Shake out Hikes and Tests
Solo Hikers
While I’ve done solo hikes, I prefer company. What happens though if you want to hike the JMT, and can’t find a partner with the same schedule? You could try the forums, and hope to find a compatible partner, or you could go solo and connect with other hikers along the trail. The JMT is ideal for this, since you’ll meet several people on most days. Some groups leap-frog each other for miles, as we did with a couple from the East Coast. For a while we hiked with a woman who was doing the JMT solo. She had quite a bit of outdoor experience, and was confident to go it alone. She told us that she found people to hike with most days, and had made a lot of friends on the trail.
Going solo is a personal choice, and could present some risks. Personal injury would be the biggest one, but if you stayed on the trail, someone would come along—probably within a few hours or less. Most other hikers will offer help if they can. Sometimes hikers get robbed or attacked, but I’m not aware of any case where this has happened on the JMT. On other trails, the highest risk is probably near towns or places where cars can be driven close to the trail. Pay attention, and you should be fine even if you go solo.
Testing has been mentioned several times because it can save a lot of time and trouble. Long hikes are less forgiving than weekend trips. Little problems with your footwear that might lead to a blister or a sore foot on a weekend trip could be a big deal on the JMT. Craig bought new Asolo boots for the trip. He dutifully broke them in for a few weeks beforehand. He liked them. Nevertheless, the first few days on the trail were really tough on his feet. By the time we got to Red’s Meadow, he was in serious pain. Craig is a very determined hiker, but as we walked through the Devil’s Postpile, he wasn’t talking, and his face looked gaunt. He gutted it out, and a few days later, his feet improved. Yes, part of the problem was just foot conditioning, but it takes a while to get boots to feel like part of your feet. Take your boots out on a few heavy hikes at least, and get your feet as trail tough as you can before starting a thru-hike.
As mentioned, Craig managed his food selections much better than I. He carefully analyzed calorie intake, and other aspects of his diet. At the very least, try out your menu at home. I used my alcohol stove to test my dinners, and timed boiling, cooking, and alcohol usage. You want to be comfortable with your menus and cooking procedure. If something isn’t going to taste good, find out at home. Experiment with meal quantities as well. Dried foods like split pea, lintels, and beans expand a lot after cooking.
Try out all your gear, and get really familiar with it. Be able to put up your shelter quickly even in the dark. Make sure all liquids are in secure containers. If there’s much air space in the container, that could expand as you travel up the mountains to the trail-head. This can make a mess, blowing off even secure-looking screw-tops.
If you’ve done a lot of 2-3 day trips in the past and feel confident about your gear and trail skills, consider this: there is an essential difference between camping and thru-hiking. When camping, the focus is on, well…camp. Setting up a comfortable and scenic campsite is a high-point of the trip. On a thru-hike, the focus is on the hike, and by the end of the day, you’ll have done so much walking that you won’t want to spend a lot of time with camp chores. Try to do a few trial hikes with this sort of mind-set. If you use a tarp instead of a tent, and don’t care about the scenery, you can find a lot more potential campsites. If you simplify your cooking and other camp procedures, you can greatly reduce set-up and take-down times.
Well, that covers all the pre-hike preparation. In the next section, we’ll cover some of the details of our hike—high points, low points and interesting details.
Our Trail Logs