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Day 1:
Coldwater Campground Trailhead to Mono Creek Trail, 23.1 miles A bit past 7 AM we all piled in the car and drove 5 minutes to the trailhead. It is funny how one may choose to walk for over 100 miles for fun yet not a step further. Shouldering my pack I quickly realized that something was horribly wrong, the female portion of my waist strap was nowhere to be found! A frantic search of the car turned up nothing so in poor spirits we drove the 5 minutes back to the cabin to search. As before, nothing was found and my mind quickly turned from search to salvage mode. The missing piece of plastic fit on 1-1/2” wide webbing. Scoobie had a harness with a similar mechanism but it was only about ¾” wide. I was about to cut it up and rig something when I remembered that my belt was actually a lashing strap! Although it to was only about ¾” wide it was a much better salvage choice. Five minutes later I had a new hip latching mechanism, rigged with 1-1/2” wide webbing passing through ¾” hardware and a leather belt courtesy of my dad. Safety pins also had to be used but I didn’t care; it worked and a crisis was averted. We climbed back into the car and were soon on the trail. Maybe it
was because I had already done some backpacking that year (Grand Canyon
of the Tuolumne over the 4th of July weekend) or perhaps it
was the excitement of it all, but within minutes of starting the hike, a
steady climb up to Duck Pass, I was in a groove. My pack felt
comfortable, my breathing was easy, and my pace was steady. I took up
off the hill with my parents following and Scoobie in between. And then,
while waiting for my parents I had my second calamity; my hat was
missing. Because of
the overcast weather I had stuffed my hat into my belt loop and it had
fallen out at some point. Shit, Shit Shit! Nothing to do but go back and
find it. It would be insanity to hike in the Sierras in August without a
hat. I dropped my pack and started jogging back down the trail and after
about 3 minutes found it and power walked back up, wondering what would
go wrong next.
As it turns
out, the junction was only 20 feet away, and, after hugs and photos, I
set off on my own. This was to
be a first in several ways: my
first long distance hike, my first solo hike, my first attempt at
stealth camping, and my first high daily mileage hike. The solo part, in
conjunction with stealth camping, worried me the most. Stealth camping
is a philosophy almost as much as a technique by which a backpacker
cooks his evening meal and then hikes several miles or hours beyond the
smells of dinner and sets up camp at an out of the way location that has
not been used before. Preferably it is not visible from the trail also
not near a water source such as a lake or river. You then sleep with
your food in your tent and let the bears bother the people who cooked
and camped next to the lake at the spot which has clearly been used
hundreds of times. The
technique is tried and true, having been used successfully by those
adventurous souls who manage to walk from Mexico to Canada via the
Pacific Crest Trail. I didn’t doubt that it would work for me as well,
but I felt a bit selfish for trying it. After all, I had been married
for less than a year, had a very light pack, and was in superior shape.
Bringing a bear canister and the extra 2.7 pounds would have bothered me
mentally more than physically. However, here I was, without a bear
canister or even parachute chord to bear bag. As I
expected, the trail was far from solitary and I met someone within 15
minutes of setting out on my own. He was heading north and after a few
minutes of pleasantries we set out in opposite directions. Within
another 15 minutes I came across two women from San Diego hiking in the
same direction as me. They had started in Yosemite Valley and planned to
hike the whole JMT. I was shocked when they told me that the weather had
been overcast all day with rain and hail for the past two weeks. If
there is one thing that you can count on, it is fine, sunny summer days
in the Sierra’s with occasionally short-lived afternoon thunderstorms.
This was something that I looked forward to; overcast skies were not
part of the bargain. The girls caught up and passed me while I was
huddled in my raingear eating a hasty lunch. During the climb out of
Purple Lake I passed them and never saw them again, but thought about
them often, mainly about how they were cheated by poor weather on their
trip thus far.
Descending the pass after lunch I came to Lake Virginia, and it was truly stunning, even on a shitty day like today. It was a lake set in a rolling green meadow, both of which seemed to go on forever. However, given the weather and the fact that I was hiking alone I didn’t stop. In fact, the next time I stopped for a period greater than a few minutes for dinner was after coming over Silver Pass at around 6 PM. I cooked, ate, cleaned and was on the trail again by 7 PM. Having studied the map during dinner I saw that I had a long downhill, perfect for an after dinner stroll.
However, as
it became darker I began to second-guess myself. I was on a trail but
thought that maybe I had missed a junction. To make matters worse, I was
on a switchback section so the compass was of little use. I pressed on
and finally located myself, about 2 miles north of where I thought I
was. Lesson learned; from that point on I started my stopwatch at all
trail junctions so I could use the ~ 2 or 3 miles per hour estimate for
locating myself. |
