Part I: Mammoth Lakes to Yosemite
An "only-Bob-could-do-this" moment slows our High Sierra departure, but we survive it
Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series about my attempt, with brother-in-law Glenn Petersen, to hike 75 miles on California’s John Muir Trail from the Duck Pass Trailhead just south of Mammoth Lakes to the Happy Isles Trailhead at Yosemite National Park. For the most part, the JMT replicates the Pacific Crest Trail in this section, our six-day plan taking us from the eastern flank of the High Sierra to the west.
MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. — On the morning we left Eugene for what would be our 23rd stretch of the PCT since 2011, we wouldn’t have inspired much confidence in strangers wondering: Can these two do this?
In preparing to give my pickup’s windshield a final cleansing, I was backhanding the gas-pump squeegee into place when I managed to pop the driver’s-side wiper blade out of place.
In 56 years of driving, this had never happened. If I’d been promised $1 million and unlimited attempts to knock the wiper onto my truck’s hood with a mesh-covered sponge, I would never have been able to do this. But with a 12-hour drive ahead of us and an urgency to get to Mammoth Lakes for a touch of sleep before our 4 a.m. wake-up the next morning, I had done this. Thunder showers were possible and, besides, it’s illegal to drive in Oregon without working wipers.
With the help of AI and YouTube, Glenn and I spent 20 minutes unsuccessfully trying to reattach the blade. We then resorted to the expertise of an early-to-work mechanic at North Eugene Automotive, my go-to place, who fixed it in less than a minute.So there was that confidence builder.
And, of course, there was Glenn showing up at my house at 6:45 a.m. with a four-inch piece of blue painter’s tape stuck vertically to the front of his shirt.
“So I’ll remember to bring my sunglasses,” he said.
I would go into great detail about his head-scratching choice of reminders had I not been the one who, half a mile after our start up Duck Pass, realized I’d left my sunglasses in the truck. Fortunately, I had not one but two backup pairs because of my propensity for losing the things.
My excuse: I’d been preoccupied about the truck itself, worried that, while we hiked north to Yosemite, the vehicle might get broken into by bears. I’d read — and been awed by — What the Bears Know, written by a man whom Mammoth Lakes had hired in the 1990s to cull the city’s menacing bear population. I had great respect for — and a touch of fear regarding — these animals.
I had insisted that we leave no food in the pickup. In fact, leave nothing that even smelled, including Wet Ones, breath mints or sun block. Though in 3,000 miles of PCT hiking I’d seen only the hind end of one bear, I’d longed to spot one — just one — from a distance before my hiking days ended. For now, I just wanted the bears to not party in my pickup while we were gone.
We would have enough obstacles on this trip, the two main ones named Bob and Glenn. All of which is to say that although we have hiked the entire 2,650-mile PCT, the Oregon Boys — trail names given to us by an Aussie in 2011 — have never been your Outside magazine cover boys. As I’ve reminded Glenn more than once: We may be old — Glenn is 74, I’m 72 — but we are slow. And hard of hearing.
And yet there we were, atop 10,673-foot Duck Pass by 8 a.m. and, by mid-morning, to the north-south JMT “freeway,” our entry far less daunting than last year’s menacingly steep climb up rocky McGee Pass. You never know if your Spencer Butte/Mt. Pisgah training hikes — and doses of an altitude pill, Diamox — have adequately prepared you for a trail that’s 9,000 feet and higher in most sections. So this was a confidence builder.
The JMT is essentially a 211-mile-long block of granite that runs north-south from Yosemite to 14,505-foot Mt. Whitney, with no road crossing it. The trail is wild. Remote. Steep. And rocky. Last year we repeated the JMT’s southern section we’d done in summers past; this year, we were trying to do the less daunting northern section.
With 35-pound ULA packs on our backs, our opening day was relatively easy, our biggest challenge an occasional stub of the toe on a root.
“I’m hoping you trip over at least 65 of them today,” I told Glenn.
“Why’s that?”
“Because when you hit the next one, I can ask, ‘How was your trip on Root 66?"
Schlocky humor was one way we would keep sane during our planned 12.5-mile-a-day, six-day hike.
"Did you write down your truck’s odometer mileage?” Glenn asked.
“No. Why?”
“Because that way we could tell if the bears found your hidden key under the chassis and took it for a joy ride.”
For me, the other distraction was allowing random songs to ramble through my head, the two this morning being Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” and Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Wind on the Water.” The latter was inspired by finding the waters of delightful Duck Lake perfectly still, then seeing them slightly rippled by a breeze.
If the JMT can be beastly, it can also be breathtaking. You’re often above the timberline, which affords views of white granite mountains, canyons, lakes, waterfalls and more. As a native Oregonian, I am compelled to defend my state, but its portion of the PCT is mainly “green tunnel” stuff and not the drop-dead visual feast served up by its neighbor to the south.
