Red’s. From there I’d be on my own.

The first day’s hike, about 11 miles, was mostly a breeze, easy ascent up the gently sloping canyon. The old familiar trail, comforting, but startling when a view of Lyell Glacier came into the picture. Are we going east, or south? By now, south. Ten miles seems long. Trudging with an almost-normal gait, but it did seem long, though it didn’t get in any way tough till we got to the end of the canyon. I had gone over Donohue before, remembered it as a hard climb, but didn’t think it would be a big deal.

But it was a big deal. I was surprised on the first set of switchbacks, there was a huge lot of huffing and puffing going on. I felt my heart racing. I was having to stop every 200 feet or so to catch my breath. And there were a LOT of switchbacks. No end in sight. I was wondering why it felt so different, but it finally dawned on me that the last time on this trail had been 20 years before, and that I was actually pushing 64 now. I didn’t want to accept that that might have something to do with it, but . . . ah, I see you chuckling.

That old man thing . . . the number thing, we’re conditioned to think such numbers make us old, and we have this preconceived notion of what old is. Those dreadful lines from Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata came to mind:

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Omigawd, is that what I’ve gotta do? No way! The counsel of my years yells in my ear, “take no prisoners!” I’ve gotta keep this up. But it is hard, a lot harder than 20 years ago when I marched over these mountains with just . . . well, it wasn’t really easy then, but I wasn’t stopping every 2 switchbacks, that’s for sure. Hey, how many of these switchback things are there, now?

So I debated. Suck it up, don’t be a wimp, push yourself, said one side. Then from somewhere I heard my honey Tee’s voice warning me over the phone a couple of days before, “อย่าดื้อนะ!” (“don’t go doing something stupid, now!”) And I thought about all the “what if’s,” like “what if you get a heart attack out here.” I decided to be a let myself be a wimp for awhile. I wasn’t too worried. I figured I’d get used to it, and if I had to slow down a little, I could make up for it when I got stronger in a few days. Besides, who’s to know? Ah, but now I must bare all.

Just before getting to our first campsite, I was parked on a rock, just for a minute, catching my breath, when a group of very trim, but not young at all, ladies came chugging up the trail at a good clip, and went past me. They camped near us, and Mat & I went over and talked with them.

Great gals, in much better shape than we were, started at Glacier Point yesterday morning. Now that is some hiking. Slept last night at Cathedral Lakes, which means not only did they go an incredible 22-24 miles yesterday, but they’ve also gone 5 or 6 miles more than we have today. Went over and socialized. They said that the first day’s long hike was kind of miserable for everybody, which information was somehow comforting. Got the story of Kevin Starr’s Sierra demise from one of them, in some detail. She knew it from the book Missing in the Minarets: how the brilliant 27-year-old SF attorney got overambitious and fell off an obscure cliff. How the famous Starr’s Guide to the John Muir Trail was published posthumously, by his dad. Interesting as hell, though the other gals had heard this before and some were telling her to shut up. But I hadn’t heard it. Also in this conversation the topic of distances came up, and they noted that the various distances on the various maps had wild discrepancies, which made it hard to plan. That made me wonder about my own planning, which was based on some numbers that appeared to be rough equivalents of Starr’s Guide. More later on this, much more.

OK, the second day. But first—there had been some mix-up with the post office and I hadn’t gotten my topographical maps till the day I left, though I’d ordered them a month before. I’d been working off an old, very sketchy, and—true to what we’d just been told—extremely inaccurate trail map. Distances were wildly off, generally adding many miles to each day’s leg. We’d made our goal the first day, but I thought it was only a mile and a half from there to the summit, and that we’d be over the hump before 9. The plan was, 1.2 miles to the top. Even if I left at 8, I’d be over by 9. Mat left at a quarter past 7, but I like to take my time packing up. I was out at 8:04. Well, that morning turned out a shocker in that respect. We didn’t make it up till nearly noon, and were so exhausted we rested for an hour before starting down. It must have been closer to four miles, and the huffs and puffs didn’t get any easier. In fact, worse, because it got a lot steeper. And I was carrying a 60-pound pack, which I was beginning to realize, was just plain stupid.

But still, there were benefits to feeling so worn-out and decrepit which I had never imagined. Mainly, having to rest so often—you might actually put that as “getting to rest so often”—gives you time to take in the sights. And how spectacular it was! You’ve got follow my picture link and see what I was looking at. Even the pictures can’t do justice, you really have to go there to understand, and the only way to get there is doing just what we were doing. Peaks and glaciers, forest and meadow, pure air, the wind in the treetops, the same ridges and valleys seen from just fifty or a hundred feet higher displaying a whole different personality.

