John Muir Trail - Introduction

    I moved out to California about 4.5 years ago and in the past 2 years have really taken an interest into backpacking.  In those two years I've almost went on one 3-day trip a month which I think is pretty good considering my limited vacation plan at work.  The problem with short trips is that one can never really get away from the general population and so I settled on the idea of a longer hike, the John Muir Trail (JMT).  While quite popular I hope it'll give me this solitude, it also helps that I'll be going solo North-South (SOBO).

    As of  Feb 4, 2013 I have my work vacation approved as well as my permit out of Yosemite!  I really can't be more excited and I'm sure this is the peak of February :-)  Now I just need to plan my arrival/departure and food resupply strategy but those are the easy parts.

    The JMT will essentially be my trial-run/testbed for doing one of the longer hikes such as the PCT, AT, CDT.  Well, probably not the CDT...haha.  I hope to keep this blog up-to-date with my planning as if this were a long distance thru-hike of the above trails.  If nothing else it'll be a good account of what not to do for anyone out there also planning such a hike :-)

As far as some stats go:

• Length 215 miles according to johnmuirtrail.org
• Accumulated ascent of 34,620 ft.
• Accumulated descent of 45,029 ft.
• Highest point is Mt. Whitney at 14,476 ft.
• Passes through Yosemite, Ansel Adams Wilderness, Sequoia National Park, King's Canyon National Park
• Planning on covering 15mi/day on average which comes out to 14 days.  Throw in a few rest days (zero days) as well as some days which are 6-8 miles and I plan to be out there for 18 days total.

Rock Sliders

 

    This is my first project post so I'll start out by saying that I'll mostly be linking to Instructables.  When appropriate I'll use this blog to elaborate on a given project whether it be technical details, background information that would bloat the Instructables post and/or afterthoughts.

    So here we go.  First up are a pair of rock sliders for my Jeep Cherokee.  This will be a bit unique as I really didn't take enough pictures to make a nice presentation on Instructables so I'll just walk ya through my process.

    First up is to buy the steel.  I've found Alan Steel in Redwood City to have the best selection and prices for the bay area.  Very nice, reasonable, and fast.  Oh, and did I mention they only charge $2 a cut :-)  I bought some 2x3x3/16 sq. tube for the main slider, 1.5x2x1/8 for the extension that would be bolted/welded to the body and some 1x1x1.8 angle iron to mate it up with the pinch seam.  All-in-all it came out to about $80 if I recall correctly.

Here's a pic of the stock prior to cutting and what would be my outside work around for tack welding.

    Time to start measuring and cutting.  Taking the 2x3x3/16 I used a horizontal band-saw to cut the ends at 45 degree and welded some plate to the ends.  Finishing up with the grinder to make a nice radius.  Not the best picture but you get the idea.

 













 
   With the sliders being rather heavy and not having someone else to hold it in place while measuring out the extensions I came up with this setup which worked quite well for getting the exact fit that I wanted.  Now I see why I always held the flashlight for Dad as a kid :-)  Underneath, you can see where the mount plate will be bolted on to the frame.  Midway through the project I decided to weld them on instead and don't have any images to show that so just picture the extensions without the mating plate.  So my process was to basically:

• Hold the slider in place with a jack
• Mark and Cut extensions to fit
• Mark a series of holes in the angle iron that would be used to bolt to the pinch seam.
• Drill holes for 1/4-20 bolt
• Mount angle on pinch seam and drill into seam(s)
• Do the fitment a 2nd time to ensure everything is good.
• Tack weld everything together while performing yoga
• Remove the slider from position and finish welding indoors away from the wind.

    Here's a shot of the workspace area I have at the Techshop which suits most needs I'd say.  Next up is to get everything finished and painted.  This is something I could've done a much better job at.  For the most part I did two coats but that appears to not be enough as I can see rust on them.  Maybe a good clear coat would've been a good idea.

    Overall I'm pretty happy with them.  Pretty soon I'll probably be re-painting them and updating them with an upper tube rail kind of like the poison spyder sliders seen on JK's today.  Here's a shot of the finished product.

Where did this snow come from?

