Wild Country Found

Campsite at mile 1434 to Burney Falls State Park (mile 1419)

Total PCT miles hiked: 821

Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.

This is the second part of a monthly series where I detail what I’ve learned or been thinking about during the last month on the trail. I can’t believe it’s been two months already. Sometimes Campo felt like a lifetime ago, sometimes it feels like last week. The last month has been wonderful, we’re finally out of the desert, we had a little taste of the Sierra and now we’re on our SoBo Flip north. Which I know was a choice I’ve hemmed and hawed over, but now that we’re up here walking south and it’s so beautiful and quiet I’m really happy we made the choice that was right for us.

One thing that I’ve found frustrating is that I feel we haven’t really hit our stride yet. Our wake up time and on the trail times still vary wildly, and I worry that our lower milage days while I was sick have erased any lead time we’d built up. It feels strange to already be looking to the end of the trail, even if only as a means for assessing our current pace, but it’s also an important thing to consider. Winter in the north Cascades can come really quickly and I don’t want to have the season suddenly shut us out. It’s also sad to think that this whole experience will come to an end some day, as I suppose all things do.

1. People who say “Cheryl Strayed didn’t hike the whole PCT” can be summarily ignored.

Those who say this couldn’t be bothered to finish a whole book, or even a movie, if they had they would know that Cheryl’s goal was to hike 100 days on the PCT, which she super did; good for her. Ideally those people would have also realized that hiking the PCT is really really not the point of the narrative in “Wild.” This phrase is usually used to express frustration at those who are hiking on the PCT because they were inspired by the book or film. It’s dismissive of someone’s effort and nobody has the right to judge why anybody else is out here. I’m certain there are worse reasons to hike the PCT than being inspired by a good book.

2. Distance is an illusion and a lie.

Sometimes five morning miles