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The JMT Wilderness Conservancy

@jmtconservancy

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🏔 Protecting and restoring the high Sierra
🌿 Conserving wilderness for all
📍 Inspiring tomorrow's environmental leaders

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Our crews are out. The Sierra is still there!

Right now, above 9,000 feet: aspens turning gold in the canyons, bears feeding hard ahead of winter, marmots already underground, and the first storms starting to move through.

The meadows we spent the summer measuring are going quiet under frost. The water table drops, the sedges brown out, and everything waits.

We'll be back in the summer! by @jmtconservancy

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3 days ago

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we honor the Tribal Nations whose homelands the John Muir Trail crosses. More than 70 Native American tribes have ancestral ties to the Sierra-Cascade region of California.

One partnership we’re especially grateful for: When we began planning our Reds Meadow restoration, we reached out to the North Fork Mono Tribe. These meadows have been the Tribe’s ancestral lands for generations. Chairman Ron Goode brought tribal specialists onto our working team, and their cultural practices are shaping how we design treatments, make decisions, and care for these meadows long term.

Our groundbreaking ceremony closed with a blessing from Jesse Valdez of the North Fork Mono Tribe. Thank you to the Tribe for working alongside us. by @jmtconservancy

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6 days ago

Continuing to highlight more women in this history series, after Helen Gompertz LeConte we're now spotlighting Marion Randall Parsons: a Sierra Club board member, published writer, and mountaineer who climbed more than 50 peaks, including a first recorded ascent along the JMT corridor itself. Nearly a century ago, she was already asking whether loving the Sierra too hard could hurt it. Meet her in this week's history spotlight. by @jmtconservancy

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11 days ago

The monitoring teams are out of the backcountry now, but we're so grateful for the work they did this season. Huge thanks to Patrick for documenting our field season. Love seeing the Sierra through his lens. by @jmtconservancy

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17 days ago

Another day on the JMT means another opportunity to see @jmtconservancy work in action.

By rerouting the John Muir Trail, dismantling the old trail, adding over 40 BDA’s, with the help of their restoration consultant @symbiotic_restoration and removing rocks and debris the restricted water flow. JMT Wild was able to restore Sallie Keyes meadow so that now it’s holds water year-round. Providing important habitat for countless species.

Meadows are an important piece of the Sierra ecosystem, and now Sallie Keyes Meadow is exactly that thanks to @jmtconservancy by @jmtconservancy

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18 days ago

Yesterday we held a groundbreaking event for the Reds Meadow Valley Restoration Project.

We gathered at Agnew Meadows with partners from Inyo National Forest, the North Fork Mono Tribe, the California Natural Resources Agency, Whitebark Institute, and the Town of Mammoth Lakes to mark the start of work that has been in the planning for years.

Jesse Valdez of the North Fork Mono Tribe closed the ceremony with a blessing and song. This valley has been cared for far longer than any of us have been working here.

Thank you to everyone who made the trip up the hill to stand with us in a meadow on a Saturday afternoon.

Restoration at this scale takes agencies, tribes, towns, donors, and crews all pulling in the same direction. Yesterday was the day you could see them all in one place. by @jmtconservancy

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21 days ago

Today I got the opportunity to see some amazing work in action.

The JMT Wilderness Conservancy is working to restore multiple meadows around Reds Meadow and Devils Postpile National Monument to help improve the local ecosystems and recreation.
@jmtconservancy by @jmtconservancy

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22 days ago

Not much light pollution at 10,000 feet.

Our monitoring teams spent 120 nights out in the Sierra this summer. This is what most of them looked like. by @jmtconservancy

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24 days ago

Pretty but bad 🌲

Green meadow, blue pools, pine trees. What a beautiful meadow!
Now count the little trees. Conifers don't belong out in the middle of a wet meadow. They can't handle saturated soil. When you see them marching in like this, it means the ground has dried out enough to let them.

Keep looking. That channel is cut down below the meadow surface, with bare banks and a sandy bottom. An incised channel drains the meadow instead of feeding it. Snowmelt that should spread across the surface and soak in runs straight through and leaves.

The water table drops. Sedges and rushes give way to dry-tolerant plants. Pines move in. The meadow stops working like a sponge, which means less water stored up here and less released downstream late in the season, when it matters most.
It takes decades to look like this. It doesn't fix itself.

Many of our projects restore meadows like this using process-based restoration and beaver dam analogs: low-tech structures of woody material that mimic what beavers would have done here naturally. They slow the water, catch sediment, and over time raise the channel bed back toward the meadow surface. The goal isn't to engineer a stream; it's to restart the process that built this meadow in the first place.

Recovery takes years. Those pines will be here a while. But the water is coming back.
Learn more through our newsletter. Link in bio. by @jmtconservancy

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a month ago

Be part of the reason we're able to restore the wilderness you walk through on the JMT. Donate to JMT Wild today! by @jmtconservancy

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a month ago

Meet the pika: a potato-sized, hay-hoarding mountaineer that spends its summers
on the John Muir Trail stockpiling wildflowers and grasses into "haypiles" to survive
winter, no hibernation required.

They live only in rocky talus slopes at high elevation and don't tolerate heat well, which makes them one of the best early-warning signs scientists have for how climate change is affecting the Sierra. If you spot one on the trail, you're looking at a genuine mountain specialist.

Have you ever spotted a pika on your hikes? by @jmtconservancy

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a month ago

2026 season for our seasonal staff: 432 miles hiked, 120 nights slept in the back country.
Swipe for the highlights, the hail, and the meadows that made it all worth it. Data’s
uploading, boots are drying, season 2027 planning starts now. Thanks for following along this
summer! photo 1: The commute.

Field Stewards, three hard hats, and a log that
is not moving itself.

Still smiling. Still wearing matching JMT
Wild sun hoodies.

Meadow monitoring with a view.

Hail at camp. Morale: surprisingly high.

Meadow Assessment Protocols in action.

That tape measure has seen things.

Cowboy camping. The alarm clock is the sun.

Patrick kept a handwritten log all summer.
Rite in the Rain, one line per day, WORK,
RUN or FUN

This is what we’re working for. See you out
here in 2027. by @jmtconservancy

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a month ago