We climbed some pretty high passes, Forrester at 13,200ft, Mather was a b**** climbing 4000ft to 12,000ft on a really rocky trail in just a few miles. Mt Whitney is the very end of the whole JMT, it's the highest mountain in the continental US at 14,500ft. We got up at 2am, started walking at 3am, got to the peak at dawn, there was just 5 of us with the sun rising (it's complicated but we met 2 other guys who we hiked the 2nd week of the trail with, then my dad d...

So....things that happened along the way..... Eating....you have to eat this freeze dried food stuff, one hot meal a day, comes in bags, you add hot water, wait a while until it rehydrates and then eat it. Gets a bit same-y. All the veggie stuff was Mexican beans and rice, or curry pretty much. The occasional freeze-dried pudding of chocolate cheesecake was welcomed. Breakfast was oats. Then bars in the day, but you pretty much feel hungry constantly. We had 2 r...

Any hike with 41lbs on your back is a tough one.....add in 5000ft of ascent and 16-17 miles and I tell you I was nearly broken. We luckily got to leave our sacks to go up Half Dome for dawn, then had to pick them back up to continue on our way. The traditional JMT is 211 miles, but you can do extra peaks and trails (which we were doing) so we were looking at around 235miles in 15 walking days. The first 3 days were the hardest. My whole body just ached. My should...

Ok, so this is where the big trip is really beginning. I'm having to write this in hindsight as there is no Internet for blogging in the wilderness so I'm playing catch up with the next few entries....I arrived in San Fran after 2 flights, both delayed, about 24hours travel time, was looked at oddly by the air hostess for asking for wine at every opportunity and you had to pay for gin on board (outrage-that's AA btw for those of you who might think twice about fl...

So- I'm on my way...not without it's hiccups on the way to the airport though. As you'll be able to see from the other photos my packing was a bit of a bomb site until the last minute. Not unexpected. Then despite being dropped off at the station 40minutes early I still managed to miss my train whilst I was on the phone to Vodafone trying to activate my new simcard- luckily my ticket was still valid for the next train an HOUR later, but I still have to wait 20 da...