John Muir Trail | NOBO

so about a year ago we were in yosemite hiking the mist trail we were sitting at top of nevada falls and amy started a conversation with a backpacking group that was just about to finish a northbound trip on the jmt and after that conversation she turned to me like hmm maybe someday we could do that and about a year later here we are what do you think of the first part of this the trail we're starting oh that was easy i love it i absolutely love it dad what do you think of the start of our trail oh i think it's a lot of work i'm already tired we are at the cottonwood pass trailhead the drive was paved the whole way it's actually a really cool drive my parents drove up here with us in a separate car and they got to see the beginning of the trail which was cool to have their support and i'm sure they were excited to see where they're sending us off from we are gonna sleep right here tonight and wake up in the morning and start the jmt or start the trail we won't be on the gmt for another couple days or so i had planned to go from cottonwood pass to happy isles in yosemite which is about 235 240 miles and i was hoping that we would be able to do it in about 17 days it is 7 30 on august 14th and we are about to start our long journey i got a crazy braid in my hair probably look like a little boy right now that's okay my hair will be off my neck and yeah i'm excited we have 14 miles today but it's gonna be relatively flat and yeah day one here we come [Music] it was a sandy hike inn pretty easy as far as elevation change goes we went up to 11 300 feet and we are now back below 10 000 and i have never camped this close to a trail ever um i don't love it but we are in like kind of an established camping area at rock creek there's a bear box here the good news is our packs today were the heaviest that they will be for this entire trip so i'm thrilled about that and it is starting to rain so we might go in the tent okay so what do you think of day one so far it's good we're something like 13 miles in we're at camp we made it here by i think 2 30 and we're camping way closer to the trail and in an area where there's spots for like 20 other tents um it would be interesting to see how many other people show up so far there's a couple people down further down um and a couple parties are going through but no one else is here and hopefully it stays pretty quiet yeah day two was a shorter day we started from rock creek and we hiked into crabtree ranger station it was basically setting up for our staging point for doing mount whitney the following day first views of mount whitney can you see it if i clean it's over off your right elbow other elbow turn the other direction it's off your left side sorry so if i do this you you don't see it there it's on your left elbow like that nice [Music] [Applause] we found a campsite at crabtree our day was only a little bit over seven miles so a very short day we got here what before 10 30 or around 10 30. um but that's okay because uh our bodies hurt a little bit i actually i don't feel too bad right now but it's nice to get a nice and easy relax time tomorrow we are headed up mount whitney which for those of you that do not know is the highest point in the contiguous united states at fourteen thousand five hundred and five feet i believe uh so it's gonna be a big day and it's also i think gonna be around 15 miles the nice thing is is we don't have to do it with a pack on our back or we won't have to do it with much in our packs gonna make dinner at 12 45 pm i pooped in a toilet that was open air in a pit toilet crabtree ranger station is awesome because it has this really cool pit toilet where it's just a toilet seat in the middle of the meadow kind of looking out over an overlook and you get to do your business while staring off into the wilderness um there is a little bit of a privacy screen but you know it shows like down to your lower back so you're not getting a ton of privacy i mean there's a trail that goes right to it from the camping so if anybody walks up they can almost see everything we woke up at about 4 30 and we were on the trail just after 5. we headed up past guitar lake and up towards whitney the past two nights we've been rained on in lightning and thunder storms so we want to get up there as quickly as possible and the light is finally out the sun is coming up and it is gorgeous oh my god we are going up the switchbacks to mount whitney the air is really thin having a hard time breathing we are at about 12 500 right now um so far so good having a hard time breathing but i'm not nauseous and i don't have a headache yet so that's a good sign yeah it's uh really nice to be doing this early in the morning no sun trying to stay hydrated we haven't needed any breaks yet my brain is moving a little slow processing things a little slow let's hold on tight the switchbacks up mount whitney at least on the uh that west side there are super gradual so much easier than it could have been for climbing the tallest mountain in the contiguous us we are used to the wasatch where everything is pretty much straight up so having really well built not that steep switchbacks was really nice and made things go really quickly getting up to the summit of whitney [Music] [Music] the 16th carson said he should have waited to propose to me on top of mount whitney but i told him there's no way he would have gotten a ring on my finger because my hands are so swollen um we have made it to the top of mount whitney i feel really good we both feel really good no headaches no stomach issues or nausea it took us about four hours to get up here from crabtree from around the crabtree ranger station and a little over four thousand feet of gain um it was easier than grand teton a lot of switchbacks uh seven and a half miles to get here from where we were but uh it wasn't very steep it's just dealing with the altitude as well so just a little hard to breathe and the connection between my brain and my feet is not as great as it usually is already starting to build up it's only 9 30 in the morning all the way around here and then down this down to here all right we're back down at timberline lake earlier this morning we went up here up to guitar all the way across then up this slope all the way along this ridge up to whitney somewhere up there and then we came all the way back down the slope across the guitar lake down to here we've got maybe two more miles to go in the day we got back to camp pretty early in the day i think it was probably around noon or something like that but we didn't have that much time to hang out because the thunderstorms all right so that was exciting we amy pulled her we realized it was getting a little bit wet out there so amy pulled her backpack into the tent and like two seconds after she did a stream of water starts running at the tent from her side which is the uphill side um so we hopped out and realized that there was a lot more water on the ground than we thought and where we were was in a little depression and we the rainstorm yesterday didn't do anything we didn't worry about it at all we said totally dry there like the ground didn't even get wet that area is about four feet behind us now and is about three inches deep in water um we got out realized we needed to move the tent moved the tent about six feet and um we're sitting in here i got soaked and carson helped somebody else who was in a puddle and got completely soaked yeah and here we are it is still raining i'm helping it in soon or at least pretty dry there's small rivers running like six inches off the head of our bed and our foot is like a foot out of the puddle so there's not much else we can do if it starts getting worse jmt day three a couple of hours later the storm stopped and everyone kind of came out and started drying their stuff and we got really lucky that we stayed pretty much entirely dry where a lot of camps i think got pretty soaked that day it was an eventful night it is day four feeling pretty good except for a weird pinch in my back this morning i couldn't bend at the waist at all doing a little bit better now um but other than that my feet and my muscles feel really good so um i feel good about that and what about you carson do you feel good feeling pretty good yeah i think we're uh we're on track so yeah surprising also we are on the jmt the first two days we were not on the jmt um so i guess technically today is day four of our trip but day two on the jmt and the plan is to make it to the south side of forester pass if the sky looks good we might go over it but because of rain we've been getting every single night i kind of doubt it but we will see i think we have a little under 13 miles to go so not a crazy day igor plateau is probably people's first view of whitney when they're going sobo or one of the first shoes made it to bighorn plateau that is forester pass and it looks gnarly from here but it's not very far away and supposedly it's only 600 feet up i don't know i can't imagine that there's a trail in there but apparently there is yeah forester pass looked impossible from the bottom looking at it i was thinking this is a route that i would rock climb um we couldn't figure out where the switchbacks were we knew that they were there but you just you can't see them from down below we are at the south side camp um we do need a little bit of a break we started our eyes started charging up uh because the rain is catching up to us and it kind of sucks because it starts coming in at like what noon yeah 1 30 every day and so it's kind of limiting us on how many miles we could do we are not sure if we're gonna make it tonight because the clouds are kind of gnarly uh which is okay our original plan was actually to camp here for tonight we just it's what time is it like two two o'clock and so the day's not over there's still so much daylight left it's just i don't want to get struck by lightning on top of forester pass after sitting there for 20 minutes we saw a hole developing in the weather and saw a hole in the clouds and figured it was going to be at about the right spot to be over us while we were going over forrester and we decided well we either go right now or we might not be able to go at all so we just we just decided to go for it all right we're going for it the marmot that's been watching us is sad that we're leaving because he won't get a chance at our packs but we're going up [Music] yeah you see that do you see the rock work in the city god we're almost