“I’m loving it,” said a man from Pennsylvania hiking with his two grown sons. “Much different from the Appalachian Trail. So remote. So high up. So beautiful.”
At about 7 p.m., as we finished our dinner — freeze-dried spaghetti for me — two boys, perhaps 12 and 10, zoomed by, trekking poles clicking. They were soon followed by their mother, the family from Chicago.
“Low on food,” she said. “Trying to make Reds Meadow by dark.”
When we arrived at the rare food stop the next morning, the trio was nowhere to be seen. We woofed down bacon and eggs — mine, with an orange juice and hot chocolate, ran $44.95 — with a handful of other hikers.
“Pop quiz,” I said to Glenn. “In 1972, what unlikely politicians put a stop to a proposed highway that would have cut west-to-east right across this meadow?”
“No idea.”
“(California Governor) Ronald Reagan and (President) Richard Nixon.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Reagan had filmed a couple of movies up here and loved it. Talked Nixon into supporting him. Tom Hanks has been here to Reds, too.”
We watered up, dropped off some garbage and moved on. At nearly 10,000 feet, we ran into more than a dozen members of the South Valley High (Los Angeles) girls’ cross-country team on a training run. Unbelievable. They were appropriately non-plussed by meeting us — until I told them I lived in Eugene, the Track Capital of the World, after which they seemed to be slightly less non-plussed.
We camped at 9,004 feet, in a makeshift site where Shadow Creek pounds into Shadow Lake. Gorgeous. Loud because of the falls. Soft soil.
We each had brought one-pound chairs — so worth the weight! — and when one of my chair’s back legs sunk into the ground, I was slowly flipped backward into my tent. It’s funnier now than it was at the time, after having hiked 28 miles in two days, but I survived, as did the tent.
On Saturday, after allowing ourselves to sleep in until 5 a.m. instead of our usual 4 a.m., we climbed beside waterfall after waterfall up Shadow Creek. We met a couple of guys from Sacramento, Andy and Shane, who were refreshingly nice. Not that most JMT hikers aren’t, but most hikers stay to themselves, and some prefer to talk only about themselves.
We zig-zagged down to Garnet Lake, only slightly smaller than Oregon’s Suttle Lake on Highway 20. It was stunning, its occasional islands looking as if they were par-three golf greens, begging for an occasional over-the-water tee shot.
On a lunch break, I took a dip in 9,833-foot Thousand Island Lake — in 1896, the man who named it, Sierra Club co-founder Theodore Solomons, had no idea his moniker would become a salad dressing — and watched a pack train cross a creek. Some hikers pay to have their tents and sleeping bags carried in by mules, and to be served three squares a day, paying perhaps $5,000 for a week-long trip.
“Let’s see,” one such hiker told me. “We had steak the first night. I think tonight is fish tacos.”
It was hard not to be envious; though my freeze-dried meals never disappointed — especially the chicken fettuccine — I’d already grown tired of my Little Debbie Big Pack Honey Buns for breakfast and foiled lemon pepper chicken and the like for lunch .In the afternoon heat, a young woman, a trail runner, passed us. As we chatted, we realized she wasn’t camping.
“Just getting in a little run,” she said, 36 miles from Tuolumne Meadows to Reds Meadow — in a single day.
Sigh.
That night, we got as close to Donohue Pass as we could so we could make the ascent of the 11,066-foot block of rock in the cool of the following morning.
“Do you remember when we came through here, southbound, and got snowed on that night in September 2019?” I asked Glenn.
He did. But as we made camp, alone, along beautiful Rush Creek, we agreed that little about the 33 miles we’d done thus far looked even vaguely familiar. Part of that was that we were going in the opposite direction; part of that was seven years of time passing.
With three days down and three to go, our trip had gone smoothly. No surprises — beyond other hikers getting younger while Glenn and I appeared to not have aged at all. But the following morning, in a single moment, all that would change.
​
​
Part II: Mammoth Lakes to Yosemite
The push to Yosemite — and the rarest of sightings
​
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series about my attempt, with brother-in-law Glenn Petersen, to hike 75 miles on California’s John Muir Trail from the Duck Pass Trailhead just south of Mammoth Lakes to the Happy Isles Trailhead at Yosemite National Park.
​
DONOHUE PASS, Calif. — Thirty-three miles down. Forty-two miles to go. As day four of six broke for the Oregon Boys — Sunday, July 26 — we plunged forward into the darkness, headlamps on.
Initially, we didn’t get far. Within two minutes of our departure, the trail dissolved into nothingness
Glenn’s headlamp shone in a meadow that reminded me of Oregon’s Jefferson Park.
