This picture from Paul W's Center Basin hike. Album link


A post in the facebook "John Muir Route" group, hosted by SaltyDog, inspired me to create this track.

This map is a track created using gmap4 (https://mappingsupport.com), of the old, no-longer-maintained alternate JMT route crossing Junction Pass, east of Forester Pass. (I believe it was the original route, before the Forester Pass route was blasted out of the side of the cliff.) The Cal Topo T4 map shows a "Center Basin Location Approximate" trail, which I used as a starting point, but then switched between that map and the aerial satellite view (where you can zoom in 4 more clicks), and marked the trail as well as I could.

I zoomed all the way in on the aerial satellite view, and marked off the trail wherever it was visible. If you use the track, the super-long strait lines are the sections where I completely lost any trace of the trail on the satellite view. Where there are short sections, you can see the trail when you zoom in. I purposely marked the line slightly off the trail so you can see in the satellite image on your screen what I saw to create the track. It is cool to see that the trail travels the ridge top to the north and west of Junction Pass.

If I were to try to travel this route, and wanted to use the old trail as much as possible, I would download the track to a gps unit so I could use it on the trip. You can download the gpx track here: CenterBasinJnctPass.gpx

Here's a CalTopo map link.
https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=36.72328,-118.35295&z=14&b=t&o=t&n=1

Edit: unfortunately, mappingsupport site no longer works.