there that took like no time at all [Music] [Music] when we got to the top of forester i definitely hit a high it was blue skies on the other side the pass was just it was just super cool um popped over first or past real quick is a lot quicker than we thought super cool one of the highlights of our trip so far today has been a day of highs and lows and that was definitely high and we're still riding it so um we have a little ways down and we're gonna find camp the clouds are coming in again it was actually blue skies when we popped over and but it's chasing us so we're gonna keep going [Music] there's the tree line way down there we have found camp at a unnamed lake on the north side of forester pass we did about almost 17 miles today i think gorgeous spot i mean incredible we had dinner and it's actually pretty warm i think we're still above 11 000 feet and of course the storm has rolled in like it has every night so night for and more rain nights one through four yeah good day we're ahead of our itinerary um my feet are sore apparently i have a blister is the sun coming out i think the sun is coming out anyways yeah lots happened today we camped a couple hundred feet uphill from an alpine lake at around 11 300 feet and just sat there with the most amazing gorgeous sunset views overlooking this lake i think it was one of my favorite sites on the whole of the jmt it was by far my favorite campsite that we had on the entire gmt today um all morning we've been going down down down apparently we're going all the way down to 9 500 feet which actually kind of sucks because then we have to go straight back up to almost 12 000 to go over glen pass we will see what the day has in store because each day we just like never know what happens at the end of it uh we are planning on getting to ray lakes and meeting my friend tabitha [Applause] came from all the way in there heading up that way to glen pass we headed up there across to go ahead and pass up there made it to the top of glen pass that was a lot tougher than forrester pass for us going nobo starting to rain we are going to head downhill and hopefully make it to ray lakes there is thunder in the distance so we will see what happens today it's only 12 30. never know we've made it down off glenn and have made it to ray lakes this is upper ray lake behind me this area has been on my adventure wish list for i think about four years now and here i am seeing it while doing the gmt it is raining on us and we hear thunder in the distance but luckily we are finally back down into tree line and we might be setting up camp kind of soon even though it's not even 2 p.m but we'll see packing really fast because i want to go training we are between upper and middle ray lakes and we are hunkering down next to the tree because it is pouring yeah it's starting to come down it's actually a little bit lighter than it was three minutes ago and we see some behind us we see some breaks in the clouds we're hoping our fingers cross gonna be uh a rain break but who knows maybe we're signing up camp soon or maybe it'll clear up and we'll have another couple hours yeah we kind of want to push on we don't want to stop yeah it's too early it's like 1 30. yeah i want to keep going but maybe the weather will stop us we'll see but we're warmer out this is where we'd swim while we were cooking dinner at lower bay lake the ranger came by and mentioned that there was a mother bear and her two cubs and that they were running around the lake and that if we saw them that we should scare them off and try to make them afraid of humans not ten minutes later we saw the mom and the the two cubs running on the other side of the lake so i ended up walking down the trail a little ways and i saw the mama bear in two cubs again uh carson was not with me i went by myself and they were across the meadow and so it was a little bit closer but still definitely far away enough that i felt comfortable uh and then not a minute after that i found tabitha and she provided us with some candy and some entertainment for the night we actually went to bed after the sun went down and i think that was the first night that we actually did that it is the morning of day six we are leaving ray lakes and leaving my friend tabitha thanks again tabitha yeah we have a big day ahead of us we need to make it over pinto pass probably before 1pm which is when the storms have been starting yeah gotta keep going one foot in front of the other feeling okay this morning got a lot of downhill all the way to 8 500 feet and then back up to 12. all right ready dollar lake i wonder why it's called dollar lake such a nice bridge isn't it it's weird when it comes in yeah it does that's fun so we are headed up towards pinchot pass and this has proved to be the most brutal day yet i don't know if it's because we went down like 2500 feet and now we're going back up 2500 feet or if we're just tired from the previous days it's downhill from there until we have to go back up something about heading up pinchot is just long it's a long tiring slog i'm pretty sure i could say that day six was the hardest day for me actually probably for both of us why are we doing this the barrier is not physical it's mental unless you don't feel pain but i feel pain