12 days on the John Muir Trail_ traveling with strangers, exhausted, tough days

Hello it is day seven on the John Muir Trail. This has been the hardest thing I've ever done and also the craziest experience of my life. Tomorrow is going to be our hardest day so I thought that I would share it with you guys long form. We are doing Forrester Pass which is the biggest pass on the trail. We have about 4,000 feet of gain and I don't know how many miles. I don't think it's too many miles. We've been doing between 12 and 15 miles a day so far. I am very tired. We've been waking up every morning at like 5 a.m and then hiking 12 to 15 miles and then getting to camp and just trying to survive. But tomorrow we have Forrester and then after that we have Mount Whitney which is the tallest peak in the lower 48. It has been on my bucket list forever and I'm so excited. I'm on this trip with complete strangers. I did not know a single person here. This is a press trip so it's for content creators and journalists and then we have two guides that are with us and it's crazy to say but like we literally met a week ago and I feel like we're already such close friends but I guess that's what happens when you like literally spend every waking second together and you have no cell service and we're just out in the middle of nowhere. The one thing I will say is that 12 days is much longer than I thought it was. Like I was kind of like thinking that it was gonna feel like a week-long trip or like I've done a lot of like you know four to five day backpacking trips. This is completely different. Being out for 12 days with no cell service completely cut off from the outside world in a very remote location while also doing extremely strenuous things because not to mention we're hiking all of this with 30 to 40 pounds on our backs and we're hiking over the tallest mountains in the lower 48 so it's very intense and very difficult but I'm really excited to share with you guys what our day looks like tomorrow. I'm gonna show you guys a little bit of what our camp setup looks like. We've got a fire going. This is Jake and Freddie. These are our guides and here's my little house. Inside is literally everything that I own for the 12 days. I have two pairs of shorts, two shirts, two sports bras, three pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, and a puffy jacket. Oh and then my base layers that I sleep in and that's about it. These are my clothes that I washed in the river earlier. It's 8 p.m and I'll see you in the morning. Good morning. That looks so good. Bon Appetit. There's a bear. That was really cool. I thought that he was joking. I thought I literally thought that you were joking when you said do you want to see a bear. Oh yeah. Okay we are getting ready to leave. I'm nervous and excited. Oh my god my pack is heavy. How are you feeling about today's hike? I'm ready. I can't think about it too much. I'm just gonna go. How are you feeling about today's hike? The only way to do it is just to do it. Jeffrey do you have the same answer or do you have something different for the court? I'm so lucky to be here. I'm just happy to be here. That sounded very genuine. It wasn't. And we are off. Mile zero of I don't know how many we're doing today but probably a lot. Many many miles. 500 miles to be exact. We're gonna walk 500 miles tonight. We'll walk 500 more. Up above 10,000. What are we going to? 13 change. I can't remember exactly. And right where the crosshairs are sitting right now 13096. That's roughly the pass elevation. Okay. But if you pull out the paper map on the side of my. Yes. So we were right here. Okay. Right. We're heading up this drainage right now. Yes. There's Forrester. Okay. According to the map it's 13180. Okay. And then we'll probably, whoops, camp at these lakes. Okay. These little high alpine lakes here. Okay. Then we'll continue south all the way to Crabtree Meadow. Okay. Tomorrow we'll camp here for two nights. On the layover day we'll go up Mount Whitney and back. Yes. Back to Crabtree, stay the night. Then we got a 10 mile hike out to Rock Creek. Okay. And then we have another 10 mile hike out to Cottonwood Pass trailhead. Okay. Well, let's get after it. 13180. We're about a mile in. We've done like 400 feet of elevation gain, but I'm pretty sure we have a little over 3,000 left. Yep. We just hit 10. Our bags are also pretty heavy because we just got our biggest resupply last night and all of our snacks. I did keep a lot of snacks. I could have probably downsized, but you never know how hungry you're going to be. And I thought that if I put something like scented out with the mules, and I wish that I would have kept it, I would have been really pissed at myself. So I just kept them all. It's gorgeous. You can still see the moon up there over that ridge. The pass is somewhere up there. So we're thinking potentially behind that dome through that pass. We have done 2.75 miles, almost 900 feet of gain, which is nice because that means the more we do on the way here means the less that we have to do like during the actual pass. And this is more gradual than the pass is going to be for sure. Taking a little break. Snickers. I have got candy. The banana now and laters are really bad though. And I'm pissed that I packed them because now I have to carry them. This is my suggestion. Thank you, Ayana. For the vegan version of ---- slaps. Nice. They don't like my positivity. It's not because I'm going fast because I'm a tryhard. It's because I want to spend as little time with this pack on my back as possible because it's pulling my shoulder. It's because you're a casual elite athlete. Casual elite athlete. That's