Day 8: Sally-Keys to below Evolution Lake-18 Miles

Slept poorly, I had to re-inflate my sleeping pad 4 times last night. I dreamt of Jennifer Garner though so no complaints here. Woke up to a soft freeze this morning, not surprising given that we are camping above 10,000 ft. We hiked about 5 miles down to Muir Ranch and picked up our last resupply buckets. We are now carrying a 6 day loadout of food and supplies which should get us all the way out. It also basically doubled the weight of Nick and my packs.


Fun Fact: Muir Ranch is the unofficial halfway point of the JMT. The last half of the trip has no staffed camps or places to eat. Just miles to hike and mountains to climb.

Resupplying at Muir Ranch

We spent about 2 hours at Muir Ranch picking through their buckets of extra food left behind by hikers. I've never seen so many Cliff Bars.

Those 5 gallon buckets in the distance are all about half filled with Cliff Bars. Nobody likes those things.

We realized that we are hiking faster than the pace set by my Dad and Nick the previous year (they finished the JMT in 13 days last year but did not take a rest day at VVR), and that if we keep it up we can finish a day early. Also we met Pat, the 87 year old who runs Muir Ranch. She is a boss. 

Be nice or she won't give you your resupply bucket

 We left Muir Ranch at 11 and made good time the rest of the day. We were exhausted at the end of the day and accidentally overshot our planned campsite. 








We wound up camping off trail again on the trail to Evolution Lake. It started to rain on us the last mile or so and drizzled on us while we set up camp. 

"It could be worse, at least it's not raining"

It seems like every night we are exhausted and tonight is no different. Having a 2 hour break in the morning at Muir really slows us down so we had to hike late into the day. Tomorrow will be better, from now on there are no more resupplies to pick up or restaurants to eat at, just about 110 miles to hike.