clouds are slowly coming over us we're almost almost a pincho pass and then it's just downhill on the other side so we got like 15 more minutes give me something oh my god i thought i was a badass until i backpacked from ray lakes to the top of pinchot pass and it is not even over yet right after we went over pinchot it started raining this was probably the worst rainstorm that we were caught in while hiking we knew it was not safe to be up there and we from the top of pinchot we were able to see the tree line and it was not very close we are a hunker down next to a tree coming down pinto pass it started raining on us we actually wanted to take a break up there but knew it'd be stupid to hang out up there um we're kind of waiting for a break in the rain hoping it lets up soon we've got a little gotten a little wet we'd you know sprint two or three hundred feet down the hill and try to find another tree to hide behind and we spent about two hours working our way slowly down from pinchot pass we have found a stand of trees we've been going from tree to tree trying to find shelter um and finally we're getting into more more densely treed area we found a spot still getting sprinkled on but it is coming down out there so kind of just need to rest our feet a little bit and then either once this passes or we decide we're going to make a break for it again we're going to head down further below more below tree line because it's kind of exposed up here today has been a day today i hope this is the hardest day so far it is the hardest day this is way harder than our mount winnie day or mount whitney day was a piece of cake okay i think i'm done are you still recording what do you have to say nada unfortunately in that thicket of trees there was a bunch of sap and so we kind of got covered i lucked out and i only had a couple spots but amy got sapped kind of all over herself apparently i sat in it and so it got on the butt of my shorts and ended up all over my fingers um yeah sap incident of 2020. and there we go blue skies on the other end we headed down and camped right at the intersection with the kings river bunch of mules that night at camp we saw a mule team crossing the river right before we decided to camp and we saw them kind of going upstream and it was cool seeing them crossing the river and then in the middle of the night we hear this winning and it was clear that a mule had gotten separated from the back train and while we're sitting there we're getting a little closer and closer and all of a sudden it runs right next to our tent yeah the next morning we woke up and there were horse prints you know three feet away from the tent and i remember just squeezing carson's hand um i mean there just wasn't anything that i felt we could do okay let's see what today brings us today is day seven we are feeling refreshed after a night of sleep uh but today is gonna be a long day our plan is to go up mather pass drop all the way down to the valley floor on the other side and then maybe start up near pass a little bit as far as elevation gain goes it's going to be an easier day but to make the d tomorrow easier uh we kind of want to go as long as we can so we'll definitely be pushing um probably a 17 plus mile day so got an early start it's pretty cold and pretty hazy all right we're gonna get going waking up on day seven we got our first real smoke and it kind of hung around all day and cut out a lot of our views just looking behind us it was it was so eerie i mean you couldn't see anything don't know where it's coming from but gotta move one direction almost that's another pass it's been a nice gentle grade so far but we are pretty high so breathing is a little tough especially with the smoke top of mather pass what do you think easiest pass so far yeah coming up from the valley was awesome super fast super easy um felt really good uh we hit the right below the pass and a few switchbacks but nothing too bad yeah feeling pretty good yeah i think it's the easiest pass we've done so far yeah i'd agree pretty chill some easiest 12 000 feet i've ever done yeah well might have a better view if it uh wasn't so smoky if i have any mistake on the trail it would be passing up swimming at lower palisade lake it was just this perfect decomposed granite lake bed and just gorgeous blue water so if i were to do it again i would make sure to stop at lower palisade lake and take a swim we are taking a long break before we head up towards muir pass originally i wanted to camp here at the junction but the further up we get up near pass the easier tomorrow will be because it's going to be all uphill so today might end up being close to or a 20 mile day my feet hurt where are you bear snow grass and grass meadows every campsite that we saw we just kept seeing more people and more people i wanna say we didn't find a campsite until almost eight made dinner really fast and got into bed last night we ended up doing almost 22 miles my feet were aching we got into camp kind of late right before sunset so hurried up made camp had dinner and then it got in the tent and hopefully because we did that today will be a little bit easier and now we're gonna start heading up up up up towards mir pass this morning i think we have about six miles day