The mountains are calling and I must go. JM
13 July 2010
Like many other early risers, I slept near the Wilderness Permit Office to be one of the first in line when the office opened at 7:30am. The park only issues 25 permits a day and the lines were long on previous drive-bys of this office. My van, equipped with a comfortable cot, was a perfect place to sleep in until the first sounds of slamming car doors and voices became audible at 4am. Judging by condensation on windshields of other cars, I was not the only one who had slept in her vehicle.
It was a cold morning. I had to throw on my fleece jacket and long fleece pants to get in line.
I need't have worried about not getting a permit, though as there were only four of us in line. Ranger Greg had us line up outside and gave us a quick briefing about staying on the trail, packing up everything out that we bring in, camping only on sand (avoiding anything green) and refraining from feeding wildlife, especially the bears. When we got inside the small office to sign our permits, he had us look at a blurry black-and-white photograph showing trail erosion from too many hikers walking next to the muddy trail rather than through it.
"Mud and water won't hurt you" said Greg. I swear he had tears welling up in his eyes as he looked at the eroded trail. Is he more concerned about meadow grass than human safety? I had seen plenty of other trails around Lembert Dome the day before that were eroded by park horses. I kept quiet.
"Anyone want to start today? We have plenty of openings, as many people cancelled their reservations because of the snowpack." A peppy gal behind me, Karen, came forward. She excitedly told Greg and me that she comes to Yosemite every summer to dayhike, and had time to spare before meeting friends down near Whitney later this month.
I ended up joining Karen for coffee at 7:30am to wait for Darlene and Al, who still hadn't arrived yet. Karen and I sat outside at the Grill and chatted. She's a 4th-grade teacher from Bakersfield, CA who is obsessed with the outdoors, especially the High Sierras. A petite woman, she has perfect white teeth and an infectious smile. She also talks a mile a minute.
I was still drinking my coffee when Darlene and Al came up to me at 7:57am. We hugged; Darlene looked just as I expected. Together we went back to the Wilderness Permit office to try to get started today.
And Ranger Greg was there to give us our permits for today! That meant we had to scramble and get our stuff together. Darlene had a cooler with beer, salmon, guacamole and other perishables she had planned on sharing with us tonight. Now that our departure date was moved up by a day she had to get rid of some of her food. We ended up eating a quick breakfast in the parking lot of yogurt, parbaked bread and other goodies.
I was nervous about my performance and apparently so was Al. "You have been acclimated to this altitude?" he asked me.
"Yes, I did a few hikes here in the park in the last two days." But that didn't mean I didn't have selfdoubts about my ability to finish this adventure. When I had my retirement physical I was told I had congenital arthritis in my spine.
I liked Al. Tall and quiet, he followed Darlene and me at a slow pace behind us. He had brought a collapsable fishing rod which he had strapped to his backpack, in the hopes of fishing for trout along our trek and preparing a dinner of trout for us. (He never had a chance to use it.)
We parked our vehicles at the Doghead parking lot a mile south from the permit office, which is also the most eastern terminus for the JMT in Tuolumne Meadows and Yosemite National Park. The lot wasn't full at the time but other hikers were coming as we sorted through our gear. Our vans were parked in the sunlight as we continued to loosen our packs of unnecessary gear, which for me is hard to do. With the slow flat I got somewhere in southern California, I left my van knowing that upon my return I would have a very flat tire.
By 10:24am we were off, heading south through Lyell Canyon. Anticipation grew in me the longer we waited, so I was anxious to get going. The green meadow was saturated with water and there was plenty of traffic coming and going. It didn't even take a park ranger long to come by and check us for permits and bear canisters. He was on a horse who also left plenty of horseapples along the trail. He was tallying people who were dayhiking and thru hiking.
We immediately got introduced to water along the trail. The trail along Lyell Creek was flooded over in many places, and every drainage into the main creek required fording. I kept my sandals on for the rest of the day as that made fording the creeks faster and easier.
"There normally isn't this much water" said Darlene. She took a bad fall early on a slippery log that gave her a deep two-inch cut on her right shin. This cut would bruise her entire lower leg for the rest of her hike. This was not a good start!
Three hours later, still on the Lyell Canyon trail, we stopped for lunch. We had views of the lush green meadow and were surrounded by the sounds of the rushing creek. A yellow-bellied marmot crawled out from behind some rocks to observe us. The marmot would turn out to be the most common animal I would see along the trail.
That is, only if I don't count all the mosquitoes! I try hard to refrain from using DEET because of the insidious characters of the chemicals in that product. However, after a few days along this trail I learned there was only one thing that even repelled these pesky things and that was DEET. My legs and arms were soon covered in welts from the many bites I incurred along the way.
We continued on until almost 6pm up Lyell Canyon as the trail slowly sloped uphill. Our first day on the trail wasn't so bad, but it made for a long day. We camped at the base of Donahue pass, near the creek that normally is passable at the neck of the creek.
I felt a little odd around Al only because he was a man, so I sat by myself and ate some cheese and tortillas. I didn't bother heating up anything warm as I was too tired. Darlene, however, came by and offered me a slice of parbaked bread topped with salmon and guacamole. Although I care neither for salmon or guacamole, I must say the sandwich tasted quite good.
There were a few other couples camped near us. Karen was camped nearby; I found her sitting high on a rock looking into the distance, as if she were meditating on the solitude of nature. She was going to hike back to the parking lot tomorrow and hike another dayhike elsewhere, spending time alone in the wilderness for a few days before she meets her friends further south.
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