Muir Trail Ranch to Evolution Lake
Waking up, the rest of the trip settled in, heavy on my shoulders. I was excited, but our wiggle room was gone. We had heavy packs, with 9 days worth of food. We didn’t have room to not make our mileage on any day, and our mileage would be getting longer, steeper and higher from this point on. Today we would make a big dent in the long climb up to Muir Pass. About 14 miles with about 3000 miles of elevation gain, ending up at Evolution Lake.
We had a little hiccup initially, trying to figure out where the heck the trail even was. It took a little wandering, and then backtracking, but we ended up on the right track finally. The first mile and a half was pretty mundane, and lots of mosquitoes. With every step, I was also swinging my arms around to get rid of hungry mosquitoes. Soon enough, we were back on the JMT, and eventually we reached the South Fork San Joaquin Bridge. What was really cool about this bridge was that someone had, with stones, written ‘110’ on the ground – according to traditional JMT mileage charts (not Omar’s GPS!), we now had only 100 miles to go! Every step now would be under the 100 mile mark – definitely an end in sight, and over the half way point. Walking along the cliffs looking down into the gorge that the San Joaquin river had carved out, I couldn’t help but again be reminded of my dad’s old stomping grounds. It reminded me of the rivers I’d seen running through Yellowstone, as well as the Kootenai River that runs through Libby, my dad’s hometown. I made another note to myself that I really need to get back to Montana and see some of these things I have vague memories of, but was too young to really have appreciated it.
After three hours, when we finally hit our first break, I couldn’t get my pack and shoes off fast enough. My feet had been hurting by the end of the day the last couple of days, but it was starting early today. I tried looking for some round rocks to massage the balls of my feet, which really just made it worse. But from learning that foam rolling may be horrendous to endure, but feels better afterwards, I kept it up. It helped for a little while, but just jumped right back in with the pain shortly after getting started walking again. I could tell that I was slowing down, even though we were moving through fairly even terrain. We crossed another bridge and started the first of two major climbing sections for the day, making our way to Evolution meadow. It roughly paralleled Evolution Creek, which you could hear cascading down into the valley we were climbing out of, but rarely caught a glimpse of it. It was a tough, slow climb, but gorgeous nonetheless. I ran into an older couple coming the opposite direction, they had started at Evolution Lake and said I’d have no problem getting there today. Eventually I caught up to Omar, where he was waiting at a creek crossing. We were finally going to have to take off our boots and get wet for a crossing! Although we never had a shortage of water, I could tell river levels were low just from the description in my trail book. Until this point, we had been able to stone hop across a handful of crossings that my book said, even in summer, would likely require shoes off and wading. That hadn’t been the case so clearly there was less water than normal. Omar went across first, then came back to take my backpack, making it easier for me to get across without having to worry about balancing the extra weight. A true gentleman! Boy was that water COLD. And boy did it instantly send shooting pain into my feet. We took our time putting shoes back on so I could massage my feet a bit more, before continuing on. Soon, we reached the edge of Evolution Meadow and our lunch break spot. Off came those shoes again! Instead of napping for most of the time, I opted for more foot massaging. A sure sign my feet were bothering me big time. But, of course, I still made time for a 15 minute power nap! The sky started clouding over, and sprinkled on us off and on. We made our way through Evolution Meadow, and into McClure Meadow, past the ranger station. We had agreed that, because of my feet and slower pace, we would go until 4 or 4:30, and stop, even if we hadn’t hit our destination. A risky move, but not much we could do about it. I knew that at the end of the meadow, there was a jigsaw puzzle of creek crossings, one or two small campsites, and then the second steep climb up the canyon wall to evolution lake. If we started that, there would be no stopping until we hit the lake, regardless of the time.
I’m not going to lie, and I’ll probably get an annoyed text from Omar for this, but I purposely slowed down a bit more. The part of me that was focusing on the pain in my feet did NOT want to do that second climb. So if I didn’t get there in time, it wouldn’t make sense to make the climb. And I had to earn the trail name Omar had given me several days prior. Tortuga. Turtle, in Spanish. Accurate, slightly derogatory, and I loved it, but would never let Omar know that on the trail! (side note: turtle was actually the self-given trail name for the woman who wrote the first JMT trail journal I read, and it’s still my favorite I’ve read. So I took the trail name as a backhanded compliment, though he never would have known it. Find it here). Plus, I was genuinely keeping a close eye on the clouds. They were getting darker, more rain was falling, and I didn’t know how exposed the climb would be up to the lake. As it started raining in earnest, maybe around 3:45, I made it to the creek crossings, where Omar was waiting. I hadn’t been slow enough! We had decided that I would be the decider. If I gave Omar a thumbs up, we would keep going. Thumbs down, we’d stop. No questions asked. I got over the stream crossings, and took a look around. There were several people, some of whom had already set up camp. I was confident if we needed to, we could find a campsite. Then I looked up the cliff I was sure we needed to climb. And I thought about my feet, and asked myself what I wanted to do, what I knew I needed to do, and what Omar would do. I wanted to stop. We needed to keep going, and Omar would definitely keep going. Nervous about how much this was going to suck, and hoping the teary face that I felt surfacing might be mistaken for rain drops, I gave a shaky thumbs up. I got an approving nod in response, and we started climbing. What I didn’t do was fill up our water, wanting to just get moving and get to camp. Omar quickly moved ahead of me, and I was stuck with my thoughts. Of course my iPod had no battery, so I didn’t have any motivating music to listen to, which meant I locked myself into a self-pity funk. Why was I doing this? I should have set up camp down below. This hurt so badly. How much further is it? Up around this corner? No, just more climbing. Oh, now I’m out of water, great. Not exactly the best of thoughts, but I was having trouble snapping myself out of it, especially when a couple of downhill hikers confirmed there wasn’t really a water source between there and the Lake, still a mile, mile and a half away (the seemingly standard distance response no matter where you are!).
The most frustrating thing was hearing running water close by, but knowing I couldn’t safely get to it. Until I rounded a corner and there were a bunch of wet rocks and moss. That meant water! I investigated further, and found just a little bit of running water. Enough that, with some patience and several minutes, I was able to get about a liter of water filtered for myself. That would at least brighten my spirits a little bit! I finally made it to the top of the climb, but knew I still had about half a mile at least to get to the beginning of the lake, and who knew where Omar had found a spot to camp, it could have been much further.
With every step more and more painful, I looked up. I swear, if the clouds had parted, light shone down and angels had sung, it couldn’t have been more perfect. Omar was walking down the trail towards me, and told me to hand over my backpack, he knew I was hurting pretty bad. Breaking down with one of the most heartfelt ‘thank you’s I think I’ve ever muttered, I handed it over. We walked for about 15 more minutes, my feet still hurting, but without the extra weight, I could at least walk a bit faster. I was instructed to immediately take off my shoes, and go soak them in the lake for 10 minutes. Freezing cold, and, as earlier in the day during the river crossing, made the pain instantly worse. But I stuck with it, in-between sniffling and watching Omar set up camp, hopefully before it started raining again. When the time was up, I hobbled back over to camp and thanked Omar again. Pain or no pain, I still had my camp chores to do, so got to work on filtering water and making dinner. Lasagna tonight – both of our favorite meals during the whole trip – another morale booster! As we were getting set up, a woman we had seen earlier, and Omar had talked to at one point waiting for me, came along. Her name was Claire, and we invited her to set up nearby. We’d actually seen her back at Marie Lake, Joey had talked with her at one point so when he waved, we all did. But it wasn’t anything more than that at the time. A teacher from DC, she was absolutely delightful to talk to. She is a true backpacker, having gone all over the world. Including the lower Himalayas, Canada, South America, and too many places to count. Truly amazing! I suppose that’s one perk to being a teacher, having summers off to do long, epic trips like that. Later, another gentleman that I’d seen in the distance while soaking my feet, came over to chat. I’d mentioned to Omar that I thought I saw the same guy that had also helped the ballerina several days ago (seemed like AGES ago now) – I recognized the green shirt. He thought I was crazy but when he came over, it WAS him! Remember I said we’d later learn his name was Garret? Well, here’s where we found out! Crazy that you can meet someone on the trail, and then 12 days later, by chance, run into them again and learn their name. Another wholly unique aspect of trail life. Also a teacher, he had taken a zero day here at the lake, and was planning in finishing the trail in only 4 more days. Crazy to do that to his body, but also part of me was jealous he would be finished that soon!
All in all, a pretty miserable day, but a much better night to boost my spirits. I think, being so close to the end, we all started thinking about home, and spent a great deal of the evening talking about the foods we would eat when we got home, including specific restaurants or fast food places. It was nice to talk with people, but Omar and I stopped at one point and asked our daily question: “Where’s Joey?” We guessed he would be somewhere in McClure meadow, but hoped he was having a good time. It was strange to know we wouldn’t see him again, today made that fact clear. I have to say though, I read a lot about how gorgeous Evolution Lake was, and it lived up to all the hype. The cloudy sky made for some gorgeous photos, the shadows playing wonderfully on the surrounding peaks. I don’t remember all the names, but the 7 peaks circling the valley are named after great names in Evolutionary science such as Darwin, Huxley, and others. The valley is classified as a ‘hanging valley’, meaning that, due to a tributary glacier meeting a larger glacier, a smaller valley is created with a steep drop off into the main valley (McClure/Evolution Meadow below). The nerd in me found this fascinating – I don’t think Omar was quite as interested as I was. Either that or I just didn’t do a good enough (or educated enough) explanation of what we were in. This was definitely an area I want to go back to and do more exploring, at a slower pace, and without the distracting foot pain!
Tomorrow we would move through Evolution Valley, and up the third and final climbing section, 1500 feet up to Muir Pass, sitting at 11,955 feet – our highest to date and tantalizingly close to that 12,000 foot mark!
I was genuinely worried about my feet. Being off of them for the night hadn’t helped much, and even trying to stretch them out in the sleeping bag proved painful. But I’m nothing if not stubborn. I might cry, complain, and move slowly, but I was still putting one foot in front of the other. We’d made our mileage for the day, something I’d been highly skeptical of earlier in the afternoon. So there were some positives for the day, enough to convince myself that it would get better. And, if it didn’t, I could still make it regardless, just like I had today.