eight i might shout out to my mom and my sister who like the cascades this one's for you still smoky still a little bit smoky but not nearly as bad as yesterday made it to the top of mere pass it was not nearly as bad as i thought and i actually think it's my favorite or second favorite pass going up from um from the south going northbound it was gorgeous in there and now behind me we have wanda lake and we're kinda gonna stop at whatever lake looks really nice for swimming at there's sapphire lake gorgeous evolution basin is that that weird i believe we have found our campsite this place is incredible oh my god an awesome creek that we're gonna be able to land look at this and we're gonna have it all to ourselves yep okay so we found the perfect spot spot next to a creek and we've been here for what like four hours three four i think it's been four hours we thought we were gonna camp here uh we rinsed out all of our clothes we got to take a full dip in the creek uh laid around on a nice hot rock walked around barefoot let our feet dried out and now it's five something um and we're like you know what we could get a few more miles in and we wanted a nice campsite tonight but i feel like we got the full benefit of what we wanted to here and now we are just going to move on a little bit we had dinner uh yeah so it should be easy we could just get to camp you know right at sundown if we want and we feel refreshed uh it was already a 10 mile day and somehow it felt like we did nothing all day and now we're going even further spot is gorgeous too by the way um but we soaked it in we hung out yeah evolution basin is one of the most memorable parts of the jmt for me that that valley is amazingly gorgeous and everywhere you look there's just a new view of these amazing alpine rocks and alpine peaks interspersed with phenomenal lakes evolution basin was my favorite area like favorite part of the entire trail and i'm really glad that we took four hours to just so get in and really enjoy it it's one of the most pleasant places and that whole area is just gorgeous wow [Music] there's evolution lake today is day nine we have the evolution creek crossing ahead of us you'll see what that's like i hear it's pretty low this year though and then we are going to get to mtr which is mere trail ranch our first resupply point we weren't supposed to get there until tomorrow but we're definitely getting there today clear meadows this morning it's gorgeous [Music] [Music] here we go to mirror trail ranch so close getting to mtr we were at day nine we've been carrying all of our food so far and mtr is our chance to get more food it was our chance to resupply so we sent in a bucket um literally mailed them a home depot five gallon bucket full of more food [Music] just picked up our resupply from mtr and our packs are heavier again uh they were super nice but i don't think they want us hanging around so we gotta get moving i think it ended up being what was it 12 and a half miles to here um so probably gonna go a few more miles just to get to a camp spot and yeah we are ahead of schedule though so that's cool except my feet are definitely feeling it what do you think we brought way too much food yes i plan for i think about 2 600 calories um on average for every day and we like can't eat it so it's like even though we're in a calorie deficit and we should be eating that many calories it's like you're only going to eat what you're gonna eat so it is what it is probably gonna lose a couple pounds [Music] we have made it to sally keys lake and um honestly going northbound from mtr is kind of a pain in the ass it was pretty steep a lot of switchbacks um but we just added it up and apparently we did like almost an 18 mile day so that feels really good no wonder my feet hurt we have extra food but we are getting so hungry i ate a bunch of food like what an hour or two ago and i'm like hungry now my energy was dipping um so our body bodies are definitely asking for the calories now so we'll probably uh eat that up real quick yeah we found a nice little spot and that was day nine tonight we had mount house chicken mashed potatoes and now we're gonna have some miso soup and i'm so happy i brought it because i'm hungry tonight for dinner that night i had dinner and miso soup and i think some snacks and i was still hungry it was a hunger turning point for me day 10 woke up to a little bit of smoke today and also my feet are a little swollen but we are almost a day ahead of schedule so we should really learn to relax and hang out probably the hottest part of the day because now that we don't have rain it is blazing hot so yeah we will see how far we go today maybe around 15 miles but whatever we plan at the beginning of the day never ends up what happens at the end of the day so we'll see just got over selden pass since we started upwards last night i think this is our easiest pass yet also this is definitely my favorite view overpass it's incredible and now we go back down and then we go back up seldom pass was my favorite pass because not only was it very easy to get over going northbound but the views the view of marie lake was incredible so yeah selden pass was a highlighted trip for sure soaking my feet in murray lakes trying to get the