You will notice the title of this
thing is “Veggie on the JMT.” That is
not because I am a staunch vegetarian trying to proselytize the hiking masses and spread the message of more healthy
eating choices or trying to prove that vegetarians can have a better hiking
experience than anyone else. I have been
vegetarian or quasi vegetarian most of my life, but it is a diet I choose for
myself and not something I go about trying to force on others. I hardly even feel very vegetarian these
days, because I will eat fowl when there is not a lot else to eat, and with my
crazy digestive system lately there is not a whole lot I can eat. Anyway, the point of all this rambling is to
explain the Veggie thing. It is very
common for Thru Hikers to take on trail names.
Much like counselors at a summer camp, the hikers either name themselves
with something that appeals to their alter ego, or they get named by someone
else, usually for something distinct about them or something (usually stupid)
that they have done. Einstein, for instance,
stowed his pack high in a tree so he could go drink and party in town, and upon
trying to retrieve it fell down a ravine into poison oak and landed himself in
the hospital. Birdman found a fledgling Peregrine Falcon that sat on his hat or
shoulder for a few days until it got the courage (or strength) to fly off. Our German friend Free Refill was thrilled to
find out about the American phenomenon of getting a free refill when you buy a
soft drink, and was always eager to fill up before he left a restaurant. My
husband is called Snickers because he always had a Snicker bar in his pocket,
and at the end of a hike would pass out any extra to other hikers. He named me Veggie. For someone who has tried hard to maintain a
vegetarian diet but not make a big deal of it, it is a little humiliating, but,
it is my trail name none the less, and it has launched one or two meaningful
conversations, as well as getting me served tofu instead of burgers. The first few days on the trail when you meet
someone and they ask your name, you pause, looking a little stupid, and fumble.
Should I give them my real name, my trail name?
Unsure at first, we almost always offer both names and explain the whole
thing. But after a few days on the trail
I notice we just cheerfully introduce ourselves by our trail names, and I do
think people remember them longer because they are unusual. I actually got to help name a JMT hiker this
year, which was pretty cool. She had been singing Karaoke the night before,
House of the Rising Sun in fact, and had done an awesome job. We decided to call her Rising Sun, which
pleased her very much- she was drawing little sun shines in the dirt with her
poles the rest of the day.
We got dressed in the tent this
morning. It was a little awkward, but we
had neighbors. We don’t set up the tent very often; usually we just lay down
our ground cloth, place our sleeping mats on top of it, and put our sleeping
bags on top. That way we can watch the
sun setting and see the stars at night. This
trip we put up the tent fairly regularly, mostly due to the amount of mosquitoes
we were dealing with and also due to the fact that the JMT has quite a few more
hikers on it than the PCT in general. When we were finally packed up we said goodbye
to Bill and Dave, but not before Bill showed me his fancy Jet Boil cooking
system. I gave Bill a Hello Kitty band
aid for his blisters, we watched the sun reveal its morning light on those same
beautiful mountain spires, and Mark and I headed out for the day.
The first three miles just flew by
as we hiked through some pretty nice country.
The creek that we camped by stayed with us for quite a while: sometimes
right near the trail, sometimes running across it, and sometimes far away in
the valley below. It’s amazing how
quickly a stream can fall off and be way below you, or how quickly you can
catch up to a stream you hear in the distance.
The air was cool, the sun was bright, the wild flowers numerous, and the
hiking pleasant. After a nice water
break we left the stream behind, headed into more sparse woodland and started
ascending. The heat and the incline of
the trail definitely slowed us down and we spent the next five miles expecting
to see the creek again at any minute.
Finally, about four hours later, we stopped at Duck Creek. I waded in to cool my feet and fill up our
water bottles, and in doing so found a nice stand of wild onions. I picked and cleaned a few and cut them up to
serve with our Wasa and cheese. Bill and
Dave were at the same creek. We visited,
compared blisters, shared a little wild onion and then they moved on and we
sunned for just a little longer before we were ready to hit the trail
again.
