Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail (3 page)

Chatwin, himself, was a rather mercurial character.
The Guardian
noted he had “a horror of houses, possessions, fixed abodes”, and believed that settlement is “degenerative for humankind.” Dead of AIDS at age 49, Chatwin, nonetheless, remains in respectable company regarding his deeply-held belief in the power of
continual movement.

The Bedouins, the Moors, the Kurds, and the Indians all felt that to be true to oneself,
perpetual motion
was necessary. History’s great religious figures maintained this faith as well. Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed all undertook widespread peregrinations at great peril.

“I know of no thought so burdensome that one can’t walk away from it,” the Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard wrote. “The more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill.” The great Russian novelist, Dostoyevsky, maintained that all our miseries stemmed from a single cause—our inability to remain quietly in a room.

Could it be that this distraction—our mania for the new—was in essence an instinctive migratory urge? Darwin,
In the Descent of Man,
notes that in birds the
migratory instinct
appears overwhelmingly powerful—even stronger than the maternal instinct. A mother will abandon her fledglings in nest rather than miss the long journey south.

I, too, have found great fulfillment in being footloose over the years. Looking back, my fondest memories (if not the most exalted actions!) as a kid are of those times together with friends on foot. But once everyone got cars, we steadily grew away from each other.

I’ve lived in almost a dozen-and-a-half cities over the years, and there is a clear pattern. I’ve been happiest in those places (Chicago, London, Latin America) where I didn’t have and didn’t need a car. Like most everybody else I just walked.

In England, I had been surprised to learn that many of the best golf courses didn’t even have golf carts.

“What if somebody can’t walk?” I once asked my playing partner, a sixtyish Englishman of dour visage.

“Then you don’t play,” he responded plainly. But to everyone’s pleasant surprise, we all found that the level of fulfillment and bonding was much greater when we covered the course on foot. However, when I returned to the United States after 4 ½ years I quickly became disillusioned when I couldn’t find anybody to play with who didn’t demand a golf cart. It was especially confounding to see people who exercise religiously in gymnasiums, clinging to these
metallic wombs
on the golf course.

This is when I became interested in hiking. In 2005 I attempted a thru-hike of the 2,175 mile Appalachian Trail. Like most people who hike the Appalachian Trail, I was so buoyant upon completion that I found it practically impossible to quit talking about it.

“Why don’t you write a book about it?” a few people finally suggested. What they were really hoping for, of course, was to get me to shut up about the whole thing. My big question was whether I could write enough for a whole book. However, the problem ended up being just the opposite. I remembered every one of the 171 days so vividly that I had to agonize over how to cut the book manuscript down to manageable size.

That illustrates a basic phenomenon of long-distance hiking. It is an utterly rich experience. In
The Cactus Eaters,
Dan White described it this way: “Though the trail narrows your choices—hike, sweat, piss, seek water, shit, eat, repeat—somehow it makes your life more expansive.” It seemed like a great bargain. You got perhaps two years of living for every six months you were out there. There had been no other such sustained experience for me where life had thrummed at such a high pitch.

After the Appalachian Trail, I went back to work for a private company. However, it quickly became apparent I had a different outlook. Deep in my marrow, I now felt that I could get by just fine with
less
sleep,
less
utilities,
fewer
restaurants,
less
housing,
less
insurance,
less
medicine,
less
money. The irony was that even though I was making less money than before, I felt more secure. This was a welcome revelation, and came about largely because of the intense Appalachian Trail experience.

Those not in the know might consider long-distance hiking just another form of escapism. But in reality it is just the opposite. Long-distance hikers confront human nature in all its rawness. The immense challenge and deep peace of the wild were irresistible to me.

The Appalachian Trail was far and away the world’s best known trail, and had been my one and only goal when I set out to become a hiker in my forties. But while hiking it, I kept hearing experienced hikers marveling about a fantastic jewel of a trail on the West Coast. Given the reverence I held for long journeys on foot, it was probably inevitable that I would turn west for another lifetime adventure.

Chapter 3

The Pacific Crest Trail

It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression, and with absolute freedom . . . and the road has always led west.

Wallace Stegner
The American West as Living Space

“I
t’s a fabulous trail,” everyone told me. “You will love it.”

“Unbelievable views,” hiker after hiker gushed. In the years leading up to my 2009 attempt to hike the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), there was unanimity of opinion. It was a great trail.