​
“It must cross this creek,” I said to Glenn above the rush of the water.
​
He checked his online app and agreed. It was a dicey crossing, especially in the dark, the kind where a slip might not only get you wet but hurt. My heart jolted when Glenn, following behind me, got the tip of a trekking pole stuck between rocks. But he didn’t panic, backed off his pole pressure in the same way a fly fisher does when a fly is snagged, and freed the tip.
​
Onward.
​
We twisted up a meadow that reminded me of Oregon’s Jefferson Park, then, as the sky lightened, began switch-backing up the rocky southern face of 11,066-foot Donohue Pass. (Those who’ve read Seven Summers And a Few Bummers might recognize this as the place where, in 2019, a small woman and her green-booted Chihuahua left us in their dust.)
​
Glenn was enamored by the desolate sweep of rock. The vast granite basin had a moonscape feel to it, as if we’d landed here by lunar module.
We reached the top — far easier than coming up the far longer north side — at 7:45 a.m., triggering a scintillating celebration of yet another blue-sky day.
​
We swept down above a shelf-propped meadow, this one featuring cursive calligraphy by Kuna Creek and a sprinkling of lakes.
We zig-zagged down a narrow, steep chute, a rocky obstacle course whose only redeeming value was a surprise rendezvous with Andy and Shane, the Sacramento boys.
​
“Man, you guys just keep on plugging,” said Andy.
​
“We just get up earlier than everyone else,” I said.
​
They were hoping to get to Tuolumne Meadows, about eight miles of easy trail, before its grill closed at 6 p.m., so they soon bid us farewell.
​
The rocky switchbacks rewarded us with a smooth trail along the north-flowing Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River. Eventually, after a wooden bridge crossing, the creek ran 50 to 150 feet to our right, s-curving its way parallel to the JMT.
​
About six miles south of Tuolumne Meadows, at about 9,000 feet, Glenn paused to make a pack adjustment. A hundred feet ahead, I leaned my trekking poles against a tree to take in the beautiful creek. It was shortly after noon.
​
That’s when I saw it: movement in the brush to the left of one of the creek’s sweeping turns. Surmising what it might be, I instinctively reached for my iPhone in my pack’s right waist-level pocket. As if cued by a movie director — “Action!” — a golden bear lumbered across a shallow, 15-foot-wide channel, heading from my left to my right.
​
Purposeful. Proud. And, for what I figured to be a black bear, far lighter than the dark-furred version I’d always imagined. More cinnamon in color than black.
​
I zoomed in for a closer image on my iPhone 17.
​
The bear disappeared behind a mound of tall grass. To my right, Glenn was making his way toward me. I had imagined this moment hundreds of times and was calmer than expected, in part because I’d mentally rehearsed it so often I knew the plan: unless I felt threatened by the bear, I would film this wonderful creature.
​
Beyond realizing I’d been welcomed into a moment of wonder, I had one other thought: This bear is huge.
“Bear, bear,” I whispered loudly toward Glenn.
Just as I’d thought the bear was gone for good, its head rose above the grassy mound and grew larger and clearer. For a few seconds, the bear rumbled straight at me, though it didn’t appear to see me about 90 feet — three first-downs — away.
​
Above the trickle of the creek, the bear growled or groaned twice, paused, then added a third. As Glenn first saw what I was seeing —“Wow” — the bear turned to my right, parallel to the trail, and disappeared behind trees. Total bear footage: about 15 seconds.
​
“See any cubs around?” Glenn whispered.
​
“No. I say we just keep moving our way while he moves his.”
​
“Copy that.”
​
We did so, though once we were a few hundred yards away, I couldn’t resist turning, looking beyond Glenn and yelling, “He’s coming after us!”
​
He bolted forward as if flung from a slingshot. Payback for all those times he’d laughingly tell me, “If a bear or cougar tries to run us down, remember, I only have to outrun one other person to survive — you.”
​
At the Tuolumne Meadows backpackers’ camp that night, I shared the video with Andy and Shane, who’d made it in time for burgers.
​
“We saw a bear right on the trail around that area,” said Andy. He and Shane had probably come through a half hour before us, maybe more. No muss. No fuss. The bear had simply ambled away, essentially ignoring the two hikers.
​
The campground was full but, when we inquired, a young man allowed us to pitch our tents in a makeshift spot near his own. His name was Elijah, 31, a Stanford grad student who was leaving in the morning for a north-to-south attempt of all but 27 miles of the 211-mile JMT, ending with an ascent of 14,505-foot Mt. Whitney.
​
“I’ve spent the last five years working on my PhD.,” he said. “I turned in my dissertation Friday [it was Sunday], and here I am. It’s time.”
​
As we ate dinner — freeze-dried beef stew for me — Glenn and I answered a bevy of questions Elijah had for us, the first being: “When do you know if you should quit?”
