Primitive and modern outdoor skills

JMT trip report

2012-08-26

Jess and I throughhiked the JMT August 2'nd to August 18'th. So here's a bit of what happened. P1020345

Jess did the planning for this one, so there should be an article coming on that topic at some point. I'm going to focus on the results ;). Nick, Jess' friend from highschool joined us for the first part of the trip. As background, we loaned him an 8x10 tarp setup, and a thin sleeping pad.

In short, the trip was absolutely gorgeous, I still need to filter through the photos.

The hike starts at 4000 feet in Yosemite, and ends 210.4 miles later (according to wikipedia) at 14500 feet on top of mount Whitney. In between, most days go from ~9000 feet through a pass at ~12000 feet and back. We did ~16 miles most days. In contrast to previous trails there are relatively few trees (just in the valleys) and a lot of marmots. We were surprised at how few birds of prey that are up there. The high Sierra are rather striking in that you regularly can see ~20 miles to where you were or will be, but rarely can see much more than that due to other mountains obscuring the view.

Highlights

More photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smalladventures/sets/72157631148273610/

The whole story:

We really weren't sure how long we'd take, we had 3 mail drops, and Jess and I had off through the 23'rd. Nick had to get back a bit sooner, so figured he'd hitch or grab a bus (more on this is Jess' post). Suffice to say, we had no place to be for bit.