John Muir Trail, 44th State Highpoint, and Feeding America Goal -- Missions Accompished!

At 7:23am on August 27, 2014, we reached the top of our 44th state highpoint, California's Mt. Whitney, and finished the John Muir Trail.  In spite of an early HAPE scare and the resulting visit to Mammoth Lake's ER, we completed the trail happy, healthy, and one day ahead of schedule.

Alex and Sage on top of Mt. Whitney

We also -- and I'm so very pleased about this! -- exceeded our fundraising goal for Feeding America.  Over $2200 raised!  THANK YOU to all who contributed.  I'll post the full donor list tomorrow evening.

I promised a full, day-by-day report of our adventures, and I shall deliver.  I'd like to be as complete and detailed as possible, and I'd like to be brutally honest when it comes to gear and accommodation reviews.  I therefore will not be able to post one journal entry a day...to do each blog post justice, I'm going to shoot for two entries a week.  We spent 22 days out there -- 18 hiking days and 4 rest days -- so that means one blog post will go live every few days, and the total blog will take a few months to finish.   Each entry will read more like a book chapter than a typical blog post, so stay tuned, because there will be a lot of substance to this site.

I'll start here with a brief intro, for those who haven't visited our main page.

I'm Trish, and I'm mom to two avid hikers, Alex (11) and Sage (9).  My daughters began hiking "grown-up" mountains at the ages of 5 and 4, respectively.  The girls and I have been ascending New Hampshire's White Mountain peaks every week, year-round, since 2008.  We also travel around the country every summer to highpoint.  Alex's earliest adventures were documented in my book, Up: A Mother and Daughter's Peakbagging Adventure (Broadway Books, 2012).  My earliest blog about Alex's adventures can be found here.  Sage's earliest hikes can be found on this blog, and most of the girls' hikes for the past two or three years can be found here, on our main site.  Now 11 and 9 years old, Alex and Sage comfortably hike 12-20 miles a day, at a mountain pace of 2-3 mph depending on terrain.

Last year, we decided to combine our hiking passions with fundraising -- we took on the 500-mile Camino de Santiago and raised $10,000 for Global Fund for Women and GirlVentures.  This year, we hiked the John Muir Trail and raised over $2200 for Feeding America.

Tomorrow, I'll list the wonderful people who helped us reach our Feeding America fundraising goal.  The day after that, on September 3, I'll begin the day-by-day account of our Sierra adventures.