Hikers meet new hikers every day on the JMT, but when we start running into people we’ve met on the JMT before, it gets a little spooky.
talk about it... we even manage to meet the same people in back-to-back years, and not just a JMT hiker, but a PCT through hiker.
We first met Boots last year in Reds Meadows, and helped his sister to make campground birthday cookies for his birthday while on the PCT.
Later in the year we heard he would be back for another PCT hike, but his schedule appeared to be too fast for us to meet up with him. We didn't see him in Tuolumne Meadows, nor anywhere south of there, so we thought we had missed him. But then, days later, on the very top of the PCT on Forester Pass, in the middle of a storm, we run into Boots again, right on top of his highpoint of the trip. Obviously, he recognized my midget-sized companions from far away and just stayed on the top to wait for us. We stayed until the lightning got close and drove us off the pass in different directions
I wonder if we'll meet him again next year... I'm pretty sure we'll be back - it's like an extension of home to us already. A well-known playground that's worth visiting more than once. Even though the awe of first discovery is gone, it's a place well worth visiting more than once. People go to their local city park more than once, so why not the JMT? Plus, for us, living far away from the mountains, it makes little sense to come for anything less than a big hike out there.
When my kids are a little bigger, we'll probably do the Sierra High Route, but until then we'll return to places we've seen before, just to throw a few more skipping stones on the lake we've been to the year before
