Summer Weekend Hike in the John Muir Wilderness

Drove down the Eastern Sierra for a summer weekend hike into the John Muir Wilderness — 584,000 acres running about 90 miles along the crest, and we covered maybe three of them. The trail climbed through aspen thickets above a lake, the leaves at that stage of green where the whole hillside looks lit from inside, and every switchback opened the same view a little wider: dark water below, a gray granite face across the valley still holding streaks of snow in late June.

The three of us traded off who was in front. The girl kept pace better than the aspens did — half of them grew sideways across the trail and we ducked more than we walked in places.

The wilderness boundary sign is a carved wooden slab bolted between two pines, Inyo National Forest lettered underneath in script. We stopped there for a while before turning around, and she was already looking back down the trail before anyone got organized.