inflammation down also this is just an amazing spot also having peanut butter and graham crackers which i'm craving right now i don't seem to want any of my sweet stuff i seem to want good fat and calories [Music] hi [Music] good thing we didn't plan on going to vvr anyway [Music] plan was to camp at the junction where the bridge is at tvr instead we sat out a thunderstorm the last of the while now and then continued up the next up towards the next pass camp for the night we have found camp we've had dinner and we are now having dessert i'm having sour punch straws put these in my mtr resupply um so apparently we ended up doing about 18 miles today yeah that wasn't the plan but it's just what happened we found a really cool site right next to like a a water slide that's really nice monument creek and we got rid of some we have a 3 000 foot climb up to silver pass and we got rid of some of that elevations i think we've only got like 2 000 left so nice kick start for tomorrow yeah and then two days we'll be in at reds meadow yeah ready for burger and beer and soda today is day 11 we have a bit of a climb to get up to silver pass yeah i don't know how far we're gonna go today we keep going further than we plan the further we get the closer we are to reds because tomorrow we should get to reds so wait really tomorrow we get to reds i just want a burger i keep waking up hungry like really hungry which yeah my body wants calories so food sounds really good all right let's get going let's do our climb we are headed up silver pass and man it is smoky out here you can smell it we're definitely breathing it in probably not the best thing for us but we got to keep going so yeah we're getting close silver pass is right up there made it over silver pass and now we are headed down and to the smoke-filled valley uh not the heart is past not the easiest pass but not the hardest pass um yeah and it's what 98 not even 9 30 and clouds are already starting to gather and build so we are expecting another storm today probably rain around noon so we are gonna get going so for family that doesn't know this is how we get our water we have that water reservoir which we connect our filter to and then it filters our water right into our bottles and luckily on this trail there is so much water here that most of the time we're only carrying one liter one liter is 2.2 pounds so the more you carry definitely starts to get heavy we had access to water every couple of miles and for the vast majority of it we carried only a liter at a time there were only a couple sections where we carried a full two liters each we just passed the turn off to mcgee pass heading up still [Music] [Music] so we have made it to the duck lake outlet and from here there is no water for a little over five miles and so our options are to either camp at least 300 feet from the outlet or to continue on for a little over five miles which will make it a 21-mile day and i think that's what we're gonna do because it's only 3 30 so we have plenty of daylight left so taking a little break from my feet and then we are gonna continue on with our long day we have made it to deer creek on night 11. we did about 21 miles today just had dinner uh freeze-dried mountain house chili mac with beef i am in a little bit of pain my feet hurt my like toe joints hurt but tomorrow we have only like a six six and a half mile hike all downhill to red's meadow resort what about you how do you feel i feel pretty good my feet are definitely tired but i think that's to be expected after 20 something miles yeah i'm excited for reds and like a real meal it's gonna be fun kind of have a forced low mileage day which will be good yeah that'll be good for us because apparently we don't know how to pace ourselves yeah we are a day and a half ahead of schedule so that is just not necessary all right good night it is the cold morning of day 12. and we are gonna make it to reds this morning or at least before noon and it's all downhill and i think it's pretty pretty gradual downhill so should be pretty quick how you feeling um my feet hurt but they're refreshed this morning i'm feeling excited for food and hopefully a shower how are you feeling i'm definitely excited for a shower yeah it'll be very nice and maybe just washing some clothes yeah we've done pretty well with the stream so far but you can only get so much done in a stream yeah so we woke up a little bit early and we hiked rather quickly i think we averaged like 3.2 miles an hour and i booked it so i can get some pancakes here we are turn off the jmt for red's meadow [Music] some guy just handed this to me just like was like do you want this and i was like yeah it is a.m though that looks so good let's see what i got oh oh yeah oh yeah so for 12 days straight i've had my hair in a braid pinned with bobby pins at the back of my head and i'm about to take them out and see what happens so gross i was feeling a bit restless it felt weird to sit down for so long after always being on the move but i think it was a really nice break for my feet and i think it was good that we were kind of forced into it since our resupply wasn't coming until the next day it was really nice to take a break even though there was a part of me that wanted to keep going so