When a stubborn cough derailed a John Muir Trail trek, the hiker behind The Trek's trip log turned an unwanted medical detour into a surprisingly good tour of California's Eastern Sierra. Days 7 and 8 of his hike involved zero trail miles and about 14,500 feet of cumulative elevation gain so far — all of it banked before the illness struck.
The day began at Northern Inyo Hospital in Bishop, where the doctor ran a quick chest exam and x-ray, ruled out pneumonia, and prescribed a five-day Z-Pak (azithromycin) plus codeine cough medicine. Her advice: take two full rest days, and if the antibiotics worked, go back out. That verdict shaped everything that followed.
The recovery days doubled as an Eastern Sierra food crawl. There was Copper Top BBQ in Big Pine — tri-tip burgers and chocolate cake twice in two days — plus eggs Benedict at the Alabama Hills Café and Bakery in Lone Pine, a sirloin at Seasons Restaurant after the filet mignon ran out, street tacos from a pop-up truck by the Shell station in Independence, and pure lime ice cream at the Eastern Sierra Ice Cream Company, which the writer rates as absolutely the best.
Between meals came an unexpected highlight: a 45-minute drive up into the White Mountains to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, home to trees over 4,000 years old — among the oldest living things on Earth — some surviving on a single strip of bark. The location of the oldest, nicknamed Methuselah, is deliberately kept secret; the Schulman Grove Visitor Center burned in an arson attack in 2008, a reminder why. Elsewhere, a drive through the Alabama Hills revealed the boulder-strewn landscape that has doubled for countless old Western films.
There's practical value here for anyone hiking the JMT or the High Sierra. The Mount Williamson Motel in Independence maintains a hiker box for excess food and keeps names of local drivers — in this case 'Mark' — who shuttle hikers to trailheads at dawn. Resupply buckets left in a friend's car turned out to be over-packed, as usual. And permit timing matters: falling too far out of alignment with your John Muir Trail permit dates is a real constraint, one reason the hiker booked a 6 a.m. pickup back to Kearsarge Pass after two zero days, eyeing a 2,700-foot climb as his fitness test.
One comic footnote: the hiker's first fall of the entire trip happened not on granite but on an unmarked concrete step at a crosswalk in downtown Independence, in full sunshine, with no pack on. He escaped with a bruised elbow and a Jarritos de Mandarina to console him.
The takeaway for travellers: the towns flanking the Sierra — Bishop, Big Pine, Independence, Lone Pine — are worth lingering in, whether you're recovering, resupplying or just road-tripping Highway 395. Good barbecue, ancient trees, movie-set boulders and genuine small-town friendliness make a fine plan B when the mountains say not yet.
Original story: The Trek
