John told me he was heading to Mount Whitney on the John Muir Trail, which is about 340 kilometers long and would take him around 20 to 22 days to complete. It sounded really interesting, but after a short while we said goodbye and went our separate ways. When John was about a hundred meters away, I called out to him to wait — I had plenty of time and no particular plan, and if he didn’t mind, I’d be happy to join him on his journey.

He told me I needed to buy food for at least ten days because we wouldn’t encounter any civilization along the way, and that I’d need a stove. I didn’t have a tent, but I didn’t worry about that. I had a sleeping bag, a thin sleeping pad, and a cheap pair of Walmart shoes, maybe ten dollars, not even leather. So I bought a stove, a gas canister, some raisins, a few oats — just enough food for ten days — and together we set off into the Sierra Nevada.

That very first night we climbed to about 3,500 meters above sea level. The moon was nearly full, and it felt amazing to fall asleep under its light. We hung our food on a tree, about twenty meters from where we were lying, so the bears wouldn’t get to it. John had a small one-person tent, and we both went to sleep. After a while, I heard some noise, woke up, and saw a bear on the tree trying to get our food down. I started yelling at him, calling him an idiot and shouting that the food was meant to last me ten days. The bear got scared and ran off.

This sleeping bag was $20 from the Salvation Army in Montreal, it was the first thing I bought there and I still have it. I found the backpack in the garbage pit and it was good enough for my whole trip through Sierra Nevada.