John Muir Trail

Well, I think I want to jump in first with just getting an update with where you're at, because I think in one of the last episodes, we talked about you taking a little bit of a break from structured training, and then you had a bunch of travel.

And I saw some things roll through on Strava, including maybe a 40-mile adventure day on the John Muir Trail.

I want to hear about that.

Maybe just give us at first an update of like, how are you feeling right now? And how have you been approaching training in the last couple weeks since we last caught up?

And then I got to Mammoth and I kind of pulled this together, this adventure, like truly a couple days beforehand.

I was like, what would be fun? I want to do kind of like a long trail adventure.

I've known that I want to do the John Muir Trail.

Everyone that I've talked to has just raved about this trail.

Backpacking.

Um, my family, my family, with Liz, with my two younger children, we went out to the Sierras every year for a number of years and completed the John Muir Trail.

Actually, the high version of the John Muir Trail, the high route, uh, over those years.

You know, a week at a time, which meant it's not very efficient because you have to hike in e- an hour [laughs] each time, but we saw a lot of incredibly beautiful country.

Mm.

That's actually this poster here, Mile, Mile and a Half.

So Mile, Mile and a Half is a feature documentary about a group of artists that hike the John Muir Trail, and they each capture it from their own point of view.

Plein air paintes- painters, um, musicians, sound recorders, photographers, videographers.

It's a beautiful movie.

Yeah.

He hiked the entire John Muir Trail, which was 16 days-

Wow

...

And it's along the Hawassee River.

You run on the John Muir Trail.

You get to, like, explore some history.

You get on Warrior's Passage.

People don't know Flyin' Brian, but the first calendar Triple Crown.

And after that, we had a lot of ultra runners, you know, going for the John Muir Trail and so on and so forth.

And they always thought because they were fast, they were going to knock it out of the park.

And they were wrong.

B, I'm the one who derailed us.

B has hiked the JMT Rim to Rim Tahoe Rim Trail Ray Lakes Loops, amongst many others, and is currently partway through her hike of the PCT, which we just established.

B, thank you so much for joining us here on Backpacker Radio.

Thanks for having me.

I'm sure you'll find some sort of contradictory info that puts you back to your own good graces.

We'll keep finding stuff until I'm right.

Okay, where are we? So backpacking out east, decide that you wanted to do the JMT.

Does the JMT come to fruition?