Again I find myself unmoored in time out here. Drifting through this sea of mountains, carried along in the currents of passageways that admit me from one eddying basin to another. I bump along, bouncing off rocks and slipping along snow, trodding up and down and up and down as the tides go. And what day is it even? I ran into a pair of climbers today and couldn’t rightly say how many days I’ve been out. I said nineteen. Apparently it’s eighteen, so the blog tells me. This written record is an anchor draped over the many days out here that blend together so thoroughly that sometimes I feel I am living only in one tiny moment.
No bears bothered my sleep last night, but I had set up my tent on a slant and that, like bears, can be a sleep wrecker as all night I feel gravity sliding me off my ground pad and into the tent wall. Still, it was warm down there at 10,000 feet, among the pines and next to babbling Bubb’s Creek.
After rising and packing and setting off, I had only a few more miles of John Muir Trail, traveling up-creek past all of the camps of the trail’s denizens, many of them not up yet, their tents like giant colorful marbles dotting the glacier-polished granite slabs lining the cheerful waterway.
I was looking for an unsigned and apparently difficult-to-find turn-off onto what used to be the John Muir Trail around the east side of Center Peak, before it was abandoned and the trail rerouted around the west side of Center Peak and over Forester Pass. Though I thought I was prepared to look when the time came, the time actually came and I wasn’t looking (isn’t that how it always goes). I missed the junction and realized it when I arrived at a stream crossing the trail (this whole scenario–missing the junction and realizing it when arriving at the stream, is laid out in the route description by Dixon and Wilson). So I turned uphill, flitting among boulders until I intercepted the trail. It was decommissioned long ago and well-hidden at the junction, but a very obvious foot path where I found it, even sporting some foot prints. I climbed up along the trail for 3000 feet, passing beautiful Golden Bear Lake with a sign from a park biologist saying there are nets in the lake to remove nonnative fish, and not to swim there. I could see the nets bobbing along in the clear, shallow water near the shore, but no fish. I am impressed with human beings sometimes, the efforts and care we put into small scraps of land on this planet. Fighting the good fight they are.
I climbed and climbed, up past thick swarms of gnats that seemed to follow me in a cloud for several hundred feet up, flying into my mouth as a breathed, into my ears and buzzing around, and making me feel solidly insane. Once I gained a prominent ridge and left the gnats behind (hallelujah), I could see JMT hikers toiling up the long trail to Forester Pass, the highest pass on the JMT at some 13000 feet. Like little ants far below me, or perhaps Orcs on their way up to Sauron’s tower. Their bodies were just specks struggling across a rough topography. I wondered as I climbed the ridge toward my own pass, Junction Pass at 13300 ft, if they could see me toiling upwards in turn. Just as I was about to top out, I was surprised to see a hiker drop towards me, a guy from Portland out wandering around in the mountains with no particular plan. We had a brief chat, both amused at the unexpected encounter, and then I went up and he went down. I took a little break on top next to an old wooden sign still erected from the trail was routed this way, before it was moth-balled. Though it’s been many years since it was cared for, the trail had been in decent shape so far, with a mostly followable tread and even some cairns to clarify the overgrown parts.
Dropping off the other side of the pass, towards the eastern side of the Sierra Crest, was another matter. Though I could follow some semblance of the trail, or at least a morass of footprints in the sand for a while, very soon it was nothing but sand and rock dropping precipitously to a canyon bottom beneath Junction Peak. Going down was like tobagonning on one shoe at a time. I made it with nary a mishap though with abundant sand in my shoes. After shaking them out, I had the good fortune to continue on snow for much of the next mile as the canyon descended eastward, getting in some of my best glissading yet, feeling long stretches of ground slip quickly beneath my skiing feet and wind blowing in my hair.
The snow situation has changed dramatically from a week ago, north of Red’s Meadow, where there was an enormous amount of lingering snow. As I’ve traveled south, the snow has become patchier, less intrusive, and I’ve hardly needed my microspikes or ice axe at all. Partly there has been more time for snow to melt, but also it seems like there was overall less accumulation further south in the range.
Eventually this fortuitous snow at the bottom of the canyon ended, and I navigated some rolling talus heaps before the canyon spilled out into another, bigger one. The mothballed JMT reappeared briefly at this junction of canyons, and I followed it down into the bigger canyon before bidding it goodbye and cutting across a talus slope to pick up the Shepard Pass Trail, heads back over the crest and returns to the west side.
Even though there isn’t as much snow, still there can be some troublesome patches holding to life in inopportune places. Just such a large snow field covered much of the steep trail in the last 500 feet of ascent before the Shepard Pass, forcing me over onto a scree slope that became less and less supportive as I climbed higher. Nearing the top, I could see remnants of the trail, which looks like it was well constructed once but had been almost obliterated by a dirt and rock slide. All those hours of labor by a trail crew, slid away in one season. Human bodies are puny in the mountains, constantly getting pushed one way or another by the smallest of obstacles. A few extra degrees on a snowfield and suddenly it is impassable.
From the top of the pass the view east into Owen’s Valley was stunning. I always savor being able to look that way, down many many thousands of feet to the valley floor, and across to the arid White Mountains. After taking it in, I descended a high basin carpeted in tundra and dotted with stones before cutting off the trail to cross another pass, this one also blocked by a troublesome snow field. In exasperation, I microspiked my feet and just climbed straight up, though it felt precariously steep as I went and a slip seemed both likely and dangerous. I made it to the top without one, thankful my rashness went unpunished, skirted the edge of the snow, and had a sweet gentle descent into Wright’s Lakes basin, a beautiful and soft place of tundra, lakes, and gnarled old, dead pines standing in groves.
As I was looking for a place to camp, I leapt across an outlet stream for one of the lakes and slipped in lake muck on the far side of the jump, fell backwards, and covered my pack and legs in mud. After choosing a spot to camp, I stripped off my pants and rinsed them off in the lake, but as I was working them with my hands I felt a small object in the pocket. It was my MP3 player, stowed there earlier in the day. I don’t use it often, but it is powerful medicine out here when I’m exhausted and have a long climb, or am facing an extended section of dreary trail miles, or I’m feeling particularly lonely or sad. Losing it would be a shame. I pulled it out and have been trying to let it dry, first in the sun and then in my pocket, and tomorrow sometime I’ll try to turn it on and hope for the best.
I usually stand outside and write my blog posts as it gets dark, and though I begin as the sun is setting and the sky is richly hued, by the time I’m done the world around me has grown black, hulking shadows of mountains under a tent of infinite stars. The moon tonight is a hearty quarter, a bright crescent but not enough to shed any light here on earth. In the dark, the ever-present sounds of flowing water become more varied, with over and under tones, as though conveying information the way the murmur of speech does.
I tried to take it easy today, despite climbing three passes, and hope to tomorrow as well. I think the fatigue will endure until a good rest day, but it was a lovely day to spend walking, resting, walking, resting.
Descending from Junction Pass
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