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    Home

    John Muir Trail 2022

    Daily dispatches and photos from the John Muir Trail, a 210-mile footpath running from Mt. Whitney to Yosemite Valley through the heart of the High Sierra.

    Out of the Cathedral

    Liberty Cap and Nevada Falls

    There was no way around it. This was gonna hurt. For a trail that runs 211 miles, ending on the summit of the highest point in the Continental U.S., you don’t expect the first day to be the one with the longest and largest climb. And yet, that’s exactly how the John Muir Trail introduces you to the scenery of the High Sierra: by exacting a pound of flesh.

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    The Other Side of Yosemite

    Cathedral Peak

    The Sierra must be seen to be fully believed. And Yosemite is the beating heart of that Sierra. Of the more than 4 million annual visitors to Yosemite National Park, the vast majority never leave Yosemite Valley, however. With highlights known the world over—El Capitan, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, Glacier Point—you can hardly blame them.

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    A Banner Day

    Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake

    From our perch on a hidden bench above the trail, the same soundtrack that had lulled us to sleep was now the first to greet us. There’s something a little comforting about it. That while you’ve been asleep, the gears of nature have kept turning, almost completely unchanged. That everything is, by all appearances, exactly the way you’d left it the day before.

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    Troubled Horizon

    Sierra juniper

    When dawn broke, it started by touching only the tops of the mountains surrounding our camp, before spilling down the flanks of granite to where we lie in our hammocks. It was nature opening the blinds.

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    A Tale of Two Winters

    Trail leading to Silver Pass

    The Sierra Nevada—literally, “the snowy mountains”—has recently begun to challenge its very name. In the past twenty years or more, the cyclical nature of snow and sun in these mountains has become anything but cyclical.

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    Sierra in Bloom

    Bunchleaf Penstemon

    If you’ve ever read John Muir’s book, My First Summer in the Sierra, it’s plain to see the deep and endearing love he had for the mountain range that his name has become nearly synonymous with. You also may have noticed that he had an equally deep and unwavering loathing for the sheep that grazed throughout the Sierra at the time.

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    Evolution

    The Hermit and Evolution Creek from McClure Meadow

    Evolution is a very very slow process. We need only look at ourselves to know how true that is. How long does it take for us to change even the smallest of things—a habit, perhaps? Real change, it seems, requires a patience that does not come naturally to a species whose lifespan is but a fraction of the earth’s.

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    Mysteries, Revealed

    Mountain Man silhouette on The Hermit

    Morning broke with a chorus of crashing water and overlapping birdsongs, melodies and harmonies, calls and answers. To hear these as the first sounds of morning, and then to open your eyes to the scenery you’d almost forgotten in your dreams, is very nearly the definition of waking up in paradise.

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    Uncharted Territory

    Dusy Basin

    To wake with the realization that you’re not on the trail you’re supposed to be, might normally be cause for alarm. But in this case, it was by design.

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    Nüümü Poyo: The People’s Trail

    Teetering boulder in Dusy Basin

    Reality came knocking early. Saddled with 6 days of food for the final stretch to Mount Whitney, we could delay the inevitable no longer. In accordance with the first law of hiking—that what comes down, must go up—we pointed our steps back up toward Bishop Pass for the second day in a row, aiming to reverse everything we’d done the day before.

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    The Golden Staircase

    Ace at Mather Pass

    The confluence of two creeks, a mere stone’s throw from our proverbial bedroom window, seemed not to care that morning had broken. Nature’s white noise machine chugged along, ignorant of day and time. The alarm on my wrist was more particular about exactly what time it was, and its buzzing was as inescapable as the reality it brought with it. Everything ahead of us was in one and only one direction: up.

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    The Glacier and the Avalanche

    Mount Wynne

    It’s easy to love John Muir, or at least the idea of him. That’s the appeal of idealists. Soaring rhetoric and a righteous cause in the proper hands can bring a groundswell of change that compounds like an avalanche. But it is a rare idealist who is able to effect change in the world. John Muir was certainly one of them.

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    The Second Time Around

    Vidette Meadow and the path to Forester Pass

    As with most evenings on this trail, I am cozy in my hammock before 8:00pm. Sweet Pea would be proud. This is the second time I’m doing this hike (the first time was in 2015). And with each passing mile, I can’t help but think how little has changed and how much has changed, all at the same time.

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    Where Stone Meets Sky

    Junction Peak and Forester Pass

    The Sierra. The range that has captured the fascination of icons like Ansel Adams and John Muir. Superlatives have been spilled over its incredible beauty, its almost idyllic climate, and the trails that beckon you to explore it ever more deeply. It may best be known as the Range of Light, but to me, it is simply the place where stone meets sky.

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    Tumanguya

    Mount Whitney summit benchmark

    The buzzing on my wrist comes as no surprise. In those brief moments drifting in limbo between asleep and awake, I struggle to register what exactly it is floating above my head. Beyond the soft armor of mosquito mesh surrounding me, and through the tarp stretched taut above, an amorphous shape of white bends into unrecognizable shapes and patterns, like sunlight seen from beneath the surface of water.

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    Mountain Man in the Adirondacks 600x600

    Jeff “Mountain Man”
    Brownscheidle

    Writer. Engineer. Triple Crown long-distance hiker. Gear junkie. Chaco ambassador. Certified Wilderness First Responder. Always dreaming of the next trail.

    When I’m not on the trail chronicling my adventures for Stone and Sky, I’m a freelance writer, public speaker, and consultant for aspiring adventurers.

    Learn more about me →

    The Gear Breakdown

    Continental Divide Trail gear 600x600

    Skills may be weightless, but down feathers are the next closest thing. Here’s a look at what’s currently in my pack.

    Take me to the gear →

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    Join Mountain Man by Becoming a Member of the Organizations that Support Our Trails

    Appalachian Trail Conservancy membership
    Arizona Trail Association
    Continental Divide Trail Coalition membership
    Green Mountain Club membership
    Pacific Crest Trail Association membership
    Tahoe Rim Trail Association membership
    NOLS Wilderness Medicine logo

    Great Adventures Deserve Great Gear. Only the Stuff Mountain Man has Trusted

    Chaco sandals
    Feathered Friends
    Gaia GPS navigation app
    Hyperlite Mountain Gear logo
    Injinji socks
    Sawyer Filters
    Ulysses writing app for iOS

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