We woke under dripping ceiling and side walls. It had rained early in the night but I think that was the end of it. At 3:30 I was searching for my coffee. I have Starbucks lattes in small packets. It’s powder. I pour it and cold water into my cup. It turns to a clumpy mixture and I stir and stir. The cup has dried clumps from Monday and Tuesday. It’s all quite horrible and wonderful at the same. You never wash anything on a desert trail.

Everything is soaked. The sun peaked over about 6:15 but did not hit our tent. We carried everything to the field and draped it on bushes and stubbly ground. The process is slowed by me searching for my sunglasses, which was in vane. This process took a couple of hours and we didnt hit the trail until after 9:00.

We headed down the trail past Parker Canyon Lake, large and scenic. The trail is wide without rocks. This will be an easy day, I dream. We’re traveling along a wide ridge and often we can view the landscape on both sides. Far below are long basins that stretch miles without towns or trees. These are not the cracked, grey deadly basins. They look like fields with yellow grass. In the background are silhouettes of mountains in all forms. It’s lovely. When we pass nearer the landscape, We’re amazed by how green the foliage is. At one point we saw a small barrow barrel shaped, multi-colored cactus. Terry used the app, Seek, to identify it as a Rainbow Hedgehog Cactus.

My easy day becomes hard. We ascend a hill with many switchbacks and steep climbs. And then the descent is littered with rock. And the pitch is shin splitting. We pick through hills all day. It’s brutal.

The weather, however, was perfect cool and bright with billowing clouds. It’s so peaceful. We were unprepared for such solitude. We had heard the trail was really popular. We’ve only seen four people in three days.

As we twisted and turned through a couple of creeks, some with water but mostly dry beds, we were up and down and around. The hiker we met on day one said that the last twenty miles before Patagonia was flat and easy. I thought for sure we had entered that zone. Until one of ups didn’t stop. And then it switched baked and then a long pull and it seem this pattern of torture would not end. I began cursing and blubbering until we reached the summit and then it was after five and the sun was behind the hill. We began searching for a campsite. Some of the most promising ones turned out to be ant hills. But we went on and found our best site so far. We got the tent up and settled for dinner in our tent by 7:00. How sweet it is to be dry. We don’t have dark skies, there is dim incident light at the edge of the sky from down below, but compared to living in the redwoods with stars only showing in holes in the canopy, it was great seeing whole constellations. The coyotes howling and foxes barking.

At 6:00, the usual time to get started, sleet was slamming sideways. We waited. By 8:00 there was no change. We jammed our belongings hastily into our packs, but as Deb reached for her mittens, one was gone. Maybe mixed in the tent wad in my pack, so I started unpacking. Thankfully it was inside. All the while sleet was penetrating wherever it could.

With the temp around 30 F, the wind drove us down the mountain. Shards of frozen clouds came sideways, breaking from the pines lining the rocky trail. All day we descended the cobbly trail in sleet, snow, or freezing rain. Progress was slow. At 4:30, Deb was nearly hypothermic, so we pitched the tent in a drizzle on a flat spot along the trail. Twelve miles in 8 grueling hours.

Our shuttle driver was great, lots of knowledge about the trail. We were joined by Holly a PCT hiker from Juneau. One more passenger made the fee less. Her pack was truly minimal with only a small tarp held up by one hiking pole.

At the trailhead the skies were ominous with dark clouds and the air was cool. We began our ascent. It was a slow climb one mile an hour. We stopped for lunch which was our only break. The trail turned and we were in driving punishing wind. We were blasted from the side and slowed to slower crawl with the headwinds. Summiting Miller’s Peak at over 9,000 feet, we then descended two miles to Bathwater Spring. Holly and Mike were there. They decided to spend the night. Terry got water from the bathtub. The winds were picking up. We had only gone six miles, so we decided to get more miles.

We didn’t get far. As we were heading out of camp, the wind turned fierce and it began to sleet. We wrestled our tent up on a space just above the two other tents. Everything was whipping around. By 4:30 we were hunkered down, the wind whistling and screaming all night. Pine trees became encased in ice and the shards from their branches pelted us all night.

This was a long day, hours in LAX in the midst of hundreds of thousands of people talking too loudly, gesticulating too wildly. And me fretting and fretting about what I might have forgotten and imagining me humped over under great weight.

