Trail Legs - A Month On The John Muir Trail

[Music] so [Music] [Music] and we need milk in this one and 20 packs of green tea that's it that's the bucket that's good yeah which one's this for what's that that is bvr so that's gonna go in there and i have a bottle of wine if you don't have any foods to put in tonight i'm gonna be like the designated backpacker so uh we're off [Music] [Applause] [Music] i think it's the heat that's bothering me it's the load from my hips down to my feet yeah and i never thought that would be what would be bothering me because i've always had real strong legs and never a problem that it just feels like it's just a new feeling for sure [Music] so so on day three we arrived at cathedral lake i think it was the first time um [Music] that i kind of relaxed but i remember going into it frustrated because we had to walk like two or three miles off trail just to get there but the fact that we were gonna bathe yeah was pretty cool i'm gonna take these little bottles of rumplements and fireball and i'm gonna put them in that little tiny patch of snow because cold liquor is better [Music] uh then the next day we got into lyle canyon one of brandon's favorite places in yosemite i could see why we had a campfire that night first campfire a little bit of mystic fire we put on it and it was and the next day we took a zero day that was that was nice i'm about to celebrate magical flames on the fire for fourth of july so 2014. america look at those colors so what happened here there's not even any wind look [Music] everything oh this is a good day this is a good day this is going to feel so good to know that we washed these clothes getting ready to go up to donahue pass we're at this pretty sweet campsite that we've been at before here in the wild canyon um it's getting cloudy which is nice because we've been cooking in the sun every single day but hopefully that doesn't mean any precipitation back to you steve preventive bait niche and get my coffee in me lots of cupcakes lots of mosquitoes mosquitoes days five six and seven in my journal are kind of blurry to me because that's when we really started hitting rain i remember the first day it rained it was only drizzled we walked through a good bit of rain the last couple miles on day seven and got to shadow lake and uh when we got to shadow lake i had another one of my very frustrating evenings but kevin and brandon already had half the camp set up everything got wet anyhow the the rain stop the shadow lake was gorgeous so we camped out last night here at duck creek crossing first place we could get water for five and a half miles um but today we're getting ready to head up the trail we're gonna do up and over uh not a pass but just a really big hill and get to purple lake and then we go up again down again to lake virginia and then we start heading towards silver pass which is just going to be a little bit of climbing and probably stay at squall lake about 10 300 feet be a good tough day nice best part of my day good to do another seven or eight i'll start wine [Music] before we made camp and got barraged by mosquitoes we jumped in a creek it doesn't feel cold at all it feels great it's been hot all day i needed that next thing you know i turn around there's kevin getting ready to do a backflip man and all sudden i just felt like a dad and i felt like yelling before he even did it but just like everything kevin seems to squeeze through and he made it unscathed [Music] 100 miles how's it feel can you do 100 more yeah nice and overcast mosquitoes are gone oh my god dude that was terrible that was like the worst hour and a half of my life i could tell you were miserable dude i was pissed i was just like i'm getting out of this it's gotta end somewhere so i found the end took two poops today [Music] you guys doing are you braiding other people's buckets right now forty dollars worth of brushes here at the mirror trail ranch look at that we sent our buckets here there's no information somehow we got them these little ones i don't know i got one of them i did get one of them so if you want you're checking [Music] we got going on here kevin i'm trying to sort out our food to figure out if we have enough to get from your trail ranch to independence sure and still have time to like hang out in some really cool spots because it's like 70 miles from here to there there's some really cool like evolution valley and lower palisades lake that we want to go to so we're just making sure we don't eat it all before we get there he's the chef i trust him so our food for the next 70 miles we scored big today at near trail ranch with all these mountain houses and some really good food and we broke two water filters yeah two those 10 miles were easily the most fabulous 10 miles of the jmt yet surrounded all day by amazing looking mountains one after the other all shades of gray brown red and rust blacks waterfalls creeks creek crossings over boulders clear lakes big white boulder islands in the lakes it looked like a moonscape and you could see the moon all day long exposed to sun but always a mountain breeze skies so blue in contrast to the white mountain tops really can't put into words how stunning it is to walk through you just have to experience it [Music] we only did about six miles a day tomorrow's nine there's a storm coming tomorrow we cross our first creek that we got to take our boots off the brandon boots are already wet it's not much it's too little brook trout caught on the hand fly about to be cooked on fire south fork of the san joaquin river so here we are at evolution lake it's cold windy and raining outside it's frozen i had to zip this shut because we're getting wet even though the sun is out over there we're still in the storm here at evolution lake tell them how miserable rain makes you uh it makes me extremely frustrated uh as soon as it starts raining i think about the quickest way to exit the trail and go home but i haven't done that yet it's just tough oh my god we're gonna have no rain and look at this man i thought i guaranteed that we'd have no rain i thought maybe a day or two but i think this is like day 25 now this is the fifth time it's a little ridiculous [Music] so we hiked up through evolution valley today pretty