That begs the obvious question—what makes a “good trail”? The Florida Trail, which runs from Key West to the Florida Panhandle, is not considered by most people to be a very good trail (despite game efforts by committed trail maintainers). It has hundreds of miles of road walking. Besides being boring, the hiker constantly has to resist the temptation to hitchhike. The biggest climb is less than 100 feet.

A good trail, on the other hand, is one with diversity of terrain. By this measure the PCT is not merely a good trail. It is extraordinary. The diversity of its geology is unequaled in any other footpath in the world.

At first glance, the most notable thing about the PCT is its sheer length. It runs from the Mexican to the Canadian border. As the crow flies, that is only a little over 1,000 miles. However, the way the PCT snakes through lake regions and rivers and winds its ways over more than 100 mountain passes, it ultimately measures 2,663.5 miles in length. That makes it
exactly 489 miles longer
than the Appalachian Trail.

The first 703 miles in California are almost entirely
desert.
Even there the hiker is in for a surprise. The trail winds up and down various mountain ranges in the high desert, before dropping steeply down to the desert floor and some of the longest waterless stretches in the United States. This includes the western corner of the famed Mojave Desert.

The Apalachian Trail is primarily a deep-wilderness experience. The signature characteristic of the PCT is broad vistas and wide-open spaces. An aspiring hiker has only one logical choice – do both of them!

The riddle of the PCT, however, comes at mile 703. This is where the trail leaves the desert for good and enters the most renowned part of the PCT—the aptly named
High Sierra.
Here, the trail traverses the crests of the very highest points in the continental United States. For 211 miles the trail doesn’t even cross a road, which greatly complicates re-supply.

The upper reaches of the High Sierra are blanketed with snow year round. However, by June 15th, which hikers refer to as
Ray Day,
there has
usually
been enough snow melt to get through the snowy, icy mountain passes of the High Sierra. Even cutting it this close leaves barely enough time to make it to the Canadian border before the snow starts flying up there in late September or early October.

So it is necessary to thread the needle. A thru-hiker starts in the desert later than is desirable given the scorching heat, and traverses the High Sierra mountain range sooner than is preferable. That challenge—along with the trail’s mammoth length—makes it a very difficult trail to thru-hike.

Once through the High Sierra, a thru-hiker has a singular mission—
step on it.
You consistently have to hike more miles on a daily basis than on the Appalachian Trail. Nonetheless, the trail maintains surprisingly high elevations throughout the rest of California as it passes through, around, or over such delights as Yosemite National Park, Lake Tahoe, and the ski slopes at Squaw Valley.

Finally, the PCT eases up as California’s 1,697 miles come to a close. The trail becomes much flatter in Oregon. Not surprisingly, this is where hikers have traditionally reached deep for their maximum miles. This isn’t to say, however, that Oregon is bereft of scenic delights. The trail runs right along the rim of spectacular Crater Lake, and traverses across Mount Hood to Timberline Lodge, all of which help maintain an air of anticipation.

The lowest point on the trail is 140 feet at the Columbia River, which separates Oregon and Washington. Thus, a PCT hiker sees
swings in elevation of over 14,000 feet
throughout the journey. Once the hiker walks across the Bridge of the Gods into Washington, the trail climbs steadily into the notoriously jagged Cascade Range. The beauty here is rivaled only by the utter desolation the hiker faces.

All PCT veterans agree on one point—
be finished before October 1st.
The weather in northern Washington is utterly unpredictable thereafter. It was that salient point that would preoccupy me to the point of obsession for the next several months.

History is for bitter, old men. Right? Don’t worry readers. I don’t plan to go through an extensive recitation of the factual history of the PCT. However, a few points are notable.

First, from a preliminary reading of the PCT’s history, one is struck by the story’s
similarity
to the conception of the Appalachian Trail. In both cases, there was a Harvard-educated, patrician-like figure who envisioned what many considered a utopian idea. In the case of the Appalachian Trail, it was the ivory-tower personage of Benton MacKaye. Likewise, the PCT was dreamed up by a fellow with an aristocratic-sounding name—Clinton Churchill Clarke.

Both men could be classified as technophobes. “Our youth spend too much time sitting on soft seats in motor cars, too much time sitting on soft seats in movies, and too much time lounging on soft chairs before radios,” Clinton Churchill Clarke lamented. “The nation needs a continuous wilderness trail across the United States from Mexico to Canada,” Clarke wrote in 1932 to the U.S. Forest Service.