John Muir Trail 56 Days of Crazy Adventure

By Dave Spivey

One-at-a-time the members of the group started to back out of the hike until there was only one left. Now a decision had to be made – go alone or not to go at all. Ill prepared for a solo adventure, the one decided to go alone anyway! This is how it started. “56 Days of Crazy Adventure” is a log of the happenings of a backcountry hike of a lifetime.
Set in a time when backpacking equipment wasn’t light, no GPS, no cell phones, just a map and a compass. A wilderness permit good for three months, starting in mid June, when there is plenty of snow and ice left in the high Sierras. A starting pack weight of 85 pounds, a slightly overweight and out of shape hiker with the determination and the will to take on the challenge was all that was needed to get the journey going. It is a real life wilderness account for all who want to go on an adventure, for those who never seem to take the first steps out the front door but, who have dreamed of attempting something challenging, which most people long for but never get around to doing.
Two hundred twenty-one miles, ten high mountain passes, numerous stream and river crossings, snow and ice bridges, 80,000 feet of elevation change, a trip to the highest peak in the continental United States – Mount Whitney, bear encounters, people encounters, fantastic natural hot springs, Half Dome, Clouds Rest, and all culminating in Yosemite Valley.
Find out what the Sierra wilderness can do to change a life, how it can bend and fold the body and mind into a new perspective of being. Read about the many individual challenges along the way and how they lead to the ultimate realization of success. Not just a bodily journey, a learning transition from who I was to who I am. It is one person’s account of a wandering, dreaming, and wondering trip through the wilderness. If you ever thought about going on an adventure and still want to, then “John Muir Trail 56 Days of Crazy Adventure” is a book for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Spivey
• Release date: Sep 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301607020

Book preview

Introduction

This is the journal of my first hike along the 221 mile John Muir Trail. Although I have edited and added to the journal writings, I have made a point to try and not embellish or exaggerate the happenings of the adventure. When I wrote this journal, I wrote in snippets of sentences so that I would not have to spend too much of my day and night with a pen in my hand. It was my intention to record my adventure in such a way that I would be able to remember the happenings of the trip after I was back at home. An adventure like this has so many parts to it that I knew I would lose some of the memories of the experiences over time if I didn’t write them down. I have input the original journal, word for word, into another file for safe keeping and for my own verification that I haven’t fibbed about my adventures!

The Muir trail (210.4 miles long) starts at Mount Whitney summit but the nearest trail head is Mount Whitney Portal, 10.6 miles away, and ends in Yosemite Valley. There is a short side trip available along the way to the top of Mount Whitney itself which adds to the attraction of the trail. Mount Whitney summit is the highest point in all of the contiguous United States at 14,497 feet. There are eleven passes (if you count Trail Crest as one of the passes), many fords of creeks, streams, and rivers along the way. There is 80,000 feet of elevation change along the way. It has 38,000 feet of ascent (elevation gain) and 46,000 feet of descent (elevation loss). I had to cross over many high, tall, wide, suspension, stone, steel, wooden, ice, log, and downed bridges. The trail has many sections which traverse snow packs and ice fields all which must be crossed with a heavy pack.

I was fortunate enough to be able to go on a 56 day backpacking trip (my wilderness permit was good for three months!). My intention was to take my time and only travel short distances between overnight stays so I would be able to explore and enjoy the trail and the trip. So many people were covering 15, 20 miles a day and I couldn’t figure out why they wanted to hike this beautiful trail so quickly. I wanted to look around and see the whole trail and not just look at my boots all day long.

A trip like this is not possible without the help and support of many other people. My sister contributed a wonderful jacket for the trip and mom helped with some of the food. Someone had to drive me up to the trailhead and someone had to pick me up at trails end, without their volunteering of time and money, such a hike would not have been possible.

The preparation for such a hike begins months in advance. Originally for this hike three of my friends had planned to go on the hike with me. All three for one reason or another had to back out of the trip. For some it was time they couldn’t spare, for others it was the monetary expenditure which held them back. One of my friends didn’t let me know he was not going until one week before the start of the trip. I was very disappointed in his decision not to go with me but what could I do? All had good intentions to go but, it just was not in the cards for my friends to accompany me.

I was the one who had done all the prep and research for the hike. It was my idea to do this. I had made up a tentative daily itinerary for the entire trip. I was the one person in the group whom had applied for a wilderness permit for all of us to go on a three month trip. I had planned a three month trip into the wilderness and was ready to go, I was still going to go, come-hell-or-high-water! If I had done all the prep work for four; then if the others could not go; why not just go by myself?

I think it is important to put some history into the story of what really motivated me to attempt this adventure. As a child I was lucky enough to have a father and mother who enjoyed being in the outdoors. While growing up our family would go to Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows every summer for a couple of week’s vacation. Dad loved to fish and he instilled his love of fishing into me. He would take me and sometimes my friends on backpacking trips into the mountains for overnight stays. Mom and dad bought a small sailboat one summer and we used it on weekends and sometimes to sail to Catalina Island. It was very slow and it would therefore take us forever to get anywhere but, that didn’t ever stop us from going. Pulling a fourteen foot travel trailer we would go on trips to National Parks and we would even stop at those small roadside attractions along the way. All of these were adventures no smaller than the one I was getting ready to go on, except this time it was me who was doing all the work instead of my parents. I was brought up to be an adventurer, to seek other places, and to explore the world around me, and I dearly thank my parents for giving me that mind set.

