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Equipment & preparation for the trip The planning for this trip began in the previous year. David gets credit for the idea of the trip as well as executing a lot of the planning for this and the previous JMT trip. My preparation began six months earlier as I started to get in shape for 27000 feet of cumulative elevation gain we would undergo. By June/July I was simulating a JMT2 day's hike in terms of distance walked, weight carried, and elevation gained, without the high altitude. I re-read books on bears and emergency medical treatment. I plotted out the elevation profiles for each day. The other aspects of preparation involved equipment. I learned a lot from the JMT1 trip, but mostly about things that didn't work out right. So this time I was aiming for an under 40 pound pack, heavy duty boots, and enough film to cover any reasonable amount of photography. After months of examining every ounce and every alternative way of doing things, I came up with a 37 pound pack.
I managed to reduce my pack weight from JMT1 by 20 pounds! The biggest reductions were in the areas of clothing, food, sleeping gear, and photographic gear, all of whose weights were cut in half. This would make a tremendous difference in the comfort level of walking down the trail. Ironically my companions were now packing ~40 pound packs (which was more than they had on JMT1) because of the tent and some other items they decided to take. One of the things I learned from JMT1 was that my feet are now size 13, rather than 12 which they had been for a long time. My old boots were too tight in the toe area, so I needed to start over in the footwear department. I tried wearing in a new pair of Zamberlan boots, but had a few problem spots which wouldn't go away, so I ended up buying some nice Lowas. Despite not having as much time to break them in as I'd like, the Lowas worked out very well. Having comfortable footwear is so important that I thought it was worth it to go through two pairs of boots to find the right ones. To capture panoramas I'd always tended towards overkill in the hardware department, but on this trip I went minimalist. I examined point and shoot cameras but did not find anything which could capture those 20mm kinds of scenes. So I brought a Nikon SLR with 20mm lens, aluminum L bracket custom-made by Francois Mercat, and a hiking stick which converts into a monopod. The L bracket was so small that I could leave it attached to the camera all the time. The result was very quick and easy setup when I found a spot I wanted to shoot, as well as a substantial reduction in weight from JMT1. Unfortunately I found no way to reduce the essential mass of film, so I ended up carrying 27 rolls. The Kodak Supra 100 performed flawlessly. In hindsight, there were only three problems with my equipment. My groundsheet consisted of two space blankets taped together. These made too much crinkling noise when the wind picked up, and they were not quite strong enough to resist tearing. Secondly, having some cold remedies along would have made my days a bit less difficult. And lastly, the cellphone was useless.
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The 2 oz. panhead & hiking stick/monopod
Hiking stick with handle
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Equipment View the overall trip map Select (non-pano) Views from this trip Go back to JMT1
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