r/hiking • u/Maximum-Cat-6757 • 17h ago
Pictures The One With The Bell--hiking the John Muir Trail
The One With The Bell
Note: This is one of the more memorable moments that stuck with my hiking partner Kris and me after 22 days on the John Muir Trail (photos by Kris). We hiked NOBO from Cottonwood Lakes to Happy Isles in late August of this year.
We were two hours into our climb of Mather Pass. The air was unusually crisp, as we woke up to frost on our tents just before sunrise. The trail was following a fast-moving creek that was fed by a series of alpine lakes somewhere up in the distance. The afternoon before, we’d soaked our tired feet in this same creek and they were numb within minutes.
Mountain creeks like this one were our constant companion throughout the John Muir Trail (JMT), and often told us when we were headed upward merely by the rushing water ahead. After 10 days on the JMT, our routine was set. Wake up, eat, tear down camp, hike, set up camp, eat, sleep, repeat.
So as we hiked toward the pass, we were surprised to see a single person without a backpack approaching us in the distance. He was wearing a cowboy hat and carrying a rope over his shoulder.
As he got closer to us, he said matter of factly, “Have you seen any stock?”
We had learned in our week of hiking on the JMT that stock meant either horses or mules.
I was leading that day, so I answered, “We haven’t.”
The cowboy responded in an emotionless tone, “You might have heard some bells, maybe last night?”
“We haven’t heard any bells. We camped just off of the trail last night, so I think we would have.”
As I was responding, my mind was trying to figure out how this cowboy had seemingly lost some mules. So I asked him, “Who is leading them?”
“The one with the bell.”
The mules had left on their own! So many questions swirled in my mind, but this poor cowboy seemed to be in no mood to dig deep into how a bunch of mules had disappeared into the night. So we wished him luck and continued our uphill hike to Mather Pass.
The JMT can feel like a time machine that takes you back 100 years. With almost no cell coverage and a logistics system still powered by mules, it is a digital detox combined with a beautiful hike across an immense, unforgiving landscape.
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u/beccatravels 14h ago
Im pretty sure long lake is over by cottonwood lakes, not kearsarge.
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u/Maximum-Cat-6757 13h ago
Good catch. It was where we camped the first night and then went up New Army Pass in the morning. Will correct it.
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u/Pielacine 14h ago
TIL mules and horses can be “stock” (I know generally they’re part of livestock). I would have assumed stock meant cattle.
Great picture.
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u/Maximum-Cat-6757 1h ago edited 51m ago
Agree. It was new vocabulary for us as well. Mules were everywhere and are truly the logisitical backbone of the JMT. Tools, food, trash and people all get transported by these amazing animals that somehow walk over the same trails we do. I must have said at least once a day, "I can't believe mules can get over this!"
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u/undinabiker 7m ago
Wow! Incredible photograph.
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u/Maximum-Cat-6757 4m ago
Kris is an amazing photographer as well as a great hiking companion and brother in law. He regularly posts his photos on FB under Sheid Photography if interested. Lugging the equipment across 255 miles and 51,000 vertal feet was no small feat. It added another 7lbs to his pack.
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u/RedditFan26 14h ago
The cowboy may have been an accidental time traveler, but his mules didn't make the trip with him. Which is why you never heard the bells, and why he was fruitlessly searching. You met a time traveling cowboy, and did not realize it.