Day 1: 12.4 miles hiked, 17.4 cumulative, Tuolumne to below Donohue (10,190′)
My son and I woke in the Tuolumne backpackers camp and packed up. As we were drinking our morning coffee/hot chocolate a ranger showed up. He didn’t care that the campground was closed. He just wanted to check our permits and verify that we all had the required bear canisters. Armed with the current bear activity warnings…we were off.
So I hiked the John Muir Trail. We just started walking and didn’t stop for 20 days. So…how did it begin?
After staving off hypothermia the previous night, we were on our way the third day with wet socks and jackets flapping from our packs. Again the Northern Loop presented us with a challenge…we now had to descend 3000 feet in 2.8 miles…my poor knees. We forged on down endless switchbacks. It was truly beautiful forest, although I had to walk slowly (and often sideways).
While visiting the Pacific Coast, I found the Pacific Northwest so beautiful that I decided to go back and do some backpacking. So early September a year later my 15 year old son and I flew to Seattle to hike the Northern Loop Trail in Mt. Rainier National Park. The Northern Loop covers nearly 40 miles in the northern and most remote section of the park and is strenuous with an gain of ~9000 feet.
It is a steeply up, steeply down trail so I spent the summer exercising and lightening my backpacking gear to prepare for the trip. I also frequented the weather report leading up to the trip. The last report predicted cool temps with some chance of rain the first two days of the hike and sunny and warmer the last two days. I was happy and felt prepared. And yet…Mount Rainier is a mountain that makes it’s own weather.
The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.
– John Steinbeck
I can’t say it better than Mr. Steinbeck. I have wanted to see the Redwood Forest for as long as I can remember. I was not disappointed.
You Must Travel It For Yourself 