Every long-distance hike has a day one, and this one set a high bar for chaos. Two friends setting out on the John Muir Trail in California's Sierra Nevada had barely left their Lone Pine motel before the first mishap: one of them realised his tent was still in his car, parked at the Onion Valley trailhead some 6,000 feet back up the mountain. Cue a pre-dawn drive back up a winding road to fetch it, before the trip had properly begun.
With breakfast demolished at the Alabama Hills Café and Bakery in Lone Pine, the hikers were dropped at the Cottonwood Pass trailhead to start the trail. Day one covered roughly 15 miles with nearly 2,000 feet of climbing — a big ask for anyone carrying a full food load, let alone someone still shaking off a chest infection. The uphill to Cottonwood Pass was a slog, eased only by the sighting of a large buck charging downhill and some gloriously gnarled trees along the dry, high-forest trail.
The pass itself delivered the classic payoff: a whole new world opening up on the far side, which is exactly why hikers love passes. Water was scarce on the route to Rock Creek, so the pair detoured to Little Chicken Lake for lunch and a refill — a scenic spot with a serious chipmunk problem. The local rodents were bold, experienced snack thieves, and keeping hold of lunch took effort.
Arriving at Rock Creek brought an encounter with the first ranger, a permit check and a decent campsite past the bear box. Then came mishap number two, barely 12 hours after the tent fiasco. Filling a water bottle at a fast-flowing stretch of the creek in deepening dusk, the writer's only pair of reading glasses slipped from his shirt pocket and vanished downstream. Wading around in water shoes found nothing. Dinner — a cold-soaked, gluey cheese concoction — offered little comfort, and the day ended with the hiker coughing again and hoping his glasses might turn up in the morning light. He put the odds at one in 500.
Why does this matter if you're not hiking 200-plus miles? Because it's a very honest picture of what day one on a big trail actually looks like. Even well-planned trips unravel at the seams — forgotten gear, altitude making every hill harder, cold-soaked meals tasting like cardboard, and small losses compounding. Anyone considering the John Muir Trail should note the practical lessons buried in the story: double-check your car before driving down from a trailhead, carry back-up glasses if you need them, treat stretches without water seriously (the Little Chicken Lake detour was a smart call), and expect your first day with a heavy pack to feel longer than the mileage suggests. The trail will still be there when the mistakes are made — that's half the fun.