From the top of Donohue Pass, what a panorama to the east and south! To the left, Koip Crest, then straight off west, Mammoth Mountain, and to the south/southeast, maybe 50 miles off, beyond The Minarets, the peak called “The Thumb,” and in front of it gorges leading off to the south and the ultimate goal of Whitney.

When we reached the basin below the pass, I began to be aware of a corollary to Newton’s “what goes up must come down.” Up in the mountains it’s more like, “what goes down must go back up again.” When I had planned this trip, I had looked only at starting and stopping elevations for each day. For instance, if a hike started at 10,000 feet and ended at 9,000, I was thinking of it as basically a downhill hike. This conception completely changed as I gradually realized that in order to get to that lower elevation, I might have to, along the way, climb another 1,500 feet before descending, maybe a couple of times! My earlier backpacking days had usually involved one big climb and one big descent, not this up, down, up, down workout.

By that night, camping by Thousand Island Lake, I was already practically a day behind schedule, still getting exhausted quickly, and had developed blisters that felt as though they might get serious. For the first time was wondering if I’d actually finish the trip as planned: the schedule was starting to look overambitious, maybe seriously so. Keeping to the Muir Trail I’d have to take two more days, not one, to get to Red’s Meadow. The next morning Mat split off and hiked out, down to Agnew Meadows by the gentler Pacific Crest Trail loop, pretty much all downhill. I could have made it to Red’s that way, but didn’t want to miss the incredible scenery of the Muir Trail.

The scenery was indeed inspirational, jewel-like lakes hanging in tiny valleys suspended from magnificent snow-dappled crags. Up there the myriad cares of the civilized world fade away, and rational thought gives way to feelings of joy and peace. Even the great questions of human philosophy become irrelevant, even the “God question.” You don’t need to name it, this deep and mystic connection to the universe. It just IS, capital I, capital S. And this is the time for a poor, weak human being to feel comfortably part of it, when the sun is shining and the snow has receded. No mistake to feel that this place, in this season is the most special part of the world for me. Even though living in Thailand, which I also love, I’ll be back here as many times as still are possible in this life.

I’ll shorten the story. Made it to Red’s Meadow in 4 days, rather than the planned 3. My blisters were getting worse, and I was still getting scarily out of breath on the uphills. Going back and forth in my mind about what to do, stop or go on. At this pace, I’d never make the whole trail in the allotted 16 days. Wildly optimistic, that plan.

Red’s meadow, in the Devil’s Postpile National Monument, is the closest place to “civilization” on the whole 200-mile trail. There are free hot showers there, actually scalding, piped undiluted, straight out of a hot spring. A shower and a shave felt really good. There’s a little café, and I had a burger and a beer. Camped with a bunch of other backpackers, met some cool people. Decided to stay there two nights, do day hikes and see everything there was to see in the area, then see how my feet felt. Did that, and started feeling better, but the blisters were still pretty bad. Delaying another day . . . that didn’t feel good, but necessary. I saw the pack sizes the other folks were carrying, and they were between twenty-five and forty pounds, this compared to my sixty. I had brought some big fat books with me. Brought extras of things like flashlights and stove burners. And . . . the kicker . . . my old worn-out Benge trumpet had come along, too. Somehow thought I’d have time to practice up there. Actually, when I tried playing it at all, I couldn’t get a note out: my lips were too dry and chapped. Really, not a note! The long and the short: took a picture of the leaky old Benge before tossing it in a dumpster. Dumped a huge amount of equipment into the hikers’ share box at the general store, dropping my pack weight to around 40. And made a fateful decision to cut the trip short, that is, go back to my car and drive down to a lower point on the Muir Trail, cutting days off the trip, go back in and see if I could get close to my schedule and make it all the way from that point. The blisters were really killing me. If I couldn’t make it, well, a disappointment, but that’s life.

And so took one more down-time day, shuttle-bussed up to the car back at Tuolumne, drove south to Florence Lake, got a boat across the lake, and hiked up to the Muir Trail Ranch, about the halfway point on the trail, where I had sent a food drop.

Everything was suddenly way better. Blisters? Not a problem any more. In the store, I’d discovered a product called “second skin,” which seemed to almost instantly dry them up and heal them. The huff-puff factor? Well, the elevation was still kind of low, but I wasn’t getting winded yet, anyhow. And the first night there was a great hot spring to soak in. The next day, heading up to Evolution Valley, one of the most beautiful of all the beautiful valleys, I felt completely energized. Reached up to 10,000 feet and wasn’t having to make those 200-foot rest stops. Folks I’d meet would ask, “Where you headed?” and I’d gleefully shout, “Whitney!” I really was thinking again that it would happen.

The first bad sign was just before leveling off into the Evolution Valley, when I stopped at the stream for a drink, and tried to take a picture. The camera had broken, there was some sort of short in the button. No matter what, I couldn’t get it to click. Oh, well. Still, the thought of not being able to take pictures seemed to diminish the trip a little.