what you are. You should put that in your like little bio. I would never put that in my bio. Yeah, we're not doing that. We're going, we're going from the logs. Freddie rushing at Steve. On trail. Good morning. Freddie and Jake have been like maybe 16 all of those days. Yeah, it's literally 24 seven. I'm not mad about that. I feel bad. We're working on being more helpful and by the end we're going to have it all down right before we're done. You guys are cooking the last dinner. I, I would cook dinner. I would do dishes anytime. You just gotta let us know. You can do the chili mac after Whitney. Absolutely, I'll do the chili mac after Whitney. We just came all the way up this valley. We're going somewhere up there. One more little break before the pass. Taking the pack off. Oh my god, the view behind you is actually crazy. We're at 4.8 miles. We've done 1760 of elevation gain which means that we're about halfway done. That being said, it is going to get incredibly steep. That first part was like pretty gradual the whole way up even though it was consistently up. Up there is the pass right beside that little dome or to the right of the dome is what they're saying now. Look how cute they are just hanging out by the river. What a life. Snack of choice. This is Freddie. Is he drinking directly out of the stream? Freddie has yet to filter water so he might end up with a parasite. Hashtag no filter. Hashtag no filter. We have a little friend. Hi cutie. We're back up and moving. That summit that I showed you earlier is actually a false summit so we are going up there and then we have to go higher. Also, didn't say this but our group used to have one more and she hurt her ankle yesterday and they sent her out with the pack meals on a horse. It was crazy. We miss you Tanika. We wish you were here. Shout out to Tanika. Okay, I'm kind of hiking ahead a little bit just to the top of the pass. It's easier for me to go faster uphill especially so I can get this pack off. This pack weighs like a third of my body weight. Usually when I do backpacking trips, I bring a lot lighter food. We are getting really awesome food from our guides. That also means that the packs are incredibly heavy. This trip is really unique. They actually don't even offer it. They do this itinerary as a 15-day trip. We're doing it in 12 and usually it's meal supported so you're just hiking it all with day packs but we're carrying all of our stuff so it's definitely much tougher than like the average trip that they take but I'm also insanely grateful to be here. This is the hardest thing I've ever done and today is going to be the hardest day. After today, smooth sailing up to Mount Whitney. Just hit 2,500 feet of gain for the day. I'm kind of dying. That means we have a thousand feet left. The way that we did this trip for 12 days was we had two resupplies so the mules bring in the resupply. We just re-upped last night for a five-day food carry and I got an extra battery pack sent in because I was running low and I want to be able to vlog. Both of those things are very heavy. I feel like my pack weighs twice as much as it felt like it weighed yesterday. Cool little depression lake. I just hit 2,700. I'm just taking a break to get the weight off of my shoulders for a second. A little bit of snow. Kind of scary. Has pretty great footholds that are already built in. This mountain's pretty crazy. Lakes down there. The only update is that we're still climbing but it is getting windy which means I feel like we're getting closer to the top. I think I have approximately 600 feet of gain left but that's if my watch was right and the maps were right going into it. Climbing, climbing, climbing. We came from all the way around this ridge here in that valley that goes behind. Exactly putting into perspective how far we've gone up. 3,000 feet done. I'm giving my shoulders another little break and look at my view. That's pretty epic. This experience is quite literally changing my life. I'm like very interested in doing longer through hikes now. I think 12 days on trail without a stop because we have two people in our group that have done the PCT like the whole thing. Oh my god. Hi baby. Just hanging out with me but we have two people in our group that have done the entire PCT and they both said that they had never gone longer than 10 days without stopping through a town. So 12 is just a really long time. We're gonna keep walking but I think one, not having cell service for 12 days has been like the biggest thing for me because I thought that it was gonna be hard. Like I thought that I was gonna want to keep checking my phone or like wish that I could and that's the part that I'm like dreading most actually is getting back to cell service. I feel like it has been so good for my mental health to just be completely disconnected and like living in the moment. The thing that I'm most excited about getting back for is a shower and a real bed. Pretty sure that we're going up over that. Kids or girl will catch a freaking break around here. This is straight up. We are in the home stretch. It's right up there. You can see a little man standing up there. All I can think is that probably gonna be up there in like 15 or 20 minutes. I'm gonna be taking my pack off, drinking a ton of water, eating my candy, having a grand old time. Just gotta finish getting through this first. Oh my god we did it. Eight miles and 36.50 of elevation. Rice krispies for you. The tan lines are unreal and the rest of our group is coming up now. It's actually unbelievable. Thank you. Lunch with a view. This is probably gonna be the most amazing thing I've ever had in my life. Oh my god. Is it? Mm-hmm. Let