John Muir Trail Day 15 Pt. 2: Being a Police Officer Again When the Trail Asked

It was Day 15 on the John Muir Trail and our pace was fast as we crossed over a river that delivered us from Kings Canyon National Park into the Sierra National Forest/John Muir Wilderness in just a few steps. We were inexplicably energetic as we headed toward Muir Trail Ranch. This would be our second resupply and, although we would not be sleeping in a real bed, taking hot showers, doing laundry, or eating a hot meal, we were still excited for some reason.

Our Second Resupply 

Within 1.8 miles, we hit a fork in the trail, routing us off the JMT and onto a rough dirt path obviously used for horses and pack animals from MTR. With every step, I unwillingly breathed in that infamous Sierra Nevada dust that covered every inch of me, my clothes, my backpack and the interior of my lungs. It didn’t matter though, I had big plans to dive straight into the river that passed the forest service campgrounds where we would be pitching our tent that night. All that dirt would be gone with the river.We passed several hopeful signs indicating MTR was just up ahead as the trail continued to drop us steeply into a dense, dry forest. In the back of my mind, I began to prepare myself for this same steep climb we would have to tackle the very next day. We’ll get there when we get there, I thought and tried to put it out of my mind.We passed one more set of hand-painted signs and realized, after a bend in the path, that we had finally arrived at MTR…or rather the back door. Since we had opted to use MTR for its resupply services only, we would be allowed to use their tables to organize our full resupply and repack. 

They did not allow hikers to camp onsite, use their bathrooms, showers or any other services. We knew that this was the way it went for this particular resupply location, having made the choice to avoid the obscene pricing of their services long before we got there.We made quick work of unloading what was left of our food supply from our packs, donating what we didn’t want to the many overflowing Hiker Boxes. 

Once we won our game of bear can Tetris by strategically cramming our food stores into the cylindrical interior, we hefted our packs loosely on our backs and headed off of the private property owned by MTR.

Camping Next to Muir Trail Ranch

We walked the short distance to cross onto forest service land, following the signs pointing the way to an established and heavily used campground where we would be staying for the night.

Looking around, I urged my husband Cliff to find a campsite away from the large, noisy groups already taking up most of the area nearest the river. We found a site, as far away from other people as we could manage and set up our tent in record time. I was desperate to be clean and looked longingly to the tiny bottle of eco-friendly/biodegradable soap I eagerly swiped from our resupply bucket to use ASAP. Cliff saw me gazing at the soap bottle and grabbed our tent’s unused rain fly and began to rig up a privacy screen in the treeline near our tent. I was overjoyed and insanely grateful for his thoughtfulness, ecstatic despite the task ahead of me.

There’s something about a thru-hike that made me appreciate the ease with which we can all quickly access the necessities in life. In this moment, standing behind a rain fly draped in the treeline, completely naked, I was truly grateful to not have to balance in a home improvement branded bucket every time I wanted to be clean. Clean was the goal, though, and if this is what it took, I would gladly do it.  

Being a Police Officer Again When the Trail Asked

I was just drying off with the world’s smallest camp towel and holding my clothes to my naked front when a scared woman popped around my rain fly privacy screen and said urgently, “I need your help. Can you please help me?

To this day, I don’t know how she found me in the fairly large campground, hidden in the treeline, but, in that moment, it just didn’t matter. 

I went from half-naked hiker trash to the police officer I used to be in a split second as 13.5 years of training and instincts rose to the surface to respond instantly.

“Yes,” I told her immediately and asked the necessary questions to know what steps to take next. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“There’s a man that’s been following me since Red’s Meadow and he won’t leave me alone,” she told me.

“Is he here now?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, voice turning wobbly. “Can I please camp near you? I just need help until tomorrow when I can hike out to catch the ferry. I’m going to quit my hike.”  

And then her head dropped as she started to quietly cry.

“I’m so sorry this is happening to you and of course you can camp by us,” I told her.  

I then pointed to my husband, Cliff, who was also a resigned police officer of 14 years, had been puttering around our tent, nearby, but was now watching us both, no doubt having heard us talking. I said, “That’s my husband and that’s our tent. Let me get dressed and then we can help you get set up.” She nodded and tiredly trudged towards Cliff who pointed to an empty campsite just a few feet away from our own and talked quietly with her.

I quickly wrestled some unused base layers on my wet body, ditched the bucket full of dark, dirty water into the underbrush, tossed my dirty hiking clothes into the bucket to be washed and tromped out of my makeshift shower stall. I walked towards the woman who had ditched her backpack onto the ground to claim the space and looked around forlornly.

I walked towards her and asked, “Do you see the guy right now?”

She looked past me, to the other side of our tent and, with a nod of her head, she quietly indicated that he was close by and setting up his tent a mere 15 feet away from our own.

The Beginning of the End of Her Hike

We walked a ways away, towards the treeline, as she quietly told me that the guy had been nice, at first, and she befriended him because he seemed to be a fellow solo JMT hiker who was desperate for human interaction. 

But then he started to touch her. 

She became uncomfortable with the unwanted, but seemingly innocent touching, until he asked for a hug. Once she reluctantly gave him one, he treated the intended one-time hug as a carte blanche agreement and he would not stop trying to full body hug her until she told him that she was no longer comfortable with his insistent physical contact. Bluntly, she told him to stop.

He took offense and placed the blame on her, expecting a full explanation to sooth his hurt feelings. She attempted to explain but…

“It didn’t help and now he’s following me from campground to campground. He keeps setting up his tent near me. I’m scared to camp alone. At some point, I’m going to hit a campsite where there’s no one else around. What if he insists on setting up a tent near me?  What if we’re alone at night together?” she asked desperately. “I don’t know what else to do but quit my hike and just finish it next year.”

“I am so sorry,” I told her, “that his actions have ruined your hike and that your only option to keep yourself safe is to quit because of his behavior.”

She wiped her face and attempted to question her own reactions to him, mentioning a JMT Facebook group where other women hikers, currently on the trail, had also reported similar inappropriate and unwanted exchanges with this same man. 

We talked for a bit longer, until she got up and walked to her backpack to unload her one person tent. I began to watch the man at the center of our conversation as he watched the woman who asked for my help.

Diligently Preparing,Watching and Waiting

For the rest of the evening, I kept an eye on him, waiting for him to give in and act on one of the countless times his gaze moved in the direction of the woman camped so near our own tent. At one point, I let him catch me watching him after he gazed for several minutes at her. I comfortably stared back waiting while allowing him to decide on a course of action. Should he have started in her direction, I would have intercepted him and we would have had a constructive conversation about his now well known and documented reputation on the JMT and the network of women (their own stories unknown to me) who had entire conversations, full of warnings, about his behavior. 

He chose to not go near her and never attempted to speak with me.

Before we crawled into our tent that night, we invited the woman to hike out with us the next morning, as opposed to quitting. I added gently that we were headed northbound on the JMT. She thanked us and said she was set on her decision to quit her hike and was headed west, early the next morning, for a reservation she made, via her Garmin InReach, on a ferry.

Cliff and I settled into our tent, void of its usual rain fly and open to the night. It was the only way to keep watch on her tent and keep tabs on the man who had created so much turmoil. No, there would be no sleep to be had that night and I was okay with that. She’d asked me for help and I would do whatever I could to help for the brief time she was in our company.

Parting Ways the Next Morning

When the sun began to light up the sky the next morning, I watched as the woman climbed out of her tent and began to quietly breakdown camp. I quietly wished her well when she hoisted her backpack and looked towards our tent to bid us goodbye. She hiked silently out of the campgrounds and was well on her way, an hour down the trail before the man ever emerged from his tent.

We made breakfast and packed up camp, also leaving before the man did. We were happy to get back to the JMT and on our way, silently hoping, as we hiked out that the woman might try the JMT again and that her experience would be a much better one that next time around.

Blog Post End Note:

Muir Trail Ranch does not manage the campgrounds where we were located. The management responsibility fell on the Sierra National Forest and their law enforcement agency. Should the woman, who asked for our help, have decided she needed and wanted to report her interactions with the man, we would have of course helped her. Ultimately, as the identified victim of any law broken, she would have had to identify herself as such and no one would be allowed, legally, to do it on her behalf. Options were presented to her, at the time, and control of the decision was left to her. Once she left the campgrounds, I had no more contact with her and do not know what the online and trail network of women ultimately did in regard to his chronic misbehavior.  Some names were kept anonymous for a reason.

Stats for the Hiker Nerds (Like You and I)

Day 15- August 31, 2024 

McClure Meadow to Muir Trail Ranch

Mountain Pass/Summit: N/A

Elevation Gain: 320′

Elevation Loss: 2,349′

Mileage: 11.7

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