Then I had to ford a stream. The usual logs across, or stepping-stones, weren’t there, so I had to wade in, boots and all. My boots immediately filled with water. I thought that was a little strange, figured to check it out after getting to the next campsite.

I wish I had a picture of the view from that campsite. Actually, I almost do. When I finally got back to civilization, since my camera had shut down, I raided the Web for other hikers’ pictures of Evolution valley and the places beyond that I got to, and found some good ones, which showed the places I saw there and on the trail from there up to Muir Pass. One of those was taken from the meadow right in front of my campsite, just wish I’d been the one to take it. But I put these “borrowed” pictures in my album, so that looking through the last part of the on-line slide show (link above) you’ll see pretty much what I saw.

But after setting up camp, I pulled off the boots, and the soles were completely split open, both feet.

I had a back-and-forth with myself about what to do, but really, that pretty much had to end the trip. I couldn’t go another 90 miles over this kind of terrain in those shoes, and the only other footwear I had was a pair of sandals. If I went out, bought shoes, and came back, that would add nearly a week onto the trip, just couldn’t do it. Could I hike in the sandals? There was a serious hiker back there in Red’s Meadow who swore by sandals, but he had a specialized pair with hiking soles, while mine, though pretty solid, and with decent-appearing soles, might not last. And you don’t wanta be stuck out in that country without usable shoes. There were no easy ways to get out of there until Whitney, really.

So I decided to take another day camping at that place, using it to hike up the trail to Muir Pass in sandals, without a pack, coming down the same day. That would be a round trip of about 16 miles, further than I’d yet gone in a day, but shouldn’t be a problem if I started early. Then I’d take the next two days to hike out, back to my car, and fill out the rest of the vacation by hiking in other parks.

So I did. It was a spectacular day. (Really lucked out with the weather, it was clear and warm the entire time.) I felt so happy and strong, without the pack it felt like flying, the views were magnificent, and the sandals were mostly comfortable all the way up to the 12,000-foot Muir Pass and back—though I did keep having to pull pebbles out from under my toes. Whatever, it was the high point of the trip in more ways than one. It was just too bad that it couldn’t have gone on. That was a little hard to come to terms with.

I really had to jam to make it back to camp that night, it was actually starting to get dark, but that made it even a little more exciting.

So the next two days were uneventful, good hikes, had another dip in the hot spring, hiked down to the lake and took the boat across, made it back to the car, down into the Central Valley, bought some new boots, and spent the next 6 days hiking in Pinnacles National Monument, and Mt. Diablo and Mt. Tamalpais state parks. Not as great as the Sierras, but still wonderful enough. I bought a new camera, so I have some good pictures of those, let me know if you want to see them.

Before wrapping this narrative up, I want to answer a couple of questions that keep coming up:

1. Did you see any bears? The answer is that my only bear encounter on the trip was actually Mat’s, there on the second night, when we were camping at Thousand Island Lake. I was in the tent, he was out in the open. A huge black bear came over and started sniffing at him. I woke up when he jumped up, shouting “Bear, get out of here!” and didn’t get to actually see it, it took off so fast. Never had any problems with them trying to steal food, because the bear canisters (an absolute must!) are so effective.

2. What did you do about water? Well, I did carry water in what’s called a “camelback,” a canvas bag that you carry in or on your pack, which has a convenient tube that you keep near your mouth so you can drink while you’re walking. But I think maybe I shouldn’t have carried it, it was just another heavy thing. Water was everywhere. “Drinkable?” you ask, and I say yes, and very delicious, too. There has been far too much made of the possibilities of Sierra water being unsafe. There seems to be no foundation at all for that belief. I have drunk unfiltered water for all the 50 years I’ve been hiking up there, and have never had a problem. There is an article you should read, if you are really wondering about this: http://lomaprieta.sierraclub.org/pcs/articles/giardia.asp. The guy who wrote it is a respected scientist, and this paper is pretty convincing to me and a lot of other people.

Was the trip a success? That was what kept rattling around in my brain. I didn’t like having fallen so far short of the plan. Measured that way, no, it was a failure. I took too much stuff, didn’t get the distances right, tried to go too far too fast, wasn’t ready for the blisters at all. Hadn’t looked at my shoes to see if they’d seen too many summers.

But then, it really was a journey of self-discovery, and I’d discovered a lot about myself, about backpacking, and about my beloved Sierras. And just being in that place for 10 days had opened my mind, body, and spirit right up. And I was in great shape. I’d overcome the “old man” thing, at least for a time. So, looking at it that way, it was a success.

And there’s always next time. I really am gonna make a stab at finishing it up in 2010, and I hope you want to come with me. Let me know!

From your old pal

-Pietro