Of course we had to leave our gallons of water behind because bottles of water are easy to come by as is the small canister of gas for our tiny Jetboil stove. Water was difficult, but the gas was impossible.

Terry is my rock. We will make it work except for Tuesday ‘s forecast of rain that could bring snow upon us as we climb over 9,000 feet. Right now this is what the journey looks like. But two miles in, it will be just walking and walking Joaquín. Consumed by the rhythm of an unknown trail. Nothing more.

It’s the little problems that stop progress. How did I lose all my masks? Why doesn’t the USPS Click N Ship open? How did a birthday meal for my son Andy turn into a party for 11? We have to host it today the day before we leave! Now it seems I’m not ready. It’s the lists of gear and food. It’s checking off the list. It’s miniaturizing every item. And the culling. The culling.

Diana and Kellogg volunteered to mail our food to assigned post offices along the trail. The struggle is to guess where we’ll be. How am I fit to do this when I spend most of my day “Where am I?” and “What was I doing?

There are many things to consider, altitude, grade of ascent, weight of pack, strength, fitness and fortitude. My fortitude barely compensates for weak lungs. We start at altitude. We live at sea level. And we will be flown and driven to 5900 feet and immediately begin a 3190 feet ascent to 9090 feet. Will I make any progress on day one?

Many serious road blocks await to reach Patagonia, our first town 51 miles ahead. But we assign it an optimistic four day hike. We’ll have a 4-day food box packed waiting for Diana, or maybe Kellogg, to attach a label on the large priority box teaming with trail food and mail it four days before we HOPE to arrive. The mailing date is March 28th the same day we’ll be dropped off by a AZT shuttle driver. For $150.00 he’ll pick us up from the hotel and drive us to our start. We’ll don our packs, look forward, as though standing before the minister trying to remember our vows, and ponder 🤔 whether the fear and trepidation of committing ourselves to trust in only ourselves is ill-conceived. We won’t look back.

This will be our last day. As we eat in our solitude, a man comes running by in shorts, running shoes and a hydration vest. He was running our 61-mile route a one day run for him. Shortly he was followed by a woman. At 7:30 am they had run about 10 miles.

We went about 2.8 miles on this trail the day before, leaving us a 10-mile day. But not just a 10-mile hike, but one with an altitude gain of 2,372 feet and an altitude loss of 1,732 feet. This will be our hardest day. My recollection of doing this trail five years ago in the opposite direction was that it wasn’t hard. But I ascended 1,732 feet and descended 2,372 feet. Plus, I was 66 and now I’m 71. 

All I can say about this is that the uphill was tough, and the downhill was grueling and unending. If one more person told us we only hadtwo miles to go, we were going to beat them bloody. So, we quit asking how far it was to South Lake. 

We were so sore; we couldn’t really appreciate the parking lot which the trail dumped us onto. We had to drive some distance to have enough signal to text Robert and ask if his invitation to spend the night was still open. He responded that mi casa es su casa. He would only be there for an hour. He was heading out to camp on a ledge because that’s what he does on the anniversary his marriage. His wife died several years ago. He would put out sheets for us and we could sleep in separate bedrooms with our own baths. 

We stopped at McDonald’s drive-thru and ate in the parking lot. We arrived in time to get instructions from Robert and wish him well. Then we went to Safeway for some junk food. 

It was over.

About 3:30 AM the wind whipped the tent until it sounded like something might snap. Then the rain came followed by a large crack of lightning a short two-counts later a deep boom of thunder rolling through Le Conte Canyon. Head lamps came on as other hikers scurried to get their tent flies up. The storm continued for twenty minutes. Luckily the intervals between lightning and thunder grew until we lost sight of the lightning and only heard faint echoes of thunder. Canyons are dramatic stages with crazy quick storms pushing through. And then the quiet dominated.

Our morning revealed no damage not even a branch down. But there was water to sop up and to wring out.  At its worst, it was annoying. At 9:30 am we pack out, this would be our latest start. Eight AM is usual. 

We continued downhill on moderate terrain. At a small creek a guy was squeezing water through his Sawyer. I ask how far we were from the hordes of mosquitoes we had been hearing about. He said the distance was zero. I stood unfazed by bites and truly amazed because mosquitoes always love me. We, too, needed to filter water, but decided to get closer to our turn-off on the Bishop Pass trail which came up a little quicker than we expected. We had questions about a good place to camp. We were heading from a low spot of 8,750 feet out of the canyon, into two major squiggles on the map indicating switchbacks and major uphill.