I did this hike at the age of twenty-four. Why then? Here are some of the recent events which lead up to my departure. I had dropped out of college, quit a good job because I designed the tooling for parts of a delivery platform and safety for nuclear weapons, got a bad case of the chickenpox, moved to my parents’ Arizona vacation house on the desert and then moved back home to live with them in El Segundo (California), had broken up with my girlfriend, my best friend turned into a Jesus freak, and I was pretty close to being flat broke. I was feeling down because when I was younger I was a pretty good swimmer and water polo player and used to dream of going to the Olympics. The 1980 Olympics were boycotted by the U.S. so if I was going to make the team it would have been this year (although I had dropped out of swimming several years before this adventure and never came close to going to the Olympic trials, my best years were in my younger days). I really needed to get away and find my place in the world and most importantly, get my head straight. All of these things contributed to me wanting and needing to have an adventure. I figured what I wanted was something a little dangerous, mentally and physically challenging and something that I could succeed at to get me back on my feet. My life was in the toilet before I left. I think by having this crazy idea to hike the John Muir Trail it gave me the attention of family and friends that I so dearly needed in my life so I could keep going on with my life. I felt like I was going to be somebody again and all I had to do was finish!

So now I was all about making it happen. Time to get off my poor, sad, feeling-sorry-for-myself ass and do what I knew needed to be done. I had a direction at last! When I returned from the desert I went looking for a new job. I couldn’t find one so, I signed up with a temp agency and began taking any job they offered me. It was frustrating, low paying work but I made enough to be able to start buying my equipment for the trip. I even worked for my brother-in-law for a while as a mason’s tender – that was mindless, back breaking work! Whatever it took to make it happen, I was going to do it!

I began reading anything and everything I could find about the John Muir Trail. I bought a few books and went to the library to find more. I started studying about first aid, equipment, survival skills, varieties of dehydrated foods, how to read the weather, topographical maps, orienteering, flora and fauna, and clothing to take for the hike. What was the best insect repellant? What kind of flies should I buy for fishing, for that matter what would be the best fishing equipment to take? Who made the cheapest and best hiking boots and what kind of soles should they have to meet the needs of a hike like this? Where can I buy cheap dehydrated food and clothing that will last? You get the idea. There were hundreds of things to consider so this was just the right thing to keep my mind focused and occupied on something exciting and not about my meager existence. I had a plan, to add to, and improve my life!

My parents, my parents! They were not at all happy about my going on this trip, dad more so than mom. Dad had brought me home an application to join his local union – The Operating Engineers Union, it wasn’t for me. He wanted me to settle down and gain some direction by working like he had done at my age. We did not talk much about my plans and he gave me very little encouragement or support at home. I understand why he felt like that, it was because here I was twenty-four, and back living at home. He knew that I needed to get my life going, and soon. He was not going to support me for the rest of his life! Mom on the other hand was more supportive of the idea but, she too was worried that I was spinning my wheels and running away from the eventuality which all men had to face – settling down and working for a living. Her words of warning hinted of doom just like a lot of other people but, she was willing to give me a chance to live my life my way and I always respected her for that.

So that is the history of why I wanted to go on this trip. There were of course other smaller contributors to my motivation like just being a little bit selfish in my needs and desires but, everyone has to think about themselves at some point in their lives. It was my life and I was going to do what I thought I needed to do to live it.

The planning of any trip is an exciting process. All of the vivid images of what ‘could’ happen on the adventure began to creep into my mind and fill my head with ‘what ifs’. Preparation for those ‘what ifs’ is what drives one to try and ready themselves as best they can for any potential possibilities, this of course is not possible to do but, the more ready you are, the more likely you will overcome potential problems.

One of the more difficult things for me to prepare for was the fact that all of my fellow hikers had decided not to go on the hike at all. This threw a monkey wrench into the mix. I would have to do everything, make every meal, do my own first aid, do all of the orienteering, and worst of all I would be making all of the dangerous crossings alone. I think that this was the one thing which bothered me the most – no backup help if I got into trouble. Any sane person would have probably dropped the whole idea and waited for a companion who would be able to go with them, not me. In fact I walked the Muir trail again later all by myself!

My family, friends, and assorted other people all told me what a terrible idea it was to attempt a hike of this magnitude alone. They would tell me how I was going to get hurt, lost, or just plain old lonely without someone around to talk to. I actually fed off of their comments and turned it into a motivating opportunity, every time someone said You can’t, I said I will, just watch me! The closer it got to the beginning of the hike I seemed to enjoy all the doubting comments more and more, because I knew they were strengthening me mentally and actually helping me to prepare my mind for what lie ahead. I think for a lot of people jealousy was a factor in how they reacted to my planned excursion, especially my friends. Deep down inside I truly believe that everyone wanted to go with me but, their own fear of the unknown stopped them from being able to support such a crazy idea. Was it crazy, maybe!

This little trip changed my life and in the end all the time spent holding a pen in my hand has paid off tenfold in memories and storytelling. I am really thankful that I kept such a journal, not so much, as it turns out for me but for my family. I am hoping that my mom, sister, wife, and two kids will enjoy the exploits of a young man’s dreams. By the way this was the beginning of a life full of adventures. Many I will write about in the future.

My John Muir Trail Journal

Day 1

Mom and Dad’s House – 100 feet

-to-

Mount