apparently there was a vacancy in the one of the hiker cabins and we decided to go for it um it was only 100 for two people with two free showers uh so nothing crazy um we probably spent more money on food and yeah so we are hopefully gonna have a better night's sleep or i am at least um because we will be on like kind of a mattress so good night and i will see you guys when i am refreshed in the morning my parents actually met us for a resupply around uh 10 30 in the morning it was really nice they were able to bring in our our bucket of food and replenish our supplies we ended up being able to leave the darlings with one of our bear cans which meant for the next four days we only had to carry one shout out to marianne hazel who let me borrow her barricade expedition that thing has a lot of capacity plenty of room to fit food for four days for two people from reds we did decide to take a quick detour off the jmt so we went through the devil's post pile it's about a mile mile and a half off of the jmt i think it's basalt columns this morning we woke up refreshed we got our free shower got breakfast burritos i'm trying to breathe met up with carson's parents and they gave us our resupply and we're able to give them some things got a late start to the day our plan is to do about 13 miles don't know if we're gonna end up being able to do it because it is now one o'clock and we've been going up a steep hill in the middle of the day so um yeah it's a little bit slow going but we will see where we end up today if we don't end up at our mark at garnet lake that's okay because tomorrow could be longer and yeah so we're planning right how many days today tomorrow to ireland creek third day to cloud's rest junction and then six miles out so four more days including today look at some of these steps that is straight up like deep pistol squat [Music] well i'm going uphill so i'm out of breath but i want to give a shout out to mark who saw me on the trail we went past him and he was like are you amy um and he said he's a fan of my channel and that he uh found me through bryce's channel yeah so that was really cool i actually i think that's the very first time i've ever seen someone on the trailer somebody's said something to me uh because of youtube i've had people from instagram but uh yeah super cool experience to meet people on the trail who see my videos i hope that the rest of your hike went really well you know hopefully no smoke i don't know what it'll be like the next couple days but hopefully as gorgeous as it is today [Music] we have made it to garnett's lake sorry it's windy so i don't know how the audio is and there's this nice laminated sign we are gonna go past this peninsula at a camp so we are legal camping and i'm going to make sure that our camp is at least 40 steps from water today is day 14. we are about to leave garnet lake it was a little bit of a climb to get down here last night to find a legal spot but it is a gorgeous lake and notable spots on the jmt in my opinion and today we are going to go over donahue pass and camp at ireland creek i believe it's about 15 or 16 miles from here and not a ton of gain i think most of our gain is going over donahue most of it is downhill or pretty flat so a little bit of an easier day compared to some of our other ones but we can't go much further because of the camping restrictions you cannot camp more than or closer than four miles from tuolumne so that's about one of the last spots you can camp so that's where we will end up i need to not kill myself getting out of here last few days don't want to end the trip like this [Music] thousand island lake this has been on my list for many years here i am [Music] going up towards island pass [Music] made it to the top of donahue pass if you are going to go northbound on the john muir trail do not underestimate donahue pass it definitely was not the hardest pass but it was also not the easiest the summit of donahue is the entrance point to the yosemite wilderness from there on out it the rest of the trail is in yosemite for us we saw a coyote in one of the meadows and he was pouncing in the grasses so that was pretty cool to see hiking along tyndall creek was really cool the trail borders this massive series of meadows so the entire time you're just looking out at these really cool grass meadows it was very beautiful and definitely some of the or probably the flattest section on the entire jmt we found camp near ireland creek today was approximately 15 to 16 miles total tomorrow is going to be a big day it's going to be over 21 miles but then the day after that is our day out so yeah the night at ireland creek was my least favorite night last night we had a group of three camp like what 30 feet away which is like like it kind of sucked because it's a pretty quiet area we're like okay whatever so at like 4 30 this morning they start packing up camp and so they they woke us up which is fine and when at crabtree we had people waking up to go to whitney at like you know 5 30 in the morning uh like what can you do you're gonna make a little noise right okay this was not it became not normal noise they started like flapping out their tent fly and i mean like also again this is like 4 30 in the morning flapping it like