And so it begins... On Saturday, August 4th, the six of us (me, Mary, Andrea, Anna Marie, Michael, and Kerry) set off on the John Muir Trail from Tuolumne Meadows.…
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.
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Next weekend I start the John Muir Trail. As part of my preparation for the hike I wanted to spend the previous weekend at altitude, but not overdo myself as…
A couple of years ago a hike was profiled in Backpacker Magazine (or maybe it was Outside, I don’t know), and it was said to be one of Yosemite’s unknown and hidden gems where one could get away from the crowds. Of course, by publicizing such a hike, one can no longer expect solitude. Still, I decided it would be a fun and scenic hike to do over five days, and hoped that it would still be less busy than many other trails over the week of July 4th.
The hike is referred to as the ‘Yosemite High Passes Loop’, but it isn’t well known. The core of the hike is a ~35 mile loop that goes over four passes: Merced Pass, Red Peak Pass, Post Peak Pass, and Fernandez Pass. Depending on what trailhead is used for access, one can also throw in another pass or two. We headed in on Saturday, June 30, from the Quartz Mountain Trailhead, making a ~50 mile ‘lollipop’ loop out of the hike, and adding Chiquito Pass to the list.
I headed off to Ten Lakes in Yosemite for an overnight this weekend. It is already so dry, I can't believe that it is still only June! My new Tarptent…
My sister came to visit over the past week, and we spent Tuesday checking out all the tourist sites in Yosemite. It was nice to get to all the viewpoints…
I am woefully out of date in updating this website. Today (May 7) I'm finally getting around to posting some photos from a ski trip two weeks ago. We went…
The forecast was for rain and snow. So what did we do? We decided to go gear testing! We picked a relatively mild low elevation hike to Tiltill Valley in…
We’ve just returned from a John Muir Trail send-off event. Our hiking buddy Paige and her daughter Taylor began their JMT adventure this weekend and we were lucky enough to join them on the first night. They’ll be on the trail for the next three weeks – unfortunately we only had one night to enjoy it. I sure wish I’d been able to head down the trail with them this morning instead of back to the car.
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