Faces of MAC: Tales From the John Muir Trail

Over the summer, MAC members Ciaran Turbitt and Julie Garrett hiked more than 240 miles leading up to and along the John Muir Trail (JMT) in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range. They carried miniature bear cannisters for the storage of a week’s worth of provisions, had to carefully monitor rations and water, and even ran out of food along the way, leading to a night with no dinner but what they could forage.

Perhaps their most fearsome adversary, however, were the rodents.

“The first campsite we went to, there were little ground squirrels and some mice that were just attacking us, and they worked in pairs. One would distract us, and one would get into our food,” Turbitt recalls, laughing about it in retrospect. “Humor is tragedy plus time,” Mark Twain once said, and Turbitt backs this up. “We’ll never forget that rst day. We thought, oh my God, is this what it’s going to be like the whole trip?”

A photo taken early in their expedition shows them smiling on the summit of Mount Whitney, the official starting point of the trail. It’s a small miracle that, sitting next to each other at a table outside MAC’s Sports Pub, they can still smile when they look at each other. After spending 24 days together eating the same extremely limited diet and only bathing without soap or deodorant in rivers, some friendships might have been sorely tested.

Turbitt and Garrett’s bond was forged in the waters of a YMCA pool and solidi ed over years of participating together in Masters Swimming groups, including MAC’s since 2023. They’ve also biked together, and their hikes have steadily grown in duration, leading them from three-day outings to a week in Yosemite to the more than three weeks they spent on the JMT.

“We started backpacking during COVID in 2020 just trying to find something that we could go out and do with just the gyms and pools being closed,” Garrett explains. “By the end of this trip, we were eager to get to our destination — that’s for sure!”

That’s not to say they’d do anything differently, except perhaps for that one wrong turn that cost them four or five hours and, two days later, a meal at the end of the day. But even for two people in peak shape from years of regular exercise, the trip pushed them to their limits. “We wouldn’t have done it without the conditioning at MAC,” Turbitt says.

“Fitness is incorporated into our lives, so it’s not a chore,” he adds. “Swimming is such great conditioning for cardio. Plus, as Julie has said to me, we’re not the type to back down. I would never have taken on that trail if I hadn’t known that she was going to be able to do it, and vice versa. We weren’t going to leave any soldiers on the battle eld. If one of us had broken down, then the game would have been o . Both of us would have had to look for a pass and get o the trail.”

Instead, they persevered, refusing even to take a “zero or nearo,” otherwise known as full or partial day’s rests, often claimed by weary hikers by ducking into a nearby town for a night of rest in a hotel bed. Turbitt explains that he always had a plan B, and knew the exits o their course should they be needed.

“I knew it would be difficult, but it was much, much harder than I thought,” Garrett recounts. “It was intense climbing and elevation gain, often in high altitude.”

To be precise, the trail rises more than 47,000 feet, and as one hiker they met along the way answered when they asked him if there were any switchbacks immediately ahead, "They’re all switchbacks.”

To facilitate their dedication to the purity of the experience, they mailed a week’s worth of provisions to themselves in orange five-gallon buckets to pick up at bear boxes or nearby resorts, as well as sending one along to their first resupply destination with the driver who’d given them a ride to the trailhead. The pair subsisted on rice, instant oatmeal and coffee, fig newtons, peanut butter and tortillas, tuna, and freeze-dried meat.

“I really expected to have a lot of cravings and feel underfed, but it was quite the opposite,” Garrett says. “After the first week, I had a hard time eating, but I forced myself because then I didn’t have to carry it!”

She lost six pounds and Turbitt lost 10, and they didn’t get their first real meal until they got off the trail and reached Burns, Oregon. While all of this took discipline — you only eat four pieces of jerky even if you’d prefer to have eight — they declare it to be well worth it, not just for the incredible sights they beheld, but also the incredible kindness and generosity they witnessed in their fellow mountaineers and the park rangers.

“We’d meet a lot of people on the trail, and we could always stop and have a conversation with somebody,” Turbitt recalls.

“Backpackers are so generous. You obviously don’t have much with you. It’s all on your back, but they’ll give you anything if you need it,” Garrett adds.

Nature, of course, was equally giving, and even when water was scarce, the mind-blowing vistas were plentiful.

Turbitt describes a sunset illuminating the rocks near a lake, creating a glow the likes of which he’s never seen, and the surface of the lake itself glittering like a million diamonds.

“It was beauty everywhere.”

While they both feel like they’ve reached their time limit for hiking outings, they’re already looking ahead at their next adventure, which they hope will take them to Wonderland Trail, circumventing Mount Rainier.

“Some people train just for the sake of it,” Turbitt says. “I like having an objective. Come here, train during the wintertime, and then once the sun breaks open, you can get out there and do anything because you’re fit.”

— Jake Ten Pas