JMT: South Lake to Onion Valley

The last section

Got a permit hiking out of South Lake for this year. Getting a permit is becoming harder and harder as the years go by. Recreation.gov has been a disaster for most users, so much so that Wired magazine wrote a story about it.

Here is the day-by-day section hike.

https://www.alltrails.com/explore/custom-routes/map-july-31-2022-8c26d2f?u=i&sh=du4ted

Here are the tentative campsites.

Mostly inspired by Inga Aksamit’s “Highs and Lows on the John Muir Trail”. That book is finally on Audible, so now I own the book in all three formats that Amazon sells.

I have hiked Le Conte Canyon to South Lake over two days (with overnight camping at Dusy Basin). This time, I am planning to hike as much as we can to the climb of Bishop Pass on day 1 and rest so we can hike up Bishop Pass first thing on day 2.

Day 2 and Day 3 both look very hard. The hike down from Dusy Basin to Le Conte Canyon is going to be very hard on the knees. Day 3 has no pass crossing, but looks hard.

This section has Bishop Pass, Mather Pass, Pinchot Pass, Glenn Pass and Kearsarge Pass, and the Golden Staircase just to complete it :).

I have also hiked Rae Lakes to Kearsarge Pass before, so days 3 through 6 will be new to me.

Ramping up on the incline leg presses and squats. It would be ideal to lose those 10-15 lbs before the hike, but I would take as much leg and core strength I can build at the moment.

I am trying to take it as slow as possible, take as many photos as I can and make it safely on the other side. The section from Le Conte Canyon to Rae Lakes is what I have left in my JMT journey (days 3 to 6), so eagerly looking forward to this.

For those of you who have done this section, is there anything here that you might do differently?