– John Muir (pictured on the right with Theodore Roosevelt)

John Muir, also known as the “Father of the National Parks,” was a famous naturalist, founder of the Sierra Club and the key activist who helped preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park. Although the idea of this trail was originated by Theodore Solomons, it was named in the honor of John Muir who died a year before the trail construction began in 1915.

Today the John Muir Trail (JMT) stretches 211 miles from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States. It passes through the finest mountain scenery and has been described as the “America’s most famous trail”. I have uploaded my pictures in high resolution. You can click on any image to enlarge it further.

The idea of through hiking the JMT first occurred to me when I climbed Mount Whitney in Aug 2018. However, I only seriously started thinking about it late last year (Oct 2020). I contacted some of my previous trekking partners who I thought were crazy enough to sign up for JMT and soon had a group of seven nutcases. This was the easy part. The hard part was getting the permit. The permits are allocated on a lottery basis with an estimated win rate of just 3%. As luck would have it, we not only managed to get a permit, we got the most coveted route – southbound JMT from Happy Isles to Whitney including a permit for Half Dome!

JMT passes through some of the crown jewels of America’s park system: Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks;  Ansel Adams and John Muir Wilderness; and Inyo and Sierra National Forests. It can be done both southbound (SOBO) or northbound (NOBO). SOBO is the more popular and coveted option. It starts at Happy Isles in Yosemite National Park and ends on the top of Mount Whitney. The trail goes over 11 mountain passes in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Here is  6 min video which shows an incredible 3D view of the entire trail.

Team

• Distance Covered: 230 miles (370 km). Official distance is 211 miles to the top of Mt. Whitney but one has to then descend 11 miles from the summit to Whitney Portal. We also added a side trip to the top of Half Dome which added another 7 miles.
• Elevation Gain/Loss: 50,000 ft gain (That’s 1.7x Mount Everest!), 46,000 ft loss
• Days Needed: We had planned for 21 days but finished it in 20 days
• Average Daily Stats: 11.5 miles of walking with 2,500 ft of climbing and 2,300 ft of descending with a 40lb+ (~20kg) backpack. That’s like covering a half marathon distance everyday, going up and down the mountains while carrying a heavy check-in bag!

If I were to describe the entire experience in one sentence, I would say “It was harder than I had expected but prettier than I could have imagined.” I also want to give a shout out to the trail engineers and rangers who have done such an amazing job of maintaining the trails and making this unspoiled wilderness accessible to us. We got incredibly lucky because all national forests in California were closed one day after we completed our trek due to wildfire dangers!

JMT lived up to its reputation of being the most scenic trail in the USA. The landscape changed every few miles as if we were in a totally different world. We saw lush meadows, crystal clear alpine lakes, gushing waterfalls, scary vertical cliffs, roaring streams, endless mountain peaks, unforgiving rocky terrain, burned out forest areas from previous wildfires, intimidating granite walls and much more. There is perhaps no other place on earth with such diverse and such amazing views.

We typically slept between 7:30-8:00pm everyday after watching the sunset and woke up between 4:00am and 5:30am to catch the sunrise. Another reason for waking up early was to avoid the afternoon heat. Depending on the location, each sunrise and sunset casted its own magical spell. The lakes reflected everything with such perfection that they doubled the panoramic beauty around us. The mountains glowed with vivid colors and changed from being inhospitable and intimidating to serene and wonderous. The forest created unusual silhouettes and carried soothing sounds from nearby streams and waterfalls in the quietness of dusk and early morning hours.

While we pay a lot of attention to air and noise pollution, we rarely think about the light pollution in our daily lives. That’s because we have nearly forgotten what we are getting robbed off! Gazing gratuitously at a star-filled night sky with no agenda or worry in mind is a feeling words cannot describe. You feel small yet somehow connected with the universe.

I tried to capture the night sky using my phone camera. Using my very limited knowledge, I played around with the settings hoping to capture at least some of the magic. Most of these pictures are from early morning between 4am and 5am after I woke up.

While we knew that we would be disconnected from the world during our trek, for the first few days we kept taking our phones out of airplane mode to see if we could get a signal. The urge gradually died and finally when I did get a signal at the end of the trek (on top of Mount Whitney) I made a couple of calls to my family but did not care to check any messages or emails. The familiar ‘new message’ beep which once felt irresistible, fell on deaf ears now. I was truly living in the present. Focusing on and enjoying everything around me without a care about what was going on in the world. I posted a quick message to let everyone know that we had completed the trek successfully but did not bother to check the number of likes or congratulatory comments. It just felt so insignificant.