​
When hearing he’d already been having heel blisters on practice outings, Glenn gifted Elijah a ton of Kinesio tape. (Neither of us had had any foot problems.)
​
We wished him good luck, gave him an email address — “Write me after you’re done,” I said — and went to bed, wisps of campfire smoke adding to the woodsy ambiance.
​
On Monday, at Tuolumne’s store, I bought some fresh food for the final two legs — two bags of Kettle chips, a cup of fresh strawberries and eight mini-rounds of cheese — while Glenn downed a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar. It was 8:30 a.m.
​
Outside the post office, just before it opened at 9 a.m., a young man asked if we were awaiting food shipments, and we told him yes.
​
“Names?”
​
“Petersen and Welch.”
​
“Got ’em both. Welch, yours is right beneath one of my speakers.”
​
I loved the personal service, including our names being handwritten in large letters for easier retrieval. But with only two days to go — and already sick of most of my food — I left nearly half of my resupply items in the hikers’ box, where others could claim what I’d discarded.
We climbed 1,200 feet to Upper Cathedral Lake, lunched, watered up, and headed to our overnight destination — Sunrise Camp.
​
It was part dude ranch, part backpackers’ camp. A “guard” out front quickly directed us to the latter. Though it was a nice camp with a water spigot and the fanciest on-trail outhouse I’d ever seen, when I heard the laughter and cheers next door — and imagined the prime rib offered to these mule-train hikers — I couldn’t help but feel we just didn’t belong.
“We’re Leonard DeCaptrio and the others in steerage on the Titanic,” I said.
​
Later, to learn more about these first-class expeditions, I approached a guy whose family was taking the deluxe route — a five-mile hike into Sunrise, plus dinner, for $500. One night.
​
At first, he couldn’t hear me over the sound of his battery-operated toothbrush. (To save weight, I had sawed a regular toothbrush in half and squeezed six days’ worth of toothpaste into a credit-card-sized plastic bag.)
​
“Excuse me if I’m not a great interview,” he told me. “I just took an edible gummy.”
​
OUR FINAL DAY was a collision of cultures on a stretch of trail whose drop in elevation — 9,321 feet to 4,025 at Yosemite Village — mirrored my drop in spirits. Yes, it was cool to roll into Yosemite, which we’d had to bypass in 2014 because of fire, but it came with a price: sensory overload.
​
If we’d hardly seen a cloud or mosquito in six days, if we’d hiked four hours that morning before seeing another human being, the tourists starting at Nevada Falls (see video below) zapped me back to reality with the subtlety of a head-on crash. Imagine a Disneyland crowd, only instead of walking on flat, wide surfaces, people were threading their way up and down a narrow, rocky, sandy, often slippery, zigzagging trail that drops 2,000 feet in five miles.
“Feels like I’m running with the bulls in Pamplona,” I yelled to Glenn over the din of hundreds of people, a small portion of the roughly 20,000 that descend on the park each day in July.
​
Fathers pushing baby strollers. Mothers carrying toddlers like firewood. Teenagers on the run, like wild antelopes, dangerously cutting the corners on switchbacks. Squirrels that were tamer than house cats, so conditioned were they to handouts from tourists.
​
“Scariest part of the whole hike,” I said to Glenn.
​
“This is ridiculous,” said a woman huffing and puffing. “They should just put in a tram.”
​
At Yosemite Village, we clambered onto a shuttle that felt more like a subway, holding the upper rail with one hand and our packs with the other. All eyes seemed to be on the two old, sweaty guys, and when we got to our stop — North Pines Campground — I imagined the others breaking into applause.
A tourist happily took our end-of-the-trail photo just after we left the shuttle bus.
​
I thought of the ending of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, how a tourist sees only the skeletal remains of a great fish and has no concept of the struggle the fisherman endured. We were the Old Men and the Trail — and were fine with that. But we understood what we’d done over the last six days. That’s all that mattered.
​
We cleaned up in a creek (no soap), woofed down great amounts of food on the patio of a bar near the famed Ahwahnee Dining Room — we didn’t even have clean underwear, much less the mandatory collared shirts for that venue — and talked of our journey.
​
We slept in the backpackers’ campground, where a low-in-the-sky full moon watched over us through most of the night. In 5 a.m. darkness, a group of backpackers — all strangely outfitted with the same tents and bags — were up and getting ready to leave, their red headlamps conjuring thoughts of a night-op scene from a Tom Clancy novel.
​
I just snuggled deeper into my bag, dreaming not of lions, like Hemingway’s fisherman did, but of a single bear splashing through Lyell Creek.
​
Editor's note: You can subscribe to Welch's weekly Heart, Humor & Hope column for as little as $6 a week. Click this link for more info.
​