John Muir Wilderness Trip Report

(To see all the photos, go here and click on the JMW 2007 album)

So as usual, I dutifully pack the trip journal but end up so busy hiking, cooking, packing, etc. there’s no time to keep it!

This summer’s walkabout was considerably changed and shortened from the original plans, although the epic factor was certainly not. First I went from a me to a we. Then, our we went from a planned loop around Blackrock and Sawtooth Passes in my beloved Mineral King to a 4-day tromp through the John Muir Wilderness since the latter allows dogs, and this was to be a maiden backpacking adventure for one certain skinny black Santa’s Little Helper incarnate who Peter recently rescued.

And oh, how the JMW did not disappoint! It was stunningly beautiful, and pretty much devoid of humans—leading to an over/under gamble the details of which need not be discussed here. We saw one couple (with dog!) on our 2nd morning, and no one else until we were on our way out, about 2 miles from the trailhead (although one guy did report that when he was out at Devil’s Punchbowl 2 weeks prior there were about 16 people camped there…so lucky us!). I usually associate it with the east side, but it actually stretches all the way across to the west, accessible out of Shaver Lake, and future trips are definitely warranted!

Trip prep was complicated by last-minute notice Peter's building was going to be tented for termites, but we finally slipped out of town with food, gear, and Merckx the star trail dog before dawn on Thursday. Watching the sunrise over the hills as we sped over highway and then up into the foothills I felt exhilarated to be finally leaving behind the dailiness of my life for a week. Merckx, who is usually seen off-leash as a black streak of light, the secret of perpetual motion, was considerably slowed down by the weight of his pack filled with his food and two bottles of wine (bubble-wrapped with care in case he took off running and banged them against some granite boulders), to the point of almost behaving like a well-trained dog (note for future outings…)

We set out along the Maxson trailhead toward Rae Lake, a destination 13 miles of mostly climbing away. The day was an alternating series of forest and meadows, some deep sandy patches of trail and some rude little pitches of switchbacks in the last 4 miles or so. Peter was working with a sprained ankle and a heel blister, and I was working with general sub-par fitness, and by the time we saw the waters of Fleming Lake (about 10 minutes shy of Rae) we were only too happy to plunk down the packs for the day. The only member of the expedition who was totally unfazed by rigors of the day was Merckx, who tore (and I do mean tore) about the place like a pack of wild horses for the rest of the afternoon and pretty much all night.

We took advantage of the solitude by stripping down and jumping (ok, Peter dove with a joyous yelp, I waded up to my knees and then soused myself) into the lake, which was not as cold as it might have been but was…bracing…nonetheless. And delicious to have a bathe after a warm, dusty day on the trail.
The next morning started lazily with sleeping in, slow breakfast, a creek-hopping game, then some taking turns reading to each other from Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee (don’t pretend you don’t think that sounds like fun—you know you do!) and generally planning on spending a gentle day exploring sans packs. Until the aforementioned couple with a lab named Baxter happened through, and told tales of how amazing the lakes Disappointment and the Indians were. Peter and I looked at each other and knew—we were striking camp and heading north.

We clambered up a granite ridge after losing the trail at Rae and discovered that Merckx’s load limit was food and wine, no extra Nalgene bottles. Even without them, the supposedly dumb dog figured out how to dump his pack and frolic free in the meadows until Peter tricked him into coming near enough to tackle. As we made our way across the rest of the meadow, Peter saw a dozen or so rainbow trout stuck in a tiny pool of a dying streamlet. We got out the mesh stuff sack from the cookset and dredged the pool with it, putting the fish we caught in our Nalgenes and then high-tailing it up the headwall to Upper Indian Lake. We were too late though—the fish died anyway, so we went to plan B and cleaned them for dinner.

