87 Miles on the JMT

Before the run went up in smoke.

The higher I got up Mount Whitney, the more the temperature plummeted.

My fingers were numb and my face was stinging as the wind whipped into me. It felt like I was getting backhanded by an icicle. I was wearing every last layer that I had but I still vibrated with cold.

I pulled my buff up over my nose, but my lungs protested as the fabric made breathing even harder than the lack of oxygen on the 14,505’ peak.

It was a fitting start to my FKT attempt on the John Muir Trail – which is riddled with stories about what a punishing and brutal trail it can be.

Another gust smacked me and I yanked my buff over my wind-whipped face.

The buff choked me and I pulled it back down so I could inhale some sweet, sweet oxygen.

As I kept marching up the mountain, I kept rotating between warmth and breath. Warmth. Breath. Warmth. Breath.

And I truly couldn’t decide which was more important. So I kept playing a torturous game of Choose Your Own Vital Need as I hiked up. Would I rather be warm or would I rather breathe?

This was going to be an adventure.

When I walked up to the Whitney Portal at 2:30 that morning to start running the 223 miles to Yosemite Valley, I knew that I was taking about 8 billion chances with the run:

Would the smoke from the nearby Sequoia Fire blow back in?

Would there be a government shutdown that would shutter the national parks that I was running through?

Would the snow hit before I could finish?

Could I do it?

The decision to attempt the JMT FKT had been a last-minute Hail Mary of a running goal, motivated by an especially long fire and smoke season, the endless cancelation rollercoaster of COVID, and, just, life. I was feeling especially aware of the need to do the things you want to do when you can. 

“It’s my YOLO run!” I joked to my friend Shelby when I asked her if she wanted to come pace the run “in, like, a week.”

I didn’t want to regret not going for it when I could, just because I had a few fears and doubts.

But I also knew that there was still every chance it could get shutdown even if I was brave enough to show up and try.

As I got closer to the summit of Mount Whitney, the first colorful rays of sunrise were sneaking over the horizon. The soft light was a stunning contrast to the jagged crevices of the sharp peak.

I glanced down at my watch and saw that I had already climbed over 5k’ since I started a few hours earlier. I laughed out loud to myself. I had climbed the equivalent of one of the biggest volcanos in Oregon and I was just a tiny fraction into this thing. The fact that this run started with a casual climb up to the highest point in the continental US was hilarious to me in my flurry of early morning nerves and excitement.

I crested the summit and made a very haphazard attempt to sign the summit register, but my numb fingers weren’t having much of it. So, I took another quick look around, made a promise to myself to come back – with more time and more layers – and kept moving in a feeble attempt to warm up a little.

I plunged down the backside of Whitney and giddily took in the next stretch of the trail. The southern stretch of the Sierra is an otherworldly landscape of chalky white granite. A barren and beautiful piece of earth.

As ridiculous of a climb as Whitney was, I knew I was just getting started.

The John Muir Trail is a trail of high mountain passes, that collectively take you through 40-something-thousand feet of elevation gain - all over high-in-the-sky peaks. The next pass would be a stout 13,200’.

But as I ran past Guitar Lake, I exhaled a sigh of satisfaction. I was barely a half marathon into the attempt and very aware of how many miles and how many passes were ahead of me, but I felt so grounded into what I was doing. I was out there for a long run on one of the most beautiful trails my feet had ever met – and it just felt right.

The total mileage wasn’t haunting me yet, nor were the other more challenging components of this trail: the altitude, the rugged terrain, the endless series of high mountain passes, the darker, colder, and longer days. I felt respect for how hard the run would be, and also confidence in myself.

I definitely still had fears looming in my head. I knew I would have to run more night miles alone – straight through cougar territory. I knew I would have to deal with sleep deprivation – as I ran through three nights with just a couple of measly naps along the way. I knew it would get bone-chillingly cold again and that I had 12 hours of darkness every night. And I knew I would encounter terrain that would catapult rocks and boulders to the top of my shit list. But, I also felt ready for all of it.

Like, when I showed up, all of these hurdles shifted from huge mental barriers to things I thought I could get through. To start the run was to declare a confidence in my ability to handle the biggest and hardest and scariest parts of the run. To proclaim, I think I can do this. I could feel scared about the things ahead and I could have faith in my courage to confront those fears.

For how unsure I’d been of my capabilities to do this run, and how much imposter syndrome I felt just thinking about going for it, I felt a surprising amount of peace with being out there, and actually taking it all on.

I thought back to walking up to the Whitney Portal in the quiet dark of the middle of the night – and how to start something so big invites us to show up with some radical self-belief.

And here that was.

The hardest low that hit during my early miles was a vehement disinterest in all food.

I’m normally a world-class snacker, but for whatever reason, I was struggling to eat enough from the get-go. I wasn’t nauseous, but the Oreos in my pack sounded as appetizing as pigeon dung and sips of my high-calorie drink mix felt like sucking down a flask of candy store dropouts melted into trashcan frathouse punch.

