John Muir Trail Trip, Summer 2005

Day 4: Onion Valley, CA to Upper Vidette Meadows

Days 0-3: Boston, MA to Onion Valley, CA

Day 5: Upper Vidette Meadows to Diamond Mesa

Heading up towards Kearsarge

We woke up at about 0700, fully rested and ready to head out on our trip. Excess food was donated to the park host, and we ate doughnuts (eww!) for breakfast. We set out at about 0830 and reached the top of Kearsarge Pass (11,670 feet) at about 1210 and ate a snack while chatting with some other hikers.

My lungs and heart were not happy with the uphill climb- there was too little oxygen at this altitude to support exercise, especially considering my asthma. Downhill was better, however - my knees were jelly but weren't terribly unhappy with me. I think I managed to bruise my hipbone from the backpack, however, and my shoulders were quite sore afterwards - a legacy of using my mother's pack instead of one fitted to me. 600 milligrams of ibuprofen (Vitamin I, as MITOC holds it) saved the evening, however.

Kearsarge Pinnacles on the way down

We got to the bottom of Kearsarge Pass and hiked around the Kearsarge Pinnacles, ending up back down at 10,000 feet for the night (just where we'd started, only with a big altitude change in the middle). Our campsite was just below East Vidette Peak (a 13,350 foot peak) near Bubbs Creek. We set up the tent and had freeze-dried beef stew for dinner - fast and tasty! I suppose hunger is a good sauce, after all. We pumped fresh water from Bubbs Creek and finished up our non-trail food.

My hiking poles have been quite excellent. They helped me get up the pass and kept me stable on the way down. When I hiked as a child, I usually made pulling motions with my hands when I was tired, as though pulling myself up with a rope; the poles duplicate this, only with actual results. The carbide tips actually dig into scree to the point that it becomes useful as opposed to a hazard as it usually is.

Bubbs Creek valley

We might skip climbing Mt. Whitney, which was our original plan, but we're not sure yet. Tomorrow we'll be hiking up Forester Pass, the highest pass on the John Muir Trail and also the highest on the entire Pacific Crest Trail from Washington to the California-Mexico border. Forester is rumored to be very difficult; as of two weeks ago it was still snowy enough to require technical equipment, which I didn't know how to use as of this summer. Fortunately the snow and ice seems to have mostly cleared up according to the last pass report, so we should be okay.

Let's see if a flannel shirt and pants and long underwear and my sleeping bag keep me warm enough tonight. Amusing sights on the trail today: a 79-year-old man from Fresno who was disgustingly fit and some religious types on the way up. Amazingly, we also ran into a pair of women and a man who were through-hiking the PCT; they'd averaged 25 miles a day (we're averaging 8) and had gone 1600 miles since April. They were heading down the pass into Independence, CA to resupply. We also met a nice father-son pair past the pass who helped us find a good campsite (they had GPS, while we only had a map and couldn't tell exactly where we were).