 
    A friend and myself headed out to do the Skinner Ridge trail starting at Bottchers Gap in the Ventana Wilderness. I called ahead and spoke to the resident ranger which gave us tons of helpful information and there was a slight thought of trying to make it to Double Cone Peak, although we didn't really have time on our side for that venture.

    We arrived at Bottchers campground and met up with the ranger to go over all the mistakes on the Ventana Wilderness map published by "Wilderness Press". Always reassuring :-) It was a great day and we set out to hit "Pat Springs" that night which is basically the only guaranteed water source along the trail. It was pretty overcast as we set out and rain was definitely on the agenda. Good thing we packed for rain!

    The trail steadily climbed for quite some time as we only passed two hikers coming out ... little did we know that's the only human life we'd see along the trail. Most of the campgrounds listed on the map either didn't exist due to a forest fire, were flooded, or didn't have a water source nearby so we decided Pat Springs we be our goal for the day which was a nice 8 miles. Prior to hiking this trail we did the Sykes Hot Springs which was nicknamed "The elevator trail" due to all the ups and downs or PUDS (pointless-ups-and-downs). I'd say this was "The elevator trail reborn"... well, maybe I'm exaggerating but it was somewhat PUD-like. We arrived at Pat Springs and it was everything we hopped for... nice, water nearby, and no-one around!

    At camp I busted out a new setup which was a GoLite poncho tarp and a Z-Packs bivy (links below). Got out the paracord and started rigging up an elevated A-frame since there wasn't any wind to speak of. I figured it'd give nice coverage for rain coming straight down.

    We setup camp, cooked some dinner, and called it an early night due to it getting cold very quickly. Shortly after falling asleep I was awoke by sleet which then turned into snow and would continue throughout the night. This was my the first time in a tarp/bivy and I'll say it was quite cool to so easily look out and see the changing weather. We woke to about 4 or maybe 5 inches of snow.... very unexpected but as Cody Lundin says "Party On!". Along the Skinner Ridge trail there are a lot of magnificent views simply due to it being on a ridge. This would become quite funny to us on the hike out as the only mountain to get snow was "Ours"! Everything else was green!

    Although we planned on camping two nights we didn't expect snow.  With that said we figured staying out another night without snow gear probably wasn't the smartest decision. We broke down camp and headed out.  The trek out was a bit more difficult since 4-5 inches of snow is, apparently, just enough to cover up the path and a good amount rocks which would give our ankles a good workout. The trail out was just covered, I mean covered, in urine from all the wildlife roaming around at night. We couldn't call out that many tracks but I can say there were a decent amount of large paw prints... more than I expected.

    On the hike out the snow started melting, everything turned to slush, and it started raining which made for a pretty large mess. We arrived at the parking lot without issues and headed out.  As we arrived at Hwy 1 it was a nice bright sunny day which made it seem like we just came from an alternate world.  It was really shocking to see the change in climate over a spread of 10 miles or so.

Party On!

Survival in the Mojave Desert

  So a group of us decided to sign-up for a "Survival Class" not really knowing what we'd get ourselves into or how good it would turn out to be.  Such a class is only as good as the instructor and I'm pretty sure all of us would agree that it was time/money well spent.  Checkout the link below to see the instructors credentials.  Here's a pic at the completion of the course as we were ready bolt for the nearest steakhouse and chow down.

Heading out

    We packed our stuff up and... wait... no that's not right.  The point of this class was survival so we couldn't bring anything except for an empty water bottle, knife and clothes.  Alright, so we didn't pack anything up but rather just left, how nice.... no planning.  I guess there's no real way to play out a survival situation since it could happen at anytime/anywhere and this was probably the best fabricated survival situation there is (or so we found out).

Arriving in Tehachapi

    We arrived in Tehachapi (the locals pronounce it like "Take-a-pee", we had our own flavors of this) a day prior to the training and got a hotel room which was probably the most shady place I've ever stayed at.  The back window overlooked a swat of overgrown land littered with the most random stuff one could come up with.  From broken down rusted cars, a large plastic Santa, phone booths, tattered stuffed animals, and so on.  Although, no gravestones to be found :-)  Or maybe there was.  It also looked like the local street sweeper was staying a few rooms down from us (cue creepy jason slasher music).  Now that we had our nighttime accommodations we set out for a local bar, who doesn't want to visit a new bar in a new town?  Pulling in to the parking lot we noticed a truck to our right also arriving at the same time, they guy got out and it continued to roll forward...haha... coming nearly a millimeter away from crashing into a glass storefront.  At this moment we knew the night was off to a great start.  Upon entering the bar the sound/conversations stopped and attention was drawn to us.  Well, it didn't quite happen like that but kinda felt like it.  We got a few drinks and headed to the back (outside) where they had a nice firepit going.  Met some locals including a fully decked out pirate in the desert, I'm not kidding, and had a good time.  One lady was certain that we were burning treated wood and that everyone would get cancer.  Good times.

The Class

  After a bit of confusion on dirt roads we found the class parking lot.  The instructor came out to greet us and we followed him to a classroom where we'd be briefed before heading out.  All but two of us jumped in a van and headed out to where the "start" would be, along the highway, while the others hiked to the start with some unknown reward for hiking.  We began hiking in a dried up riverbed with temps in mid 90s and studying various plants/rocks along the way, eating the plants/seeds we came across and collecting some for later.  Further up the trail we got into deep reeds and discussed bamboo, the good 'ol yucca plant which we'd become very fond of, and methods to spot water sources.  The instruction was very informal, in that, the instructor had a route and knew what was along it but would discuss things as they came up.  In between major points of discussion such as water, food, exposure, etc ... the instructor would re-iterate either past information, touch on stuff we'd be encountering, or give background/technical details on the subject.  At any point questions could be raised and we'd spend more time on a particular topic.
   After a while we came upon "basecamp" or where would be staying for the night with two A-frame shelters already setup.  We'd be making one for a subset of us and thank god it was only one.  I'm gonna call B.S on any survival show that demonstrates making shelters and starting fires in under a 3-4 hour time-frame.

At camp we discussed the various uses of the Yucca plant which include (probably not limited to):

• Food
• Hydration 
• Cordage
• Anti-inflammatory agent
• Shampoo

Although, if you've never had it, beware...:-)  For whole group it made our throats quite itchy, obviously in a true survival situation this doesn't matter.  Yucca probably isn't my first choice but I didn't mind it all that much, very fibrous, and when hiking today I'll always grab some to remember this experience.  We did find one young purple yucca that would be roasted the next morning which actually tasted quite good, others may contest to this.  After cooling down in the shade we headed out to gather bow-drill components!  We're making stuff!  I won't go into all the details of a making or using a bow-drill as you really just have to try it in the field.  Plus, text/photos wouldn't do it justice.... just a bunch of numbers to memorize so sign up for the class!
   Once back at camp we started gathering materials to make an A-Frame structure which would be shelter for 3 people.  In modern tent-size standards we made a 1 1/2 person structure for 3 people...haha.   As you can see in the picture our mansion also included a nice fire wall to reflect heat back into the sleeping area, and a small barrier to keep embers from rolling into the structure.  While it's nearly 100 during the day the temps drop quite low at night. The rest of us slept in structures built by previous groups as you can see in the gallery below.  All-in-all, from yucca plant discussions, bow-drill gathering, and A-Frame building it consumed the entire day.  At night we tried our luck and using our hi-tech fire-starting devices and if I recall correctly 3 of us lit a fire.  Damn, is that hard!  So we crammed into the structures and called it a night.  I actually had a great night sleep believe it our not.
   We were up at sunrise the next day, cooking yucca, observing how to boil water in a plastic container, and talking about first-aid.  While hiking out we stopped to cover primitive trapping methods, and other techniques to kill small animals/reptiles.

Update:
    Since I wrote this I've had a few questions about water purification.  The instructor did indeed have 1 water purifier for the entire group.  We also drank from a source and filtered water through a handkerchief
.

Thoughts

• Loved it!
• Wished it were one day longer so our stomachs could get over the adjustment period and be able to more easily focus on some of the technical stuff such as traps.  
• It really illustrated how much work everything is.  In no way would we have been able to accomplish the tasks at hand after hiking all day as some of these survivor-type TV shows illustrate.
• The information and method of presenting it was invaluable.  A very good and knowledgeable instructor.  Nothing beats hands-on.
• As this was a broad skills course I'm now looking to take some more specific classes.

Gallery

Mojave Desert Links:

• California Survival Training