Journal pages, no. 8

July 16, 2012, Day 8 - 1.4 miles:  

We caught the ferry to Vermillion Valley Resort (VVR). A great group of weekend backpackers paid for our one-way $11 ferry ride (we realized after they ate breakfast and left). The lunch was incredible. A man gave Ben his sleeping pad. We met 3 other southbounders - 2 of them stayed the night (Noah's Arc and Ice Man). Amble On hiked back to the trailhead with us. He's 70 y.o. Trail Magic Monday!

*problems with photos; will update*

Cleaning up after dinner, waiting for the next morning's ferry to VVR.

On food:

As we approached this hike, the food situation baffled us. We had done plenty of personal research on thru-hiking, so we understood the concept of restocks and food packages, but on other trails, particularly, the Appalachian Trail, restocking options often come with towns with grocery stores, so planning food for your entire trip isn't necessary. The JMT is very isolated because access to most nearby towns requires a hefty hike out of the Sierras via a mountain pass. Also, because it's bear country, every hiker is required to carry a bear-proof container of some kind for food and other smellables. The exception is Mammoth Lakes, a mountain town with easy access because of Devil's Postpile National Monument, which sits on or near the trail. For a few bucks, hikers can take a bus into Mammoth, where food and gear stores abound. For us, Mammoth was Day 5 of the hike. 

A short hike from there is Vermillion Valley Resort, which is a resort on a lake that runs on generators and caters to hikers and fishermen. They drive three hours to the next viable town / city to buy supplies each week. They have a corner store-style market that has some useful essentials for hikers, but you're at the mercy of what they think you'll want or need. They also have food barrels where hikers can unload unwanted or unnecessary food they were carrying. The barrels' contents are up for grabs to anyone coming in looking for food. We didn't plan to stop at VVR, but because of Ben's sleeping pad, we made a detour. We had restocked in Mammoth, but decided to check through the bins and replenish once again while we had access to a store. Our mission was a sleeping pad, which they didn't carry. We were blessed by serious trail magic as we encountered a man who was eager to help us in any way he could find, which happened to include gifting a foam sleeping pad to Ben. It would never make the go-lite list, but he could sleep, and we could continue our trek. Our plan A was to find a hitch to take us three hours to the nearest gear shop and another to take us three hours back to the trail. 

Another couple of days from VVR, we passed the Muir Trail Ranch. This place holds your resupply bucket in exchange for $55 when you get there. The effort they put into bringing in your resupply (via USPS in a 5 gallon bucket) is commendable and probably worth the money, but also sucks. The ranch is also considered the halfway point on the trail, so by deciding to pass it and it's high-priced luxuries by, we were committing to make the rest of the hike with what we had in our bear vaults. If you click the link, you'll see that the ones we packed (on the left) are half the size of those we saw carried by everyone else. So by skipping the ranch, we were committed to hauling it.

We experienced great things with our food choices, though. Not the food, per say... altitude and strenuous activity tends to mess with an appetite. The entire trip, we survived on cheese, crackers, gorp, snickers, starbursts, jolly ranchers, tortillas, and peanut butter. For dinner, we always cooked. We shared Pasta Sides or the random freeze-dried meal. My favorite was mashed potatoes and stuffing. We never ate enough, but we survived. Ben learned to pay attention to his intake because he would suddenly crash and require an immediate sugar burst. We dreamed about fast food like crazy, memorizing our orders for when we finished the trail. We reminisced about MN State Fair food with a guy we met from Minnesota.

Sorry, I got sidetracked - we experienced great things because of our food. No. 1, we learned to embrace trade-offs. We chose to hike light, and we owned that choice. No. 2, we made friends with people who offered us some of their food. No. 3, we learned that when you have the space to fill, you'll fill it, even with crappy food you'll never want to eat. And it will go bad. More than once, we were offered food by people who were dying to give it away to lighten their packs. One of them gave us moldy cheese. Another gave us a gallon-size bag of granola. These were people out there for four days, max, carrying more food than we carried at any given point in our 14-day trip. No. 4, we received tons of compliments on the size of our packs, including from a ranger who wondered if we could possibly have bear-proof containers at all. While hiking, it's our goal to go without. It made us more thankful for kindness, friendship, and food. It gave us something to laugh about. It made for great memories. We focused on what we were doing - hiking sunrise to sunset - and we loved it. We also learned that "food is fuel" is not our mantra. We love delicious food. At home, that's fresh cooked with fresh ingredients. On trail, it's fat and sugar in any form we can get it. It's interesting to see the difference access and privilege make in meal planning.




Catch up: read the JMT journal pages nos. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 7