Today we would finish the remaining 18 miles on the John Muir Trail. For Jeannie this would be her last hiking for awhile as she was going home to be with her boyfriend as he recovers from a series of foot injuries. We had celebrated her last day with the half liter of wine last night, and this morning a 6 point buck greeted her in camp. For once her camera worked and she was able to get a photo. I was still a little drowsy and never managed a good shot... We packed slowly, and I think despite all the hardship out here, it would be hard to cut it short at this point. I still feel like I have a lot of good hiking left in me. Within a short time though, I became quite jealous that this would be Jeannie's last day, as the mosquitos started swarming us and making life miserable. The worst was definitely Sunrise Meadow, where the trees each projected a high pitched hum, and hundreds of the pests buzzed around us biting at any opportunity. The meadow was gorgeous, but we practically ran through it to escape all 8 million of these evil guys. Actually, I think they were girls, because only the females need blood to feed their eggs. My humorous interpretation was that mosquitos are just like people, where the women all seem to be out for blood, while Jeannie said that 'at least mosquitos are the only creature where all the males aren't bugging you'. We had a good laugh over this one, while still trying our hardest to hike our way out of the swarm. Around noon I flipped on my cellphone to hear if my Dad had landed in Sacramento yet. Turns out he accidentally booked a flight for 9pm instead of 9am, so he was trying to standby on an earlier flight and would be here late tonight or tomorrow morning. Well that took all the pressure off me to finish today, but Jeannie still needed to catch teh 5:00 bus to Tuolumne and then on to Mammoth Lakes where she would start making her way back to L.A. As the day passed it was clear we would be fine to make it to the bottom by 5, but not necessarily to the bus stop, which was an indeterminate distance further from the trailhead. With about 5 miles to go Jeannie just took off, worried she might miss the bus, and I did my best to stay within sight of her. That was really tough, and the worst was when I lost her for a minute then came to a trail junction - one way was longer but was the official JMT, the other was shorter and more scenic. I figured she probably took the JMT, so guessed it would be the right way to go. I went another 20 minutes before I finally caught her resting on the side, and the whole time I was thinking she must've taken the other route.
After this she got ahead again, and coming upon a group of trail riders they let her pass but got going again before I could pass as well. I didn't expect this, but they were MUCH slower than my hiking pace, so I was forced to leisurely walk behind while chatting with a pair of hikers similarly caught. I guess the reason for the slowness was the inexperienced riders who were uncomfortable on their mounts. One was out from NY and the other came down from the Trinity Alps region of Northern California. When we could finally pass the riders we took off once more, and I was surprised that these two hikers could keep up with me easily, and in fact did much better on the downhills because they were more nimble without the big load I was carrying. At the bottom I caught up to Jeannie again, who had figured out where to go for the bus. Despite officially finishing the offical 224 miles of the JMT, there was no time for celebration as we had only 15 minutes until the bus left. The two hikers I had chatted with offered us a ride over to the bus stop, and we gladly accepted. They had been out for a week just driving around and hiking to different backwoods areas, including a couple sweet hot springs they told us about. When they dropped us at the bus stop we were loudly greeted by Fool and Joe who were waiting for the same bus as we were taking. We got to talk to them the whole way back up the hill for two hours. It was neat hearing about their hiking experiences, when they had been only a day or two ahead of us. Turns out that the tracks up the wrong pass next to Mather had been from Fool, Avocado and Muumuu, and that had been the major reason that Avocado and Muumuu decided to get off trail. They had hiked all day got to the top, realized it was wrong, turned back and hiked into the late evening by headlamp to net a total of seven miles. Wow, that sounded so much worse than the short detours that Jeannie and I had taken... Fool would be heading north tomorrow, and Joe was also headed back to Mammoth Lakes, so at Tuolumne Fool and I got off while Jeannie and Joe continued on the bus. Neat how the pairings on trail can switch so quickly and seamlessly.
Fool and I grabbed some dinner food at the store, including my celebratory 22oz beer for finishing the John Muir Trail, then we went over to the backpackers camp, where some nice folks let us camp at their site since we couldn't find one that was open. Tonight I wouldn't have to worry about my food since there was a bear-proof locker at the site, and everything outside my tent was crammed into that for protection from the wildlife. Tomorrow Fool would take off and I would meet up with my dad to get going on the final leg of my journey this summer.
Miles Today: (18 John Muir Trail)
Trip Mileage*: 1001^
PCT Mile Marker*: 942
*From here on out ‘Trip Mileage’ will be the total distance I have walked, and the ‘PCT Mile Marker’ will be my current location on trail. Up til now they have been the same, but that is no longer the case due to my impending jump ahead.
^Trip mileage calculated as 942 PCT miles Mexico to Tuolumne Meadows, 24 JMT miles Tuolumne Meadows to Yosemite Valley, 18 miles out and back Kearsarge Pass, 17 miles up and down Mt Whitney, smaller side trips not included in the total)
Photo: Half Dome, which sadly I didn't have time to climb
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