Yesterday I returned from two weeks on the John Muir Trail. If I ignore the ~8 miles or so between Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne that I haven’t hiked, I’ve now completed the trail. At the very least, I’ve walked every mile of the trail between Tuolumne and Whitney over two hikes – the stretch from Kearsarge to Muir Trail Ranch was completed last summer, and the past two weeks were spent on the stretches between Tuolumne and North Lake and then Kearsarge to Whitney.

As usual, I had an amazing time on the trail and it was with hesitation that I headed home. I started off on Saturday, August 4th with an enthusiastic group of hikers – Mary, our fearless leader, and Michael, Kerry, Anna Marie, and Andrea. The group slowly shrunk as people left the trail at various points along the way, and I said goodbye to Mary, Michael, and Kerry on the 13th when I headed up Piute canyon. They should be summiting Mt Whitney today or tomorrow – I hope they have as beautiful a climb as I did! I enjoyed nearly every step of the hike – although there were definitely times when I would have liked to have been somewhere else (like that hot descent into MTR, or the last 1000 feet of the 6000 ft descent of Mt Whitney).
I have thousands of photos to sort through, so I’ll likely be posting them one ‘trail day’ at a time, with separate blog entries per day. At first glance I’m happy with the snapshots I got – although the smoke blowing over the Sierra from the Zaca fire didn’t help matters much. It did help create a nice sunset from places like Humphrey’s Basin and Guitar Lake.
I’ll link the following to their respective blog entries when I’m able to put them up.
My itinerary was:

• Day 1, August 4th:Tuolumne to the Footbridge at Lyell Creek
• Day 2, August 5th: Footbridge to Garnet Lake
• Day 3, August 6th: Garnet Lake to Red’s Meadow
• Day 4: August 7th: Red’s Meadow to Deer Creek
• Day 5: August 8th: Deer Creek to Cascade Valley
• Day 6: August 9th: Cascade Valley to Vermillion Valley Resort
• Day 7: August 10th: Layover at VVR
• Day 8: August 11th: VVR to Rosemarie Meadow
• Day 9: August 12th: Rosemarie Meadow to Piute Creek Bridge
• Day 10: August 13th: Piute Creek Bridge to Upper Golden Trout Lake
• Day 11: August 14th: Upper Golden Trout Lake to North Lake (and into Bishop)
• Day 12: August 15th: Car shuttling, then Onion Valley to Vidette Meadow
• Day 13: August 16th: Vidette Meadow, over Forester Pass and to Tyndall Creek
• Day 14: August 17th: Tyndall Creek to Guitar Lake
• Day 15: August 18th: Guitar Lake to Whitney Portal, with the side trip to the summit of Mt Whitney