Upper Indian is a gorgeous spot as well—a large lake nestled in a small basin, the terminus of the trail up against Mosquito Pass. There were no humans there, either, although we did see deer and bear tracks stamped in the sand of the shore. We scrambled up the rocks above the pass with the bottle of pinot to watch the sunset and Merckx play at being a mountain goat. The fresh-caught trout made a delicious opening course, so delicious we didn’t have much leftover room for the dinner we’d made. This time Merckx stayed in the tent with us and kept us awake most of the night from shivering and shifting about.

The next morning we took our coffee sitting on a rock overlooking the lake at sunrise. We struck camp and started off, and like the day before Merckx just stood and howled and cried like we were leaving him to die until Peter took him by the collar and started him moving down the trail. We were planning on staying at Disappointment Lake, a mere 5 mile trek, until we both realized on the final climb that meant a long, long hike on our exit day. So we took a couple of snaps and acknowledged that it was indeed very beautiful and a handy jumping-off spot to explore the whole Red Mountain Basin (a future trip?) and headed south toward Devil’s Punchbowl and the Kings River.

Not far from the Punchbowl the trail crossed a granite slab and dematerialized. We figured we would aim off to the right in the general direction of where the trail was headed in order to pick it up, or at least reach the lake and pick up the trail going south on the other side. However, as we hiked and hiked, climbed over ridges and along drainages with no lake in sight, we realized we’d aimed so far off we completely missed it. It took another hour or so of descending (we knew the river and the river trail would be unmistakable catchment features) to figure out we were in the Fleming Creek canyon, and we decided to keep following it down and hope we didn’t get hung up in an impassable gorge or some such luck.

Which we pretty much didn’t, and we got to walk down a route relatively few humans have, and see vistas that would have been obscured by the very high ridge wall had we taken the proper trail as planned. Even toward the bottom where the creek deepened into a narrow high-walled granite chute with a yawning gradient, we skirted around the side and finally popped out on the bank of the Kings River. And still no sightings of people!

We found a perfect campsite in view of the slow gentle flow between shallow sun-warmed pools and wide expanses of weathered river rock granite. Bathing and sun-drying as the river chirped and gurgled past us, Merckx hopped up to join us for a brief nap, worn out at last. We saved our best dinner (tamale pie!) for last, and when it was finally ready Merckx joined us to cross the river and scramble up above it to say goodbye to the sun and hello to the moon as we ate it. We built a small fire in our tiny ring and sat mesmerized by the dancing flames and breathing embers as Mercxk dug himself a hole in the sand and hunkered in for the night, not to be moved until morning.

The first light revealed more of the clouds that had begun to steal in the day before, and we knew that rain was supposed to be coming that day. This was the most unforgettable coffee day yet, sitting on a large block of granite smack in the middle of a river whose surface was as still and clear as glass, perfectly reflecting the sky and spears of treetops above it. It was hard to leave such a quiet, beautiful place, but pack up we did, climbing out of the river canyon to follow a tributary up to Post Corral Meadow and back out the way we came. Peter stepped up that section to double-time, and just when I had to stop and cram a few handfuls of gorp I realized we were at the top of the last climb. As we started down, we saw a man with a dog named Magic who told us he was here 2 weeks ago and saw all those people at Devil’s, and that he had been hiking these mountains since he was 16 and was 62 now. We wished him well and passed his wife coming up the trail behind, and sped on toward the trailhead. Peter came within 2 humans of losing his over/under gambit in the last 2 miles, but squeaked it out. The trail mix bag in which Peter had placed the key had in fact been gnawed by some rodent or other (as had his pack the night before) but other than that we made a quick getaway.

Merckx passed out in his food bowl and slept, kicking the back of Peter’s seat all the way home. We stopped in Paso for some food and could practically taste the hot showers we were going to take as soon as we got to SLO. Remember the termite tenting? Why on earth did I mention that? To set this moment up: Peter discovers after standing in a cool shower that never got hot that not only was the water heater pilot out, the gas was never turned back on by the Gas Company after the tenting. And it was Sunday. And they don’t send techs out for such things on Sunday. Etc. Etc.

But we figured out a contingency, and finally curled up clean, fed, and happy together in a warm, comfortable bed, a blissful end to an awesome adventure.