Day #36 Unexpected Trail Family

John Muir Trail Part 5/11 – From Garnet Lake to Junction before Donohue Pass via Thousand Islands Lake (… Miles – will update asap!)

I woke up and noticed that my sleeping bag was damp – the tent ceiling was full of small condensation drops which kept falling down. Even my shoes felt stiff and ice-cold. Frozen dew and dirt clung to every surface. The sun rose and shone on the opposite walls – great. I had a hot chocolate a woman gave to me yesterday as a comfort and to warm up. It was smart to have brought gloves, a fleece buff and a beanie – the trio kept me warm more than once, during hiking or at camp!

I slowly got in motion like a grumpy cat on sleeping pills. The trail couldn‘t have been any more scenic as it rose and fell next to gorgeous crystal clear lakes and soft flowery meadows with white granite boulders strewn in.

I took a break at beautiful but very windy Thousand Islands Lake – I stretched, snacked and decided to hike Island Pass but camp right before Donohue Pass instead of doing both passes in one day.

It was a good decision as the campsite at the junction was one of the best so far – another hiker I met, Cathy, camped here too and gave me good coffee – we agreed to start a fire later as it‘s freezing when the sun hides behind a cloud.

I took my time to take a nap in the sunshine, wash my entire tent and air out everything – tonight I want a clean surrounding and I hope to get more circulation to avoid icicles inside the tent.

A little later, a scruffy-looking guy with a white beard and round glasses in a stained, green windbreaker showed up. He introduced himself as PCT-thru-hiker Jeff. While he set up his tent, I collected firewood. Together, we lit up the fire and soon, other hikers showed up – attracted by the warm glow and Jeff‘s friendly shout-outs to join us. Corey, a girl who wanted to thru-hike the JMT southbound, was relieved when she found us – her feet would hurt so much that she couldn‘t think of finishing the trail. We comforted her and made dinner. That‘s when Sarah, Casey and Savannah (I hope I‘m spelling your names right, girls 🙂 joined us and immediately sat down at the fire. Just like Corey, they looked exhausted after doing Donohue Pass from the more strenuous side.

We chatted into the night and Jeff, father of our spontaneous „trail family“ told entertaining stories and gave us tips about gear and thru-hiking. He has done pretty much all of the US long distance hiking trails and at age 60+ he’s still doing 20+ (!) miles (that’s sometimes a half-marathon im kilometers!) every day on the PCT. Whenever I set up my camp every day, he is still out there, hiking until darkness falls. One of Jeff‘s hiking folklore stories was about „Catwater“, a woman of his age or older, hiking endlessly and since many years. How did she get her name? The legend says, she drank water from a creek where a dead cat was in… in the middle of the Sierras – no idea how the animal got there – she filtered it and deemed it okay to drink. We all shuddered and laughed. The 7 of us exchanged reasons why we chose to hike these trails. It was really good to have company and stay up later instead of curling up in the tent alone at 8.30pm.

On a side note, I‘ve read lots of trip reports and blogs about long distance hiking and some people said both the JMT and the PCT are full of people, toilet paper and trash. I wonder where that comes from. I‘m currently on a section that JMT and PCT share and it‘s not crowded – I meet hikers maybe every 20 minutes or less, sometimes an hour goes by and I don‘t see anyone. As for trash and used toilet paper (which, as a reminder you should pack out = take with you) I saw little bits but nothing that ruined the wilderness experience. I collected any plastic trash that I saw so far.