In the fall of 2017, I planned a backpacking trip of the southernmost quarter of the John Muir Trail with my dad. We planned to start at Onion Valley and finish by summiting Mount Whitney and exiting at Whitney Portal. This was the longest backpacking trip I had done at the time, though I had a lot of experience with weekend trips.

This was coming on the tail of a summer with a good deal of activity, including a short trip to the Palisades area, the San Francisco Marathon, a two week trip to Peru where we climbed up to almost 19,000’, and a climb of Mount Williamson just the weekend before.

I got to Onion Valley the day before we were set to start and got to work rationing food and packing up the bear canisters before settling into my hammock for a night under the stars.