annual end of the summer backpacking trip

link to photo album

Becky and I have been wanting to visit Glacier National Park for years, but given its popularity we weren't willing to drive out there at the spur of the moment to put a backpacking trip together...so we put in all our reservations early this spring to get the exact itinerary we wanted...now all we had to do was cross our fingers that the park didn't start burning like it did in 2017.    Sad trombone...as our departure date neared, west side access was closed due to a big fire and some of our trails were shut down due to grizzly bear activity...so a trip to Glacier was going to be thoroughly compromised.  Time to find another destination.

The Sierras have never let us down, but a spur of the moment trip to California was going to be a little tricky as the most popular trailheads already had their quotas booked solid for months and we didn't want to head down there with our fingers crossed we could get a walk-up permit the day we wanted to start.   We still managed to get a reservation and piece together a wacky little loop trip zig zagging some areas we'd seen on the John Muir Trail and Sierra High Route trips years ago but we'd also get to see a lot of new terrain.

The trip reinforced just how easy it is to find solitude in the oh so popular Sierras. The few times we were on trails, particularly the Pacific Crest Trail, we'd see people about every ten minutes, but once we headed into cross country terrain, we'd go all day without seeing anyone.