A gift from 'A Doug's Wife', I dug into this book with anticipation. Any Sierra hiker knows all about the JMT - and this one had me thinking about moving this ~30 day hike up to the top of my bucket list.
Some random quotes and passages:
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"Then a strange thing happened as we followed the creek. It looked like we were crossing a low valley, but it turned out to be a very high valley that spread into a large meadow. I could see a large grove of trees at the far edge of the meadow, but then what?"
"By now our set-up was pretty predictable. We set our packs down, I scouted around to see if there was a better campsite then the first one spotted and then we made our decision. It was probably too close to the lake to meet leave-no-trace principles but had clearly been used before, so rather than crush more fragile plants, we set up our tent on a compacted sandy site."
"Entering Evolution Valley, it was apparent that it was as beautiful as everyone had said. It was an idyllic scene with a meandering creek, lush green meadows and granite spires stabbing at the sky. Horses grazed peacefully like a scene from the Big Valley TV show. It was enough to make me want to throw down my pack and build a log cabin to live out the rest of my days, national park restrictions on that sort of activity not withstanding."
"On and one we went, across the vast slick slabs of polished granite shimmering with sluiced panes of water, through rustling forest, crossing and re-crossing murmuring books. Finally we collapsed at Mono Creek, fast water tearing across the path, too tired to go on."
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http://ingasadventures.com/
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Highs-Lows-John-Muir-Trail/dp/0997061804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524621743&sr=8-1&keywords=highs+and+lows+on+the+john+muir+trail