as loud as they could they're 30 feet away from us and then they stop flapping out the tent fly and they they take down the tent and now they're flapping out the tent like wild and crazy and so i yelled something out of the tent and then after that they're pretty quiet so i'm glad i said something they knew we were here there is no way that they pulled up and we're 30 feet from us and didn't see we were here i don't know it was just super inconsiderate over the top um again i expect if people are gonna pack up and wake up early that's fine like you might make some noise but we were wide awake because of how much noise they were making wake up that early if you need to but come on people come on so last night was not the best night but at least we didn't have a horse running through and winning like 10 feet from our tent so it wasn't scary it was just loud day 15 we planned for it to be a long one we plan to pack up from ireland creek go past tuomi and then camp at the junction to cloud's rest so going down towards tuomi it is a very flat trail and we are kind of right alongside these meadows which is pretty cool it's really easy going really fast hiking we've got a long day apparently it's going to be like 23 miles so i'm glad that it is flat for now carson and i have actually been to the top of that because we rock climbed it last year this year we were just walking by it but it's a pretty cool view it is kind of hazy out here but still pretty cool right now we can see clouds rest we are not going to do that on this trip the jmt does not go on top of it but it is a popular detour because it is amazing i did the day hike last year and it is my favorite hike in the park um and also not since it's super smoky and hazy i'm especially not too sad to not do it um i'll do it again for another year and [Music] also we should be less than three miles from camp and it'll be like a 22 ishmael day but we have also been walking through a burn area for a while and so i'm really hoping that the camping area is not in a burn area because if it is uh we will probably press on um and go to the little youth cyanide you little yosemite valley campground um i'm just not down to camp with like in a snag forest it's not down yeah bye so we're still continuing into the burn area and going down and there are these plants that are really overgrown on the trail and they are pokey and sharp and you have to walk through them i'm wearing shorts carson's wearing shorts um i probably wouldn't switch into pants but i don't have any pants anyway because i got rid of them at reds so we are just getting a little scratched up not the worst thing in the world but not the most fun getting close i don't remember why we decided to keep going and not camp where we planned uh but for some reason we decided to make it all the way to the little yosemite valley campground by far the busiest campground for us on the entire jmt day 16 last day less than four and a half miles so last night we stayed at the little yosemite valley backpackers campground and there were composting pit toilets solar composting pit toilets and it's just kind of like a free-for-all like you just kind of camp in the camp boundary next to a bunch of other people and we are back on the jmt [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] well we did it uh john muir trail in 14 days and a total trip in 16 days 240 ish miles we will find out later that's it that's it we're done at the end of the jmt i felt i was definitely tired but it was also it felt really good to have finished and finished in fairly good style it felt very anti-climactic it wasn't about getting to the end it was about the journey to get there my parents were able to meet us at the end of the trail and pick us up and to top it off on the drive out from yosemite we saw bear run across the road and for our fourth bear of the trip yeah i mean i feel incredibly lucky to have been able to take the time to get out on the jmt and get to experience the that section of the sierras and see all that it has to offer i would love to go and spend more time there and uh check out some of the rock climbing maybe do a technical ascent ascent up whitney um but yeah we are super lucky that we had the support of both amy's my family and yeah we got to do this amazing amazing trip i feel very lucky to have been able to do this not only am i privileged enough to have spent the money and the time to do this uh but i am also physically able and that's just something that i never want to take for granted i just have to say thank you to both amy's and my family we couldn't have done it without you [Music] do do [Music] you

Channel: Amy Routt

Views: 87,214

Rating: 4.9122486 out of 5

Keywords: jmt, john muir trail, sierra, sierra nevada, pct, pacific crest trail, thru hike, thru hiking, backpacking, eastern sierra, mount whitney, thousand island lake, rae lakes, thru hikers, backpackers, adventure, outdoors, outside, public lands, yosemite, happy isles, cottonwood pass, nevada falls, mist trail, the range of light, range of light, sierras, sierra backpacking, amy routt, jmt thru hike, john muir trail thru hike, jmt thru hiking

Id: SbMHehLEZTA

Length: 69min 24sec (4164 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020