Hiking the John Muir Trail

Sorry for the unadvertised absence but I've been gone hiking the Appalachian Trail John Muir Trail.

Here's the executive summary: the JMT starts at Happy Isles trailhead in Yosemite Valley and nominally goes to the summit of Mount Whitney, 211 (208? It's remarkably hard to get accurate numbers here) miles away. Because there's no road that goes to the top of Whitney, you then need to hike out to the trailhead at Whitney Portal, for a total distance of 218 (222?) miles. I left Yosemite at about 10 AM August 13th and arrived at Whitney Portal at about 2 PM August 23rd. More specifically:

Day	Camp Site	Distance	Cumulative
1	Upper Cathedral Lake	17	17
2	After Donohue Pass	20	37
3	Reds Meadow	21	59
4	Squaw Lake Outlet	21	79
5	South of Selden Pass	24	103
6	Sapphire Lake	21	124
7	Upper Palisade Lakes	22	146
8	North of Glen Pass	22	168
9	Tyndall Creek Crossing	21	187
10	Guitar Lake	16	203
11	Exit	15	218

Note: numbers are approximate and don't include detours, places where I accidentally went off the trail for a little bit, etc. The cumulative and distance numbers don't add up perfectly due to round off error.

It's traditional, I suppose, to do some sort of day by journal, but honestly you don't want to read that "Day 5: walked another 20 miles. Ate another 9 PowerBars. Stunning scenery. Very tired." More interesting, I think, is to talk a bit about planning, gear, logistics, etc., so I'll be doing some of that over the next few days. I'll also post some more pictures once I get them uploaded, sorted, etc.