JMT, day 1

John Muir Trail

Monday 9/12/16: Day 1, from Tuolomne meadows. Started hike at approx 8000 elevation, hiked an easy, mostly flat 10.5 miles. First evening of camp set up involves a lot of fumbling to get organized. Camped at 9000 ft, small headache. Love my group of gals: Kirsten, Carissa and Joan. They are fun, funny, considerate, sincere, generous and kind people. It's so great to have women hiker friends, because girl backpacking trips are so special to me. 

Before today I was supposed to join these ladies to start our JMT hike on Saturday the 10th from Sunrise trailhead (we had a permit to start at that spot only and on that particular day). However the week before I was knocked out sick with a cold and a tremendous sinus condition. I decided that I didn't have the energy, nor was I well enough, to start the hike on the 10th as planned (and drive up to Yosemite/Tuolomne Meadows on Friday the 9th). I think I could have possibly relapsed really bad if I did that and put myself at risk of having to cut my JMT trip short soon after starting, in addition to the risk of simply getting more sick. So I joined my group two days later, at Tuolomne meadows, and everything went fine.  There are strict rules about starting at a different spot and/or on a different day than what the permit says and and if caught by a ranger, I could have lost my privilege to hike the trail this time. Luckily that didn't happen and we took off from there without a problem. 

Today was tough for me because of   my sinus and lung congestion, but armed with pharmaceuticals I went for it and actually did not feel terrible for doing so. 

Oh I stayed at my mom's last night and set the alarm to ring at 4:00 am. Of course I awoke just about every hour to check the time as I was worried I'd sleep through my alarm since I wasn't going to get enough sleep that night. At one point I had been awake, tossing and turning for a long time when I checked my watch again and it was 4:45!!!! And the phone alarm never went off. I quickly checked it and realized that I set it for 4:45 PM, duh. We frantically got ready to go as we planned to be out of the house by 4:30. Tripping over myself and not thinking clearly I finally managed to get myself together and we left the house at 5:20. Geez, I was just astonished on how I could've made that mistake about the alarm. Anyway, we eventually stopped for coffees and were being speedy about it, but when I was getting myself ready to drive I could not find my sunglasses. We tore apart the whole car's contents looking for them and I went back into the coffee shop twice to check and ask if I left them, my mom went in once too. Over the course of 20 minutes I started to break down, as we were already running really late and now I've lost my mind because I couldn't recall where my sunglasses were. And I cannot tolerate a day without sunglasses let alone 3 weeks of hiking in the sierras. I thought out loud that maybe I'm not supposed to go on this trip. But my mom corrected me and said that it's only a test on how bad you want to go. We finally found them tucked away in a spot that made sense but there were other items in there so we didn't see them when glancing in there the previous 5 times. *Sigh*

The start! 

Near our 1st campsite. 

Me in my fancy camp chair. Love that thing!!