Day 2 7.6.08

16+ miles totaly for the day, and we slept in and didn’t start until about 2 p.m. (having hiked 25 or more miles out the gate on the first day created two fairly tired hikers. So, today we hiked our hearts out up and over our first Pass - Donahue Pass.

If we thought the mosquitos were bad at Sunrise - wow - They are TERRIBLE here!!!

We camped on this really flat area overlooking Waugh Lake and with Banner Peak off to the other side of us in all of it’s glory (I believe it was made famous by the one and only Ansel Adams)

Really a beautiful spot.

We haven’t been purifying water, but it looks pretty safe to drink (on my last through hike it was so early in the season and all fresh snow melt, so for the second half of our trip we mailed our filter home and drank straight from the Sierra and never got sick) But today we did notice a bit of red snow up stream from where we were drinking, hoping that doesn’t make us sick. (usually won’t know for 11 days after you drink the bad water)

We are left with about 21 miles for Monday’s hike to Red’s Meadow to meet up with Taylor and Peter (they’ll be hiking the second portion of the trip with us) Hopefully the mosquitos dies down as we go.

I was praying like crazy over the pass - at over 11,000′ I’m usually getting knocked pretty hard by the altitude, God was good and I didn’t feel crappy at all and was able to hike through it, maybe a little slower, but I kept giong and didn’t feel sick as normal.

We took a bunch of self portraits on the trail using our trekking poles with this neat new invention called the Stick Pic attached to the end of the pole to hold our camera! too cool.

Banner Peak in the morning light before hiking to Red’s Meadow.

For those of you who are following along on this trip report, I asked in the first day report how many blisters you guys thought I got while on the trail. No one has guessed correctly yet. If you’ve already guessed, you can’t guess again, but I know there are more of you reading this, so drop a comment, pick a number and take a guess. To answer Cody’s question, if a blister forms within a blister after the original has already popped, no, it doesn’t count as a second blister.

We’re super excited to have David and Jennifer’s wedding featured in the current issue of The Knot, and then to have it featured on the entire website on the front page is SO awesome! Tons of thanks to David and Jennifer for having an AWESOME wedding!

Does have some cussing, so if you’re around young kids or not ready for that, read my post about my backpacking trip…

I’m going to be blogging one day at a time for the next 11 days, entering my journal entry as well as photos from that day on the trail. So, sit back and enjoy. (quick disclaimer on the photos… I only brought my half dead point and shoot, so they’re just snap shots)

JMT 2008

Day 1 7.5.08

Phil and I hiked our first marathon plus… left the backpacker’s campground in the valley at 6:45 a.m. and arrived at the backpacker’s campground in Tuolumne Meadows after 8 p.m.

Hiking the miles wasn’t all that tough, it was more when I hit about 7,500 or 8,000 feet the elevation knocked me over and slowed me to a crawl for a while.

Our original goal was to reach the end of Lyell Canyon about 8 miles farther… Which would have put us well over 30 miles out the gate. But 25+ miles was a pretty healthy start.

We arrived at camp on night one absolutely trashed from the mix of elevation gain, long day and big miles. After drinking a bit of Gatorade I started to feel better and enjoyed some cous cous surprise, a cold beer handed to us by our neighbors in the backpacker’s campground, and a nice pipe of Nottingham.

Phil standing at the beginning of Sunrise Meadow on the John Muir Trail:

Me at the beginning of Sunrise Meadow

Check out this picture from the last time I through hiked the John Muir Trail and passed through Sunrise Meadow (we had about 75% snow coverage for the entire John Muir Trail last time):

Remember to come back tomorrow and so on for the next 11 days as I post up my journal entries, photos and thoughts from the trail.

Also, if you are the first person to comment under any of the posts about my John Muir Trail through hike and tell me how many blisters you think I got while hiking for 220+ miles over 11 days you will win a $20 iTunes gift card (you can only guess once, and if you are a close friend and already know, you can’t win)

As the season continues picking up we’ll be adding tons of new images as we go. Our web design is AMAZING and made it super simple for us to add and delete new pictures from the galleries as well like.

The one catch is, as we add we’re going to have to start deleting photos, so if you have a favorite photo, or least favorite photo in our galleries, let us know so we can share pictures with you guys that you want to see.

Here’s one of the “new” photos I just added back to the website. My buddy D called to ask where it had gone, so because someone spoke up, I’ve added it back in:

Seriously, this little baby had the most AMAZING smile!!!

Lauren told me this photo of her and Joe leaning against the fence at the Carneros Inn was her favorite picture from the slideshow.

Lauren’s shoes were truly my favorite shoes yet! The feathers were really really fun!

Cheryl scored this amazing shot of Lauren’s legs.

The smoke from the fires in northern California cleared enough to allow a nice view down the valley.

You can see the entire slideshow from Joe and Lauren’s wedding by clicking here.

Thanks to Anne McElwain (one of Lauren’s MANY very beautiful bridesmaids) who refered Lauren to us for her wedding photography. (Anne is an amazing photographer herself, check out her website here!)

Celeste Popadiuk of Celeste Nicholas Events did an wonderful job keeping the day stress-free and making sure all of the details came together perfectly.

Catherine Conklin from Wiggy Flowers did an amazing job with all of the beautiful floral pieces!

Nam Vo from MakeupNV did a beautiful job with all of the girls’ makeup.

Lisa Kincaid from Fleur de Lisa Wedding Cakes created an awesome cake to be enjoyed and remembered.

Father Robert Dittler from the White Robed Monks of St. Benedict did a great job with the ceremony.

There were tons of other wedding professionals who came together to make this a special and perfect day.