cool and started raining and it made us all miserable because we only have so much stuff everything's starting to get wet and cold but here we are at evolution lake and it was worth it and we are surrounded 360 degree view by amazing this is unbelievable i am recording brandon's in the picture he already talked oh [Music] [Music] okay friday 18 july 2014 we hiked out of evolution valley four and a half miles to the mere hut and the 5.5 more miles after that to our next campsite [Music] okay my best piece of advice for first time through hikers to spend more than 20 or 30 days out here i know that kevin and brandon and i kind of bragged about it before we were leaving that we prepared in two weeks but i really think the best advice i can give you is to prepare some people take a whole year to prepare we are rationing our food we are almost out of fuel so we're using campfire we're almost out of toilet paper so prepare plan plan out your food everything like that that's the best place uh my piece of advice to a would be through hiker i think would be the trekking poles i never really believed in them very much you don't see too many young people using them but it has helped a lot and i think that would be my piece of advice trekking poles helped me we got a good start this morning like 7 00 a.m eight and then we got the worst storm that we've seen on this trip yet it's like our 9th or 10th day that we've dealt with rain and it was thundering and lightning so bad that it just gets scary downright scary so we stopped made a little fire so we stood around burned a bunch of wood now it's like what one o'clock in the afternoon there's a sun that was the golden staircase you realize how lucky we are most people walk the golden staircase do it in bright sunshine suntan lotion someone always don't put enough warning gets burned and look what we did it in pouring down freaking rain thunder lightning here we are at lower palisades lake yeah we are out there uh we're almost 12 000 feet up going towards the pass there's uh and we're hoping all right um we're here just past uh mather pass coming down about to go over to the pinchot pass we got about three days of food left before we get to our next food drop so i'm gonna go ahead i'm feeling pretty strong i'm gonna hike ahead and do it in about two days hopefully less and get our food resupply that way brandon and his pops can meet me right back at the curesacher pass junction and we can continue on like we never had to stop [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so this is cool this is our new friend [Music] and maybe we'll see you down here at the junction [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh i'm gonna cut the snickers into three pieces because there's three of us and we are going to dip it in peanut butter and then put honey on it and drink milk powdered milk chase it with milk that's our dinner day 25 we get to this basin right below forester pass and from what we hear far surpass is supposed to be the butt kicking pass but anyhow this by far and it's funny all three of us agree that this is the coolest campsite we ever stayed number one campsite of my life you can't see it now down that basin and number two three and four were on this trip also so now we're leaving and we're climbing forester up foster pass we have a nine and a half today a nine and a half tomorrow and a 15 miler on day three to reach out so we got the toughest miles ahead and probably the most beautiful scenery body feels good i can't believe how fast i build up to this my scrambled life mind it needed this and my spirit deserved it and here we are i think it's a second one there's nothing like traveling what's going on you're not feeling good no i'm starving we're on a terrible diet of nothing and we're at like 12 000 something feet so we came from somewhere down in here that's where we camped still a little ways from forester pass how's it going we're slow so [Music] is oh it's our last day of full hiking before we get to guitar lake in the base of mount whitney it's raining again how'd that feel dude that was a scary looking dive your head's out of the picture my head was out what do you mean you that wasn't a shallow dive you went oh okay huh no wait did you see it it looked a little scary i went you're gonna hear me i went it didn't hit the bottom but it was it was very cold but it was refreshing that's my first full body bath i think i've had the whole time we've been out here [Music] our last night of camping day 27 and surprise surprise it's raining lots of again you can see it you can see my shelters blowing around me and kevin set it up with rocks so i hope we did a good job or it's going to blow away on us dinner time at guitar lake hopefully clouds break and give us a chance tomorrow to push up on whitney so it's 3am the sky is pretty clear see the milky way in the stars we're gonna start packing our stuff up and make an attempt at this mountain kevin good morning brandon excited i am what are you doing i'm adding honey flavored syrup to the milk dad how you doing all right it's all right you can calm down there's no pressure [Music] all we're doing is walking right yep [Music] this walk is impressive [Music] cool stuff live every day [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] here after all this time and everything i've been through i needed this to cleanse my soul and it is a soul cleansing thing you know you when you're walking 10 15 miles a day you've got a lot of time to think about things and i needed this i needed so bad to deal with that stuff and i i think i feel cleansed [Music] it's been 28 days of hiking and about 10 days of rain unfortunately we got snowed on on the way up here [Music] we got everything yeah we got free food again today [Music] yeah we got 10 miles to go yet from here closer to 11. yep come on let's go yeah it's time to go [Music] down look at this it plays the guy that sits next to the dude in the bowling alley at the bar and he drinks sarsaparilla [Music] well dude sometimes you eat the butter sometimes buried you

Channel: Brandon Smith

Views: 4,143

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: d38LghYbGOc

Length: 30min 57sec (1857 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021