The only thing that was really helping me eat was the promise of a lighter pack. Between the amount of layers I needed for the 50-degree temperature swings between day and night, the pile of safety essentials for the solo backcountry travel, and the fact that I was carrying approximately 10,000 calories because there would be so little crew access along the way, I was hauling a hefty bag up and down those mountains.

And so when I hit Forester Pass, I breathlessly chanted “Energy! Lighter pack! Eating is good!” and shoved a peanut butter tortilla in my mouth. Chewing it 117 times before forcing myself to swallow it. I knew I needed to keep eating, regardless of how unappealing it may seem.

But outside of the fact that I’d developed a distate for all snack food, the first part of the trail was an absolute treat and I was flooded with gratitude for the mountains, the trail, the friends who were supporting me, and the fact that I got to be out there, spoiled with alpine goodness.

And after 45 ridiculously jaw-dropping miles and almost zero humans along the way, I got to pick up my friend Shelby, who would pace me through the next 40 miles. I was elated to see her, though very unenthused about the bag of food she’d hiked in to resupply me – full of all of the things I had declared war on in the last 45 miles.

Shelby and I got to do one pass in the waning sunlight before night hit and it was a hell of a pass to get to see. The descent led us down to a quiet lake surrounded by golden willows with the sun sinking into the mountains behind it. It was bliss.

And then the darkness hit – and the cold that comes along with it, which was decidedly less blissful. Streams were freezing into sheets of ice. Our fingers were numbed into immobile claws around our poles. And the wind was making us whimper for mercy.

And some other nighttime things popped up, too.

“Shelby,” I whispered, as I came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the dark and forested trail around 3am.

“Yes?” she whispered back, her voice wondering why we were being so quiet.

“We need to figure out what to do about the bones,” I whisper-screeched, fast and frantic.

There were two large bones in the middle of the trail – and I assumed the cougar who slayed the bone-owner was nearby, ready to be protective of his fresh kill.

“The bones?” Shelby said, her voice dripping with skepticism.

“Emily,” she laughed. “You’re hallucinating.”

“I’m not hallucinating. There are bones – look! Right therrr – oh. I think I was hallucinating.”

We both cackled and kept moving down the boneless trail.

That was far from our last hallucination of the night. Both of us were seeing pirate ships in the boulders and other hikers in the trees and Shelby was visited by a human-sized animatronic koala, but they were all much friendlier sights than the bones I had imagined earlier that night.  

And the next morning dawned full of promise – the sky was a bright blue and the mountains were smothered in bright foliage, I was just a few miles from my first full crew stop and the hot mashed potatoes that would come with it, which was the first thing that sounded appetizing since I started climbing Mount Whitney at 2:30 the night before, and the sun was working on warming the earth back up to a pleasant and tolerable temperature. I could feel my fingers starting to melt back into functioning body parts.

And, despite the lows along the way, I still felt like I had a good run in me. I was excited to see how fast I could cover the rest of the miles to Yosemite. That self-belief from the start had survived the night and all of the low-calorie, low-temperature, low-sleep lows.

And then I ran into a pair of hikers who stopped and asked me about the smoke.

“It’s nonexistent,” I said – a little confused. “It’s been a beautiful, clear morning.”

“Well, you’re headed straight into it,” they warned.

And they were right. I was heading straight into it. And it was bad.

By the time I met Ian by the intersection to Bishop Pass, it was raining flakes of ash and we couldn’t see the mountains or trees through the thick wall of smoke. I was hacking up some heinous combination of smoke and Sierra dust and our eyes were stinging with tears. And the worst of it was exactly where I was headed.

“What should I do?” I asked Ian, even though I knew there was no way I could keep running – especially since the next section was 66 miles with no real bailout options. And I knew that if we were back home, I wouldn’t run a single mile in smoke that bad. I knew if we drove up to the Whitney Portal and saw that cauldron of soup simmering over Mount Whitney, I would not start.

And I knew that even if I was 87 miles into this run and it would suck to bail, that it was exactly what I should do. I delayed the inevitable by drawing out our discussion of my options, before I finally surrendered to the smart decision.

“I have to call it,” I sighed. And I coughed like a pack-a-day smoker into the dirt.

So, we packed up all of the crew things and started to hike the 12 miles up and over the 11,972’ Bishop Pass that was our exit from the trail. As we climbed up, I turned and looked back into the smoky abyss, the JMT buried beneath it. I imagined another world where I was running into that valley, surrounded by clean air and endless granite.

I thought about what could’ve been. And then I thought about what was. I thought about walking up to the Whitney Portal with that radical self-belief simmering inside me. And the quiet confidence that stayed with me through the highs and lows of the 87 miles I did get. I thought about how good and right it felt to be running on that magical trail, trying to see what I could do. And how grateful I was to be out there, especially after how hesitant I was to let myself even try.

I was bummed to have to walk away, up and over that pass, and away from the JMT, but, I as disappointed as I was, I still felt some of that peace I had felt as I ran deep into the Sierra. I had no regrets about showing up at the Whitney Portal and going for it.

The smoke robbed me of the chance to finish the run – but it couldn’t take away the fact that I started. I get to keep that.

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