John Muir Trail Journal Day0

I did 211 mile (340 km) John Muir Trail thru-hike in July, 2014, by myself.

JMT hike is memorable and life-time accomplishment.
Every night during JMT, I wrote journal. I will share them.

 

John Muir Trail Journal Day0

Day0 Backpackers' Campground in Yosemite Valley

I will hit the JMT tomorrow.

Finally I left for the JMT trip. It's surreal. 

It was 6 months ago I applied for a permit for this backpacking. Finally this is happening. 

I picked up a permit at the Wilderness center, and pitch a tent at the backpackers' campsite. This campsite allows for backpackers to camp who depart the next day and the next day they finished the trip.
Because this is the first-come first-served site, I decided to take it easy after I secured a spot around noon.

While I was relaxing, a Korean couple came and started looking for a site. Because it was around 1 p.m., many sites were still available, but they seemed to try to get the best site. Finally they decided to pick a site next to mine. Then they started pitching a tent, but they didn't know how to do it. I was surprised. It is pretty rare for people who don't know how to pitch a tent to camp at backpacker's campsite. It is not car camping. They asked the people at the next site over to help them pitch a tent. They told them that it was their first camping. Seriously?

While I was observing a Korean couple, an American lesbian couple (it was obvious) came in. They looked like very professional backpackers. They set up a camp quickly and sat at a bench side by side and started making meal. 

Then another American group came in. They were proudly talking about bears. One person said that he had never seen any single bear in the Sierra. He doesn't believe that bears live in the Sierra. There ARE bears. I have seen many bears in the Sierra. He just didn't have an opportunity to see them. I thought that he should not be proud of it, he should rather be ashamed, but he is American. Oh well.
He was very loud (he is American), so other campers went to his group and asked him not to speak so loudly (It's American). He spoke quietly for a few minutes and got louder (It's American). 

The campsite was interesting.