John Muir Trail Day 22: Highest I’ve Ever Been Part 3 (mile 157/211)

Having decided to leave the JMT at mile 158.2 of 211, today would be my last full day on the trail. I enjoyed, savoured it. Early in the trip, up near Garnet Lake, an older gent who was on a repeat JMT hike had reached out his hand for mine. I’d aimed for a hygienic fist-bump, but he took my small fist in his big, soft hand and said, “soak it ALL in on this trail”. Today, I did. 

The Aussie and Georgia and NJ hikers left camp before me; I packed up steadily. What sounded like birdsong was all the different squirrels circling the trees, waiting to have the campsite to themselves. The squirrels are not shy. I left in hot sun, ready for the climb to Mather Pass. The highest pass so far. I drank water, I pressure-breathed, I didn’t have altitude-sickness symptoms (having taken 600mg of ibuprofen and 325mg of aspirin in the last 12 hours). 

Ascending, the landscape became barren and lunar once again. The trail was rubble, vertiginous. Invisible from above and below, the trail’s a secret seam 6 to 12 inches wide, hidden in the landslide. 

It’s a sharp landscape here, the peaks a roman-numeral jumble of X, I and V and the occasional tumbled-down L. I look at the towering crumble-cliffs above the pass, spend an hour climbing towards one with a jagged X across its giant face. Even the valleys here are V-shaped, not the smoother Us of older geography. 

My breath is jagged, too — the higher landscape pixellates out of the blues and greens below, into chunky greys and rust bursts. Even the little glacial-melt lakes up here are steel-coloured from their level, thin aqua from above. I notice a thumb-sized chipmunk eating an ear of grass. Where there’s moisture seeping down the scree, pompoms of yellow grass burgeon, break out of the endless rock. 

The pass is like climbing into the sky, rounding a corner on a slopeside shelf and wedging my pack into a rock crevice so I can stop, look back at the valley I came out of and ahead to the last JMT valley I’ll cross. I meet an Irish gent and his American partner – they’re planning “tea and biccies” on their northbound descent. He quizzes me about my favourite British crisps of the 1980s – what do I think of Monster Munch, what do I miss the most? 

I left the UK in 2004, thinking I’d be in the States for 2-3 years of school only. I don’t feel a strong particular “home” allegiance anywhere at this point, and am aware when I feel homesick-nostalgic for Brituals such as tea & biccies, I’m missing the olden-days not the present – my own childhood, my nuclear family. Here on the trail, most Americans have guessed I’m Aussie (the Aussie gent I camped with last night said most people assume his accent is British). I’m less interested in people’s origin points, and more interested in why we’ve left places, why we’ve stayed elsewhere. 

I was 7 when my family moved to Scotland, our accents no longer matching. I grew taciturn, guarded, sarcastic, angsty. By pretty much any non-financial metric, the emigrant version of me is better – in the States I grew stronger (physically and mentally) than ever before, I got and remained sober, I unlocked a certain fearlessness and willingness to speak up when needed. Although I’ll probably always cringe at the sound of my recorded voice, I added a vocal mic to my stage setup and took advice from a trusted-talented friend on sending my voice through it to the house speakers. A bandmate told me that singers sound out of tune if they’re pronouncing the same words differently, so now I try to match their vowel sounds. 

Before picking up his backpack and hiking on, the Irish guy says, “Whatever we’re looking for, it isn’t out here”. I ask if they need anything for the hike onwards; he asks if I have a cold beer. I laugh, no. Compared to the heavily-laden version of myself climbing out of Yosemite Valley three weeks ago, I feel more open with strangers. Less guarded. I’ve jettisoned many of the things I thought I needed, become stronger and more fearless and more stoic. Accepting that the discomfort and deferring of first-choice wants (a shower, salt-n-vinegar Square crisps, another shower, fluffy scrambled eggs on sourdough toast) allows me the precarious privilege of being up here in the high passes, climbing into and out of the sky. 

A few days before I left for the trail, I was panic-buying dried bag meals in a mountain store tucked in a green, U-shaped Adirondack valley. “Why the JMT?” asked the cashier. “I’ve never been in any landscape like that – I want to see it”, I’d answered. Mincing down the south side of Mather Pass is unprecedented again – it looks like Iceland from the air. Dark rocks, little rust-and-turquoise pools, no trees. I scuttle down implausible switchbacks, across a landslide, and then finally on a flat trail threading between lakes. I’ve run out of sunblock and my right leg is peeling. Someone up ahead has a silver umbrella stretched against the sun. I have my battered UPS hat and a lime-green bandana from Reds Meadows emblazoned with a horse face, horseshoes, ropes. 

I’m striding on a gentle downhill and I’m eating almost the last of my food and then I find myself actually running for a little while, the big pack cinched down tight at my waist and chest, the real-emergency pouch of tourniquet and gauze and tiny trauma shears and painkillers bopping me on the back of the head. I’m wished “Happy Trails” in an Asian accent; I note the colours of the hikers’ outfits. I run into the mum of my shuttle-buddy, who says “it is so nice we get to keep meeting you”. She says I mostly sound American, apart from certain vocabulary. She is a year or two older than my own Mum would have been this year. I like meeting her multiple times, too, and passing the progress report to her daughter when I reach the riverside campsite (“she’s about a mile out, moving well, smiling”). 

I tell them I’m leaving the trail tomorrow, acknowledge that the pass I’m going to use as a cutout is not the optimal choice – incoming hikers have said it’s “brutal” with an elevation change of nearly 6,000ft over 7 miles. I don’t have enough food or enough time to choose a later pass, though. The holiday weekend is coming. I painstakingly text a couple of local “trail angels” from my satellite device. They cannot help with a ride from the trailhead to (any) town.