We did carry a Garmin satellite device which allowed our friends and family to track our progress/location and also exchange text messages.

The evening before our last day we were reminiscing about the incredible journey when Anu asked – “What did you really miss besides your friends and family?”. We all thought about it deeply and realized that we really did not miss anything else. Yes we would’ve loved to have better food and physical comforts but they didn’t feel as important any more. We had even forgotten about Netflix! 🙂

I realized how little one needs to live a fulfilling life. Everything I needed could fit in my backpack including shelter, clothes and food. Yet somehow we are running out of space in our five bedroom house.

It is an honor system but almost every hiker follows the LNT guidelines. Some of these guidelines are easy to follow but others note quite so:

• Travel only on designated trails. This is obvious.
• Camp at least 100 ft away from water sources unless there are pre-established campsites. Do not set up camp on vegetation or grass.
• Carry all your trash with you.
• Store all food and toiletries (anything that smells) in a bear proof container. This is not just for our own safety but also for the safety of the wildlife. If bears can get to your food, they will learn that behavior and become more aggressive. Mama bears may teach that to their cubs and multiple generations of bears may have to be put down to correct the behavior.
• Bury your poop (with the exception of the Mount Whitney area where you have to carry your poop). We were required to dig a deep cathole away from water sources for pooping and then cover it back with dirt. If you use toilet paper, you have to pack it up and carry it with you. We decided to use a portable bidet system rather than carrying used toilet papers. This whole process felt a bit gross until we got to the Whitney zone. Here you have to poop in a wagbag and carry the poop down with you! Suddenly the cathole system looked very attractive! Grossness aside, the squatting position works really well.

We had to cover an average of 11+ miles every day but also had to account for altitude effects, climbs, descents and finding appropriate campsites. While we had planned out an itinerary in advance, once we started our trek we realized that it would need to be changed. There was a significant difference in the walking speeds which changed depending on the terrain:

• Ashutosh, Arun and I were fast climbers. Followed by Anu and then followed by Samir, Ankur and Meenal. Arun had to leave due to a family situation after six days so that left Ashutosh and I in the front.
• Ankur, Anu and I were fast descenders. Descending was often equally or more difficult due to the steep and rocky terrain. It was really hard on our knees and ankles.

• Wake up between 4:00-4:30am, go through the morning routine, make breakfast/lunch, pack up the tent etc. and get on the trail by 6-6:30am. The early start allowed the slower group to reduce their time in the afternoon hours which tended to be hot. However, 4am was also the coldest hour of the night. Waking up in freezing temperatures and going through the morning routine was very hard. For me, this was harder than the walking part that followed 🙂 Towards the end we realized that we can do a staggered start instead. Ashutosh and I started an hour later. There were only three days left but I enjoyed the late start 🙂
• Most of the mountain passes we crossed required 3,000+ ft of climbing, some required 4,000+ ft of climbing. Not everyone in the group could climb that much at one stretch. Therefore we decided to break up the climbs and found campsites midway through the ascents.
• Ashutosh and I were always the first ones to reach the final destination. We scouted the area for the best campsites and reserved them for our group

The last ritual before going to bed was to dig a cathole for the morning and put some markings around it to find it easily in the dark.

We went to bed between 7-8pm.

“Life is about enjoying the journey and not waiting for the destination”. This could not be more true for JMT. In fact it was only about the journey and never the destination. We stopped frequently during the hike to soak in the beauty, often spending as much as half an hour at a spot to enjoy a waterfall or eat a snack by the side of a lake. We took time to talk to fellow hikers and learned about their stories. It was often a humbling experience. We met hikers who have trekked the entire PCT (2,600 miles), have done JMT multiple times, young women going solo and kids as young as 10 year old! We also met a black lady who was doing a 6,000 mile hike to encourage more people of color to take up hiking!

I carried an electronic copy of Elizabeth Wenk’s seminal book on JMT and read it every night to understand the terrain and landscape we were going to cover the following day. Being able to identify the landmarks, peaks and some of the flowers and trees make the journey that much more enjoyable. I thanked Lizzy via Facebook after the trek and she was gracious enough to respond to me.

The trek was really hard but that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t have fun. Here are some fun pictures from the trek