me give a Yelp review of this restaurant. Forrester Pass and what goes up must come down. So here we go. Well actually a little bit more up but downhill's coming. Get your pack on Jake. What are you doing? Wow this is crazy. So the trail that we're walking on now one person died in a rock slide making it. Donald Downs. We made it to camp and that's home for tonight. We're gonna close off for the body so I'll be back. Well we're clean as can be. I guess the cleanest I've been in eight days for sure. But we still have so much time before dinner. I think we're gonna lay out for a little bit, play some music, and then our guides are cooking us food which is really really nice. And this is our view. She's gorgeous. Yum. Yum. Thank you. Let's go walk. Freddie is all the way up there. Crazy. Holy crap. I'm about to go to bed but I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about this trip. It has been the craziest experience of my life. I showed up here knowing that I was not going to pass through a town for 12 days with a bunch of strangers and it's crazy now because this was the eighth day on the trip and it's like we all feel so close and I can't imagine the fact that a week ago I didn't even know who they were. I think that that's like one of the biggest and most beautiful things about group travel in general which is why I'm so passionate about it. That's why I started my company. It is just insane how close you get with people when you're sharing such a cool unique experience together. The first six days were feeling really long. Like I was like is this ever gonna end? And obviously you're getting used to it. You're getting used to everyone. You're in such a crazy environment and now it's like getting close to the end and I'm like ---- like I don't want it to end and as much as I am excited to like actually shower and potentially eat an entire pizza to myself like I really am having the best time and I kind of wish that it was longer. I wish that we were doing the whole trail. I think that not being in self-service has been the best thing for me mentally. Like I have never felt this mentally good in my entire life and I feel like I've just been so present and so in the moment and so not worried about like little other random things that were going on in my life and I think like I want to bring a lot of that back to obviously maybe be more disconnected in my daily life but also that's hard. Like when you have access to your email all the time. When you have access to your text messages all the time or social media it's just hard to stay disconnected and I think that that's my biggest fear about going back is losing this aspect of presentness that I feel right now where I was talking to Iona about it earlier but like literally all we have to worry about out here is walking to where we need to walk which is incredibly far. Super hard. You don't even have the mental capacity to think about anything else in that moment because it's so tough especially carrying a pack and then we get here and we're worried about like surviving like setting up our tent and hanging out and filtering water. This has been something that was on my bucket list forever and it's like one of those things where it's so hard to get permits for it's so hard to plan that when I got this opportunity to come on it with this company I was like I need to go because I might never get that opportunity again just because I don't know if I would ever like have the means or have the ability to plan it or get a permit or whatever and this was just all set up for me and I just showed up and it is insane. It has changed my life honestly like changed my mental state. I would love to do more big long through hikes. I really want to do a solo one. I'm thinking about doing the other half of this trail because we didn't do the first 100 miles. We are about 90 miles in right now and we're hiking 130 so we have like 40 miles to go. I think it's like 20 miles to Mount Whitney and then 20 miles after Mount Whitney because we can't exit the Whitney portal but I would love to come back and maybe even with my dad. My dad and I had always talked about doing this trail and so I think it'd be really special to come back with him and do the first half so maybe in the next couple years we'll get that going. I do have a little PCT itch but I think that I need to do something like the Colorado trail like 400-ish miles. Spend like a month out in the back country before I decided to make like a five-month commitment like that but I could totally see myself doing it and I think that I would love it but we'll see. Those are my thoughts. If you have a chance to go on a trip like this I highly recommend it. Now make sure you are mentally and physically prepared and if you have never backpacked before potentially do like a three-day trip like this was really long for me. I'd only ever done a five-day trip before this. Definitely a very unique and very cool experience if you made it to this point in the vlog. I love you guys so much. I'm sorry it was shot on my iPhone. I didn't bring my camera with me but I am really glad that I got to do at least some form of long-form content because I just didn't know. I don't have a lot of power um but I finally got a new power bank in in the resupply last night and I was like I want to shoot a long-form video even if the quality isn't as good on my camera as it is on my camera. I just think you get a little bit more real perspective when you get to like hear me chat more and stuff than I obviously have time to do in short form but I love you guys so much. I hope that you're having the best day and please go get outside today.