We climbed again, up to Purple
Lake, still going slow and making our way around, under and over downed trees, but not as bad after the rest, water and food. We saw quite a few PCT hikers too, which
slowed us down as well, because we always like to stop and visit with the
friendly ones, and most of them are. We
share trail conditions and water availability, talk about the upcoming weather
and usually share a story or talk about our destinations. Sometimes they ask if we have seen a
particular hiker, and we are always happy to tell them what we know. I have never met people so comfortable in
their own skin as the thru hikers. They
are tan, lean and seldom out of breath.
They strike a comfortable pose as they stop to visit and move fluidly on
as they resume their hiking pace. I am
often stretching out sore muscles or working on regulating my breath as I stop
to talk.
Arriving at the lake we made some
pudding, soaked our feet and said hi to the Frenchies. (I guess I gave them trail names too) I
thought about going in for a swim, but the wind had picked up and the water was
pretty cold. Instead I took a few
minutes to do some laundry- just socks and my shirt. It seems our breaks are a little longer and
more frequent this hike, which is fine with me! Then it was back on the trail
and up and over and around half a forest of trees. While doing so I composed
and addendum verse to my Hail to the Trail Crew poem.
Oh Where is our Valiant Trail Crew?
Their saws have been buzzing all year But from these branches I’m scaling
and the dead trees left trailing
I’m guessing they’ve not gotten here.
As I mentioned before, the Mammoth
area had gotten hit with some pretty fierce wind storms this winter, and there
were a lot of downed trees. At first we
were told we wouldn’t even be able to camp in that area, and that some of the
trail might even be closed, but those trail crew are fast and sure, and had
most of it taken care of before we got there.
One OCD friend of mine counted 97 trunks that he had to either step over
or around. I didn’t double check his
figures. I was too busy scrambling over tree trunks and watching where i was going.
Lake Virginia was another nice
spot. We had been told by a PCTer that
there were a lot of people camped in and around there, but it is a big lake and
we didn’t see anybody. It was kind of
cool to have the place to ourselves.
There was a lot of heather on the banks, and small butterflies dashed
about, as well as a few dragonflies. The trail goes through, literally, one end
of the lake, so you have to rock hop from boulder to boulder to get through
dry. That looked kind of fun, but with my coordination issues i would probably end up wet anyway, so I just took my socks off and slogged through in my shoes. It felt pretty good, actually. But then there’s the whole ordeal of drying
feet and toes on the other side and making sure everything is in place before
you move on. We took the trail around the lake, and then got to the top of a
steep downhill section. You could look
down to the bottom and see all these trails zig zagging steeply back and forth
in front of you, like the steps of a Mesopotamian Ziggurat or something. The cool thing about this particular downhill
stretch was that there were streams on either side, so we scurried down the
path, rested momentarily in the shade of all the greenery that grows by the
stream, and then scurried to the other side where we rested a moment
again. All I can say is I am sure glad I
wasn’t climbing UP that stretch in the heat of that 90 degree day.
Our original plan for the night was
to camp at Squaw Lake, but since we were pretty tired out from the rigors of
the day’s trail, we found another spot
close to a creek- actually seemed much more like a river to me- and made camp
for the night. We weren’t really very
close to the water source, and I was actually a little grumbly about having to
walk back so far (over some more downed trees) to that mosquito-haven to get
water. I put on my long sleeved shirt, slathered on some repellent, grabbed the
water containers and headed off. After we had made our dinner, some Thru Hikers
stopped by, settled themselves out of the wind at the base of a big boulder at
the edge of our camp, and made themselves dinner too. We visited a little and found out that there
was another creek just a few hundred feet down the trail the other way, which
made me happy, because I still needed to get water for washing up and tomorrow’s
supply. Mark was pretty wiped out and
started snoring, so I got to spend some time playing with my watercolors. Tomorrow we hike in to VVR for our resupply,
which is good, because my snacks are down to a meager supply and I am
completely out of trail mix.
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