We had heard that Dusy Valley was good for camping but was over-taken by mosquitoes. We believed that perhaps our mosquito luck was running out, so we should camp before the valley. There was a ranger station a few feet across the trail from the turn off. The ranger appeared to be absent. Then I saw a guy sitting on one of the chairsin front of the cabin. I walked up and took the other chair hoping to ingratiate myself to gain some information about Bishop Pass and water. The only information I gained was how comfortable and utilitarian a chair is. I longed to sit for an hour. 

I took a guess that there was water just down the road. I gathered our bottles and filter. And there it was a large campsite with a stream. Robin came down and helped. And then we stepped on to our last section heading onto Bishop Pass Trail and up the first of two switchbacks. It seemed endless, but at the plateau we had nice level granite. It was a bit early to stop, but we weren’t sure we’d find something this flat and then would end up climbing for another couple hours. We set up camp. I walked ahead and right away found a creek. Beautiful. There was a mix of trees and granite with enough open views to watch the skies.

We left the trees behind at Evolution Lake. Our landscape was high elevation granite dotted with lakes and covered in rock rubble. From back at the Evolution Creek crossing, at elevation 8,486 feet, and at 15 miles from Muir Pass, we had climbed two switchback sectionsand hiked upward continuously. From Wanda Lake, we only had 1.2 miles and a gain of 465 feet to arrive at Muir Pass elevation 11,991 feet. 

What a Morning! To me the surroundings at our campsite looked like Ellesmere Island in Arctic Canada, a place I long to visit. We had been so lucky. No rain. No lightning. No snow. Here we go up granite feature with lakes, tarns and cirques as company. And water, plenty of water. 

Robin told me how she her maintained a steady pace no matter what the terrain. Her pace keeps her well ahead of me. So, I tried to find the pace that can keep me going up steadily without stopping. I certainly haven’t perfected it, but I’m improving.

And it seemed in no time we reached Muir Hut. Following the obligatory poses and pictures we were ready to climb down. Looking down the hill, we faced the truth. There were many patches of tricky terrain ahead. Ankle breaking rocks large and small served as detours around unstable snow patches obscuring the trail. Robin does not like downhill, and damn if she didn’t fall. We both were feeling low. Our diets were lacking. So, we stopped and set up the stove right on the trail. We chose to make the only freeze-dried breakfast we had. It tasted like the packaging. We it to our garbage at the bottom of my bear canister.

A young male hiker stopped to talk to us. He had a hiker’s guitar and looked friendly and one with the trail. However, his girlfriend had gone ahead because he was suffering from intestinal destress brought on by his trail food. Also, he had just lost his job as a music teacher. It was an opportunity to develop his next career: freeze dried hummus. It was all about the marketing. This was hiker humus. Look for it soon. 

Back on the trail we faced a snow slide straight down executed by glissading. We faced so many features with roiling, fast water lapping close to our safety. Then it seemed in a mere in a few steps we were surrounded by a bucolic forest. 

The clouds started billowing up and tinging dark. We checked our raingear and concluded it was paltry. If we proceeded, we’d get soaked. It started spitting just as we came upon a camp with many possible sites. It was empty and Robin picked the perfect site under some tree branches. In short time, we were joined by six or seven or ten, who knows, PCT hikers. The rain seemed quelled.Our tent neighbor had joined his daughter for a two-week stint on her PCT journey. When I found out he was a Trust Attorney, I asked if I could ask him some questions. He pulled up a rock and said he’d give me a consultation. Then, to make sure I’d remember his words, he made a transcript on my phone. Trail magic at the end of the day.

We woke in good moods due to sleeping on soft, level terrain, and having water close to us. Plus, even at water’s edge the mosquitoes weren’t bad. Perhaps, our perfectly safe poison,  Permethrin, that we sprayed on our clothing, did, in fact, keep mosquitoes at bay. 

We greeted some PCT hikers passing by our camp at hardy paces. Each one had a bright smile, a golden tan, and killer legs. We became salmon swimming upstream. Surely this direction only created an illusion that we were that slow. We chatted with the friendliest, mostly about my Garmin inReach Explorer Plus. The dang thing hadn’t worked yet. I scanned the northbound hikers to see who was wearing this product. Unfortunately, they all claimed they didn’t know much about them, yet they poked around with my unit and declared that it was at least on. I had this notion that Terry would worry if he didn’t get a signal from my device. What I found at the end of the hike was even though he hadn’t received any signals, he didn’t worry or care. He had total confidence in us. 

I could chock this up to one of the things I worried about unnecessarily. Both Robin and I were eager to check off dangers that lurked. Such as Evolution Creek. This can soak you and everything in your pack, so people were giving us advice as we approached it. You can enter somewhere else. You can remove your shoes. You can hoist your pack over your head. 

It is a wide creek and you do need to wade through the spring run-off. And that’s just what we did, easily. Shoes on. Comfortable temperatures. Not slippery. Ankle deep. No worries. Other then we were in a drought. 

A 67-year-old MN guy, put us on to free food at the McClure Meadow Ranger Station. I mention the guy’s age because he was proud of doing so well at this age. I was proud that he was from MN.

We watched for the McClure Meadow Ranger Station sign. Basically, it was right on the trail, but I walked past it. “It’s right here” Robin said. As we could have guessed, PCT hikers were foraging through the box while encircling it. Who was getting what? What were the choices? It was hard not to feel guilty taking anything away from this group. Robin got a tin of oysters and asked Ranger Victor, a new pal of ours, if he had TP. He gave her a roll. Perfect. Perhaps the oysters might prompt the need for more TP. It turned out of all our food choices we both liked the little bag of olives, and Robin liked the oysters too.

There was a group of six men assembled behind the food box asking about the choice of food but remaining shy about checking for themselves. They were a disparate group. One guy was in his thirties, and one was fifty, the others were approaching my age. Two presented as over-weight broken down guys. They appeared to be unlikely hikers. They left shortly before we did. About 1/8 of a mile later, we ran into them sitting on the side of the trail. We stopped to visit. Pete, the oldest with a brace on his knee, told us they were hiking to a carefully guarded secret destination. It was the deepest canyon in the US. He said they had planned this trip 25 years ago. And finally, they had time to do it. This meant traveling on a mostly cross-country route to Tehipite Dome and down deep into King’s Canyon. Pete was good at piquing my interest. I couldn’t wait to learn more. According to my feeble research on the internet from Spanish Peak to the confluence of the middle and south fork of the Kings River the distance of 8200 feet made it the deepest canyon.

We headed off to the switchbacks before Evolution Lake. We stopped for a rest and the guys passed us slowly except for Pete. He came later. He looked slow but steady and robust. As we move forward, we’d catch the guys who had gone ahead to wait for Pete. They always said, “He’ll catch up.” But we never saw him again and after Evolution Lake, we left them all behind.

At a creekside, we met one of the most flamboyant characters, Vince Connolly, or “Sugar Bon, Bon”. He was a ragging liberal. He said Michelle Obama had it wrong. It’s not, “when they go low, we go high”. It’s, “when they go low, we put our knee on their necks”. He had every anecdote, saying, and slogan modified, polished, and memorized to incite. He was nonstop anti-Trump. It was 15 minutes of major Trump bashing. 

Good thing we were on our way to some to the most peaceful and beautiful tarns on the trail. We were headed for Wanda Lake but mistook the small lake in front as a corner of Wanda Lake. It all worked out fine

I woke at 3:00 am to the sound of a mountain quail. The night had been rife with screaming wind gusts. Now it felt calm and mild. Perhaps it was as warm as the low fifties. I lay until I fell back to sleep. As far as I knew when I woke at 5:19, Robin hadn’t moved all night. I imagined our rock platform and the long view down our ledge had been there for centuries mostly in this same state of repose. This peace was ours.

We had just enough water for breakfast, which is as it should be. Don’t carry unnecessary weight. Despite things seeming as they should be, we didn’t know what we were headed toward. 

The looming of crossing that roaring creek, a river really, was a haunting menace. We knew we must get on the other side. We hiked higher over rocks, big ones, often rolling them unexpectedly. We were almost exhausted of water. All this uncertainty plagued us. Until I turned a corner and there it was: A Bridge. The most exquisite bridge. Cheers. Our trail ended and we walked over raging waters on our first bridge on the John Muir Trail, JMT. Accessible water awaited us. The terrain seemed almost flat. And real camps with totally flat tent sites were along the waterside. We chose a beautiful four site camp to ourselves.