JMT Day 1

TL;DR

Our first day on the trail took us from Happy Isles to Little Yosemite Valley in 5 short miles. Because we didn’t get a Little Yosemite Valley pass-thru on our JMT permit, we were required to stay the night in Little Yosemite Valley. Little Yosemite Valley backpacker’s camp sits back behind Nevada Falls. Campsites have bear boxes and there is also a 4 stall solar toilet for the camp.

GPS Track and Elevation Data

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Thoughts

Shuttling the cars ended up being a 2 day affair. We drove two cars out to Lone Pine and dropped one off at Whitney Portal. The next day we started the drive north, stopped by Mammoth to drop of our Red’s resupply (which ended up being an endeavor in itself), and then continued on Yosemite Valley. Since we arrived after the day hikers were already leaving (~6:30PM) we were able to get a parking spot. We made our way over to valley backpacker’s camp and squeezed our way into half of a campsite. That was my first time using that backpacker’s camp and it was a bit chaotic. Its kind of every person for themselves yet you still have to pay even if you don’t necessarily have a real spot. Randomly, the rangers will come around checking for payment tags and if you don’t have one you’ll get an earful and then kicked out. The night was hot and I got my first mosquito bites before the trip even began.

We weren’t in any rush to start the next day. We packed up and went to “HalfDome Village” (I miss Camp Curry) to get breakfast and then headed to the general store to grab some lunch to take with us. We then returned to the car to make last minute gear choices and prepare to leave for real. With a poorly planned early afternoon start, we said bye to my car and set off toward Vernal Falls.

The initial segment of this trail is packed with day hikers making their way to the base of the falls. If you’ve never done the Vernal Falls hike, it has a decent amount of elevation gain within a short distance. We bobbed and weaved past the day hikers just so we didn’t have to do the steep portions at a slow pace. Just over the bridge at the bottom of Vernal is the fork to the Mist Trail on the left and the John Muir Trail on the right with the first trail sign for the JMT.

The trail wondered up switch backs until it reached the top of Nevada Falls. The short day was a nice way to ease back into backpacking even though it sort of truncated our schedule more. Although, we can’t really complain, not many people are even awarded the Happy Isles start.

We took a break at Nevada Falls to cool off and eat lunch. Little Yosemite is about a mile past the falls so we weren’t in any rush. On the way there, we did have our first wildlife encounter. A rattlesnake on the side of the trail. I am not a fan of snakes by any means. They’re actually what I worry about most backpacking. We reached the Little Yosemite Valley backpacker’s camp, set up camp, then headed down to the river to lounge around some more. Much to my dismay, our second wildlife encounter ended up being a water snake floating by right as I was about to get in. This trip was off to a great start.

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