to ten day’s worth of food, as on the southern section of the JMT. Careful planning is required to ensure that you have sufficient food while walking the Trail, and you must be completely self-reliant.
Walkers should also be aware that the national parks and official wilderness areas of the US are subject to a range of regulations designed to protect ecologically sensitive areas (see ‘Low impact trekking and national park/wilderness regulations’, in ‘Walking the Trail’, below).
While the JMT should present no real difficulties for the seasoned hill and long-distance walker, it is recommended that those undertaking it have previously walked at least one continuous route of more than 150 miles in length, preferably in the Scottish Highlands, Alps or Pyrenees, before attempting the JMT. Some experience at a reasonably high altitude would be an advantage.
If you are concerned that all the planning and physical effort required to walk the John Muir Trail is a little beyond you, then do consider the achievements of Al (Albert) Ansorge from Illinois, who in 2001, when over 80 years old, completed his tenth walk along the entire John Muir Trail. Al made his first JMT trek in 1981 when a mere youngster in his sixties. He reckons that the JMT is the best hike in the world, and this author could not disagree with that opinion.
John Muir
John Muir (1838–1914) is a household name in the US. This somewhat eccentric man – naturalist, conservationist, sage, explorer, mountaineer, inventor, writer and founding father of the national park movement – is alas largely unknown, except to outdoor enthusiasts, in the land where he was born and grew up, Scotland. It is hoped that this guidebook will in some small way help to make the name of John Muir, together with his philosophy, principles of conservation and respect for the wild places of this planet, better known to a wider audience.
John Muir was born on April 21st 1838 in Dunbar on the east coast of Scotland, in Lothian. He was the son of a strict Calvinist and tyrannical disciplinarian who worked his sons harshly. In 1849 the family decided to emigrate to the New World, and so at the age of eleven John left his homeland to make a new life in the United States of America. The family settled on Hickory Hill Farm, near Portage in Wisconsin. In his free time John learnt to wander the open, unfenced country of the neighbourhood, and at this early age developed the love of the outdoors that was to remain with him all his life. He was largely self-taught during these formative years, hiding his reading from his father, who disapproved of book learning. John discovered that he had a gift for invention as well as for geology and botany, and with these talents entered the University of Wisconsin in 1860.
After three years of higher education Muir did various odd jobs, living for a while in Canada to escape the Civil War in the States, but it wasn’t until an accident that nearly blinded him in 1867 that he determined to wander widely. His first long trek was 1000 miles from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico. He next sailed to Cuba with the intention of travelling down to South America, but instead changed his plans to head north for San Francisco where he landed in March 1868.
It was a decision that was to change the whole direction of his life. At the age of 30 he entered Yosemite for the first time and was awe-struck by what he saw. ‘I only took a walk in the Yosemite,’ he later said, ‘but stayed for six years’. California, and particularly Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, would become his home, both physically and spiritually. To Muir the Sierra Nevada was ‘the Range of Light…the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains I have ever seen.’
Octogenarian Al Ansorge (seated far left) in Vermilion Valley Resort dining room during his tenth trek along the JMT
John Muir had considerable mountaineering talents, being attributed with the first ascent of Mount Ritter and with one of the early winter ascents of Half-Dome. But it is for becoming the first conservationist that he is really remembered. Muir was one of the first people to study the science of ecology and to witness at first hand, from his pine cabin home in Yosemite, the damaging effects of the hand of man. He developed a theory of glaciation to explain the formation of Yosemite Valley, and in 1874 started his career as a successful and influential writer. At the age of 42 in 1880 Muir married Louise Strentzel and moved to Martinez, California (now a John Muir National Historic Site), where he ran a fruit farm and brought up his family of two daughters, Helen and Wanda. JMT walkers will pass two mountain lakes that were named after these daughters, either side of the Muir Pass (Day 13). He still managed to travel widely, visiting Alaska, South America, Africa, Australia and elsewhere. He returned to Scotland on only one occasion, to the Highlands, Dunbar, Edinburgh and Dumfries, in 1893.
One of the numerous mountain tarns below Silver Pass (Day 9)
Through his writings and eccentric lifestyle Muir became widely known throughout the United States. He was an influential figure who received the rich and famous to his simple Californian home, including the poet and essayist Ralph Emerson, the author and naturalist H.D. Thoreau and the eminent geologist Joseph Le Conte (see Le Conte Canyon, Day 14 of the JMT). Muir was a confidant of congressmen, presidents and other influential people, and in this way was able to persuade the most powerful men in the country of the urgent need to protect the wilderness areas of western America from commercial exploitation. He pushed for the establishment of Yosemite as the first national park in 1890. In 1903 Muir encouraged President Roosevelt to spend several nights camping out in Yosemite with him, during which time they agreed on a programme of conservation for the area.
Muir was also instrumental in the fight to set up Sequoia, Grand Canyon and other national parks for reasons of conservation and access, and is today dubbed the founding father of America’s national park system. The debate over national parks was really a debate about exploitation versus conservation. In a land where capitalism and the work ethic reign supreme it is perhaps surprising that Muir’s views won the day and that the national parks in America were established to protect and conserve the great wildernesses so early on in the country’s history.
John Muir was undoubtedly America’s most famous and influential naturalist and conservationist, but he was also a popular writer whose somewhat romantic style and unbounded love of nature often won over the hearts even of those with little interest in nature and the environment. His eight wilderness books, a lifetime’s work, are classics of the genre: The Story of my Boyhood and Youth, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, My First Summer in the Sierra, The Mountains of California, Our National Parks, The Yosemite, Travels in Alaska and Steep Trails. They were republished in Britain by Diadem in one volume in 1992 (see Appendix 7 – Bibliography). In all he wrote over 300 articles and 10 major books.
Sadly Muir lost his last fight, a long, drawn-out campaign to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite from being flooded. This failure dispirited him and soon after, on Christmas Eve 1914, he died of pneumonia.
His lasting memorials are the world’s national park networks established by those inspired by his vision. His views are perhaps even more relevant today because of the many threats that the modern world poses for the wild places of this fragile planet. In essence Muir’s naturalist philosophy was a simple one, believing that man truly belonged to nature. ‘I only went out for a walk,’ he wrote, ‘and finally decided to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.’
In Memory of John Muir
In Britain the memory of John Muir, the principles by which he lived and his life’s work in saving and conserving wild areas of the world are embodied in the John Muir Trust, a charity founded in 1983. The aims of the trust are simple: to save and conserve wild places. At the time of writing the it owns and manages seven outstanding wild areas, totalling over 20,000 hectares in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, including Britain’s
