My JMT origin story … take two

Rolf looking out over Mono Lake, 1987

Sophie and Rolf

A year ago I was reaching my final stages of preparing for a dream hike of mine: the John Muir Trail. I’d dialed in my gear. I’d gotten (reasonably) in hiker shape. I’d even sent out all my resupply boxes … correction: buckets, because on the JMT most resupply places require you to pack your food in plastic buckets. Whatever.

But then disaster struck. For four years, since I retired right before the pandemic hit, I’d been a volunteer park patroller and had hiked hundreds of miles with my trusty companion: my golden retriever Sophie. She was the best buddy anyone could have on the trail: friendly to all, always in a good mood and ready for more … man oh man I loved that dog. She was a certified “Bark Patroller” for one of the agencies I volunteered for, and she was always good for a smile by all on the trail.

And then, at just age 4-1/2, and just a month before I was going to head out on the trail, Sophie became seriously ill. For the longest time we couldn’t figure out what it was: Lyme disease? Some other infection? CAT scans and ultrasounds showed nothing. But she got progressively worse and worse, until she could hardly hobble around our house. I had to call off my trip. There was no way I could be away – to leave my wife and Sophie alone – while she was this sick.

I forfeited my resupplies and some other reservations, but I would have done so a hundred times over if only Sophie would get better. But she just kept getting worse. We were heartbroken. And then, on our last visit to the veterinary ER, we got the dreaded word: Sophie had a lymphoma (i.e., cancer) in her spine, where it hadn’t been seen before. It was painful and unavoidably deadly. I slept on the floor next to Sophie because she was in too much pain even to crawl into her crate. We called for a veterinarian to come to our home to put her down.

I’ll never, ever forget how Sophie died as we were out in our backyard on a warm August night. All we could hear were the crickets. I stood on our grass. Sophie wandered over slowly, and collapsed right on top of my feet. It was as if she wanted to be as close to me as possible in her final moments. I crouched down and stroked her, and so did my wife, as the veterinarian arrived to put our dear pup out of her misery.

It was typical Sophie that even as she was undoubtedly in terrible agony, she wagged her tail at this new visitor. That’s the kind of dog she was …

Before Sophie got sick, I’d written a blog last year called “My John Muir Trail Origin Story.” After Sophie died I decided that I still wanted to hike the JMT, for all the reasons I’d set forth in my blog … but now with the added incentive that I want to do this for Sophie. I have some of her sweet-smelling fur left, and I’m going to carry it with me in an (ultralight, no doubt) envelope. Maybe I’ll scatter her fur someplace meaningful; I don’t know. But Sophie will be with me on this trip, that’s for sure. As will my dear wife and our two sons.

So … I have lots to write about before my buddy and I start hiking the trail. Because this year, I’m hiking with a buddy, and we’re going northbound rather than southbound. I can’t wait! And I have lots to tell about our preparations and plans.

But for now, please indulge me, dear reader, as I pretty much just cut and paste last year’s “origin story”:

It’s July 1987. A footloose 29-year-old with a 60-pound North Face external-frame backpack (yes, they made those back then) and heavy Asolo leather boots plods his way from Guitar Lake up to the summit of Mount Whitney in California. I’m counting my steps: every fifty steps I have to stop and gasp for several minutes, trying to get oxygen into my body. Protecting me from the cold at 14,500 feet is a cheap L.L. Bean rain jacket on which I’ve slathered seam seal and water repellent lotion. And red polypropylene tights. The night before I cowboy-camped on a perfect evening only 1,000 feet below.

I finally reach the summit and collapse. After drinking in the view and taking some snapshots with my film camera and tiny tripod, I find a summit hut with a hiker box: the first such box I’ve ever seen in my life. Inside the box I find a mysterious thing called a “Clif Bar”: also the first I’ve ever seen. It looks like it could be a tasty, or at least edible, reprieve from the Knorr soups, oatmeal, and huge pepperoni logs on which I’ve been living the past several days while hiking northward in the High Sierra. I grab the Clif Bar – the first of hundreds if not thousands I’ll eat over the rest of my life – and leave behind my last unopened, heavy pepperoni. Someone else will enjoy it, I’m sure. Then I begin the long, long descent to the town of Lone Pine.

My 1987 pilgrimage to Mount Whitney was part of a long, ridiculously haphazard route I concocted nearly 40 years ago when, growing tired of being a corporate lawyer in Houston, I chanced upon a book by Peter Jenkins called “A Walk Across America” and decided to quit my job and start long distance hiking. The only other backpacking I’d done in my life was in the early 1970s Boy Scouts, when we hauled along impractical things like D-cell flashlights and Dutch ovens. My gear in 1987 wasn’t much better, though: at nearly seven pounds my pack was the third lightest thing I was carrying after my synthetic sleeping bag and three-person tent.

After a car accident derailed my plans to start hiking at the Mexico border, I’d started my walk in April near Tucson, Arizona, and wound my way northward mainly on small roads until I reached the Grand Canyon: my first experience of true solo trail backpacking. After crossing the canyon I wandered into Utah and somehow made it through several days of backpacking in Zion National Park before striking west toward Nevada.

My plan after Zion had been to backpack for two weeks along Interstate 15 through Nevada, but a day’s walk west of St. George, Utah I realized that I’d surely die attempting that: the 100-degree temperatures were already baking my feet in my cheap black leatherette dime-store boots. I turned back and caught a bus to Barstow, California, where I resumed my walk, hiking northward in the High Sierra before exiting over Mount Whitney.

I can’t remember why I left the wilderness at Mount Whitney. Maybe I simply ran out of food. Anyway, after reaching Lone Pine I kept walking north along abandoned roads paralleling Interstate 395, totally bypassing the John Muir Trail. There were rewards from my curious routefinding: I walked past astonishing Mono Lake with its bizarre mineral formations, and the silent ruins of the Manzanar internment camp where I learned what Americans had done to our Japanese-ancestry fellow citizens during World War II.

I finally left the hot valley and hiked westward and upward to enter Yosemite National Park, again hiking in the backcountry from Tuolomne Meadows for almost a week along the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir: a stretch where I saw more bears (three) than other people (one).

My strange but incredibly fulfilling expedition ended two months later a little south of Portland, Oregon, after I grew tired of the stiff ocean winds always blowing into my left ear as I plodded northward. I talked in more detail about my strange 1987 journey with Juliana Chauncey and Zach Davis on a Backpacker Radio Podcast in early 2022, after I’d retired from gainful employment and thru-hiked the Colorado Trail.

In the last three years I’ve also thru-hiked Colorado’s Collegiate Loop as well as the Benton MacKaye Trail in Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina, and the Four Pass Loop near Aspen. My post-retirement gear now has a base weight of about 15 pounds: less than a third as heavy as my base weight 38 years ago. At 66, I hope that with lightweight gear and at least a semblance of fitness training I’ll be able to backpack more trails for maybe another ten years if I’m lucky. I’ve still got a bucket list of several other long-distance adventures on my mind.

At the top of my list is the John Muir Trail: a stretch of breathtakingly beautiful, rugged terrain that I’d almost surgically excised from my 1987 trip when I left the Sierras at Mount Whitney and rejoined them at Tuolomne Meadows. Last year I was going to hike southward from Tuolomne Meadows to exit over Mount Whitney, but this year I’m going northbound – and adding another 30 or so miles – by starting at Cottonwood Lakes, taking a detour to tag Mt. Whitney, and then finishing at Happy Isles.

I’ve also recruited a companion: my Colorado Trail “trail magic” companion Steve. We’ve doled out trail magic to dozens and dozens of CT hikers, and Steve has hiked the CT twice. He’s a strong, steady outdoorsman and we’ll have a lot of fun together.

To me, this trek will feel like a fitting completion of my Sierra adventures: exploring the parts I’d skipped nearly four decades ago.

So, in early August Steve and I will drive in my car out to Lone Pine and Cottonwood Lakes. Then we’ll hike northward and (hopefully) get buses back from Happy Isles to Lone Pine.

I’ve been planning out my gear, our resupply options, our zero and nero days, and all the other details that go into a thru hike. I’ve been slowly and steadily ramping up my hiking mileage, and I’ve already camped out a few nights to re-test my gear and try some new gadgets. (More on that later.)

I’m very fortunate to be friends with numerous people who’ve already thru-hiked the JMT – and in two cases have vlogged extensively about it: Audrey Payne (a recent Backpacker Radio guest who’s currently on a PCT thru-hike, and whose book “Where the Rhododendrons Bloom” is an AT-hike classic); Colorado Trail and general thru-hiking expert Jared Champion (his Outside Comfort Zone YouTube channel is incredibly helpful to CT hikers), and one of my CT tramily members Su Jane Ling (who thru-hiked the PCT last year), are all JMT-veteran buddies of mine. And I’ve made more such friends over the past several months. Their advice has given me great comfort, as have the many JMT stories I’ve heard and read on The Trek and elsewhere.

So … you’ve just heard my “take two” John Muir Trail origin story. If you’re hiking the JMT in August and see a slightly bewildered and more than slightly intimidated, bespectacled, bald and white-bearded fellow who answers to Rolf or (my trail name) Kinnikinnick, please say hi … and if you happen to have an extra Snickers bar on you I’ll probably be grateful for it. Or a Clif Bar, for that matter. Maybe even a pepperoni log.

I’ll write some more blog entries as I prep for my trip, and as I plod, scramble and wade my way northward to Happy Isles. Here’s wishing all the JMT and PCT thru- and section-hikers this summer wonderful adventures! And profound thanks to all the trailbuilders, rangers and SAR volunteers helping keep us safe and sound.