Even though he and his wife, Sheryl, lived in the state for just five years, Wabash Professor of Biology Dave Krohne calls California "our homeland."
"Canoeing had been our first love," Krohne says of the couple’s move to the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned his PhD. "But out there, it’s mountain country—a whole different world.
"We learned to do mountaineering, backpacking, everything there. I hunted ducks at Tule Lake, and my Labrador retriever, Tule, is named after that place. It’s amazing country."
In 2004 the Krohnes returned to that homeland and the 211-mile long John Muir Trail, which Dave had backpacked solo in 1985. Although Sheryl had covered miles of the trail on foot and by ski and climbed dozens of peaks along the way, she had never hiked the entire route. Other travels had kept them from the Sierras for nearly 20 years.
"We were anxious to re-discover our ‘home-range,’" Krohne says. "And undertaking that trail on the far side of 50 meant we’d find out how well we’d taken care of our bodies —how much tread was left."
Had the land been taken care of as well?
The southern portion of the trail passes through once-lush alpine pastures that John Muir himself warned would be denuded by livestock overgrazing. That land has not recovered.
But Krohne says lower elevations have, and much of what he saw suggests the area’s wilderness designation has been effective.
"The backpacking craze was still going on when I hiked it in 1985, so there are fewer people on the trail now," Krohne says. "But there’s a broader mix of young and old people, whereas before, it was all young people on the trail.
"Visually, it’s very similar to what it looked like then—amazing.
"The trail passes through wilderness with the highest level of protection we’ve got—fires are allowed to burn, there are no structures, no roads, no permanent encampments—and it seems to be working."
• No tea time for bears
The last grizzly bear in the state was shot in 1922, yet ursus arctas horribilis remains California’s state animal.
The more adaptive black bear is still found in the Golden State, and bear-proof dumpsters in parks and the requirement of bear barrels for packing food into the backcountry have reduced the human-bear encounters that so often lead to the animals being killed.
Those encounters were common when Krohne hiked the JMT in 1985, and he’s got his own bear story:
"I had just climbed out of Little Yosemite Valley, where you climb 4,000 feet in about 10 miles. I took an hour to bear-bag my food, Boy-Scout-perfect, over a tree branch 15 feet off the ground.
"Then a mother bear with two cubs showed up. She climbed up the tree, then carefully crawled out onto the branch until it cracked and the food dropped. Then the three of them sat there and ate all my food. The only thing left were the teabags!
"It looks like they’ve cleaned up that problem," Krohne says of the new policy. "We saw a few bears on this trip, but they weren’t associating us with food. They’re not Yogi and Boo-Boo anymore."