John Muir Trail Day 11: Being an Anti-Influencer & UnPro-Hiker from Pinchot Pass to Mather Pass

The morning began cold and crisp at our peaceful campsite. Quaking aspens encircled our little tent, with my side door unzipped to overlook the river and deer grazing on the opposite bank. It was a dream I was drinking in with great gulps, as we packed up to leave, knowing that I would likely never be back to see it again.

(Want to see the people, places and all-around mayhem mentioned in this post? Here’s the Instagram Reel I totally might regret posting…)

That’s kind of the way it goes, I think, as an adventurer. There’s so much to see and do in this vast world and not nearly enough time to ever experience it all, much less to revisit it again. And so, we took in as much as we could, hoping that would be sufficient as we said goodbye but…

Does that actually work? My whole-hearted answer: hardly ever.

We made breakfast and packed up slower than usual, hesitant to leave but knowing we had to, as the faint foot path took us back to the John Muir Trail.

Our goal for the day? We were headed up and over Pinchot Pass to hike as close as we could to the base of Mather Pass.As we hiked, the trail seemed to steadily trend upwards throughout the morning as the sun moved directly overhead. We were both tired and our conversations were sparse but, after 20 years of knowing my hiking partner and husband, the silence was comfortable.

My thoughts strayed to the days when I felt like a pro-hiker, the kind that moved effortlessly, no matter the terrain. In every comic sense of the word conversely, today was not one of those days. 

Nope, today I would be the opposite of an Influencer…an UNprofessional hiker, if you will. Today would be one filled with tripping over every other rock, forgetting my trekking poles even though they were now a natural extension of my arms, absentmindedly managing to not zip or buckle any part of my backpack which made me think back to the high school kid who did the same thing, which resulted in dumping the contents of my backpack onto the stairs during passing period.

Bullying and berating myself, I learned, doesn’t actually help anything at all and so I distracted myself by marveling at the landscape we travelled through, instead. The sky was an intense royal blue which provided the perfect backdrop to painted hills, gorgeous geologic features, alpine lakes, patches of late blooming wildflowers, and stunning summit scenes that led all the way up and over PinchotPass. 

After a quick snack and water break, we moved quickly down the descent and spent all afternoon hiking through the vast mountain valley that spanned the distance between Pinchot and Mather Pass.

We pushed ourselves hard into the evening, evidence of that effort rearing its ugly head in the form of me falling flat on my face in the middle of a river crossing. At the time, there seemed to be no explanation for how it even happened, but there I was being held down by the weight of my backpack as I tried to push up out of the river while struggling like a turtle. 

Seeing my husband watch me while standing dry on the opposite bank of the river had me seeing a violent shade of red and I yelled at him, “Yeah, no problem, I’M FINE!”  He of course asked the question everyone (he, I and all the witnessing marmots) wanted to know: the water was one inch in depth and the probability of getting wet in that one inch of calm, trickling water was so highly unlikely that…well, to sum it up, how did you actually manage to fall in?The answer, though, was obvious. I was profoundly tired which resulted in my footing going to shit. But did we stop? No, we did not.

Onward we hiked in silence, with my anger at clumsily falling into the river fully fueling my progress all the way to another amazingly dreamy campsite at the foot of Mather Pass. We set up our tent near a pair of small alpine lakes framed with a background of an entire mountain range and I thought to myself, this is the night for astrophotography. This is going to be epic.I stuffed the dinner we made into my face, crawled into our tent, climbed into my sleeping quilt and slept the sleep of a person who had exactly one care left to give, which was to my alarmingly full bladder screaming at me sometime during the late night.

I barely managed to struggle my way out of the tent in time to stagger towards a rock before my bladder decided that rupturing was the only option it had left. As I hunkered down in the pitch black, I looked up and saw the Milky Way beginning to come alive in a way that only a truly dark sky, absent of any light pollution, could possibly hope to showcase.

…and I begrudgingly thanked the timing of my bladder and even falling into that damned river if it meant arriving precisely on time to get to witness this perfect moment.

Stats for us hiker nerds

Day 11- August 27, 2024

Foothills of Pinchot Pass to the base of Mather Pass

Mountain Pass/Summit: Pinchot Pass elevation 12,050’

Elevation Gain: 3,869’

Elevation Loss: 1,984’

Mileage: 14-ish

Want to see all the people, places and all-around mayhem mentioned in this post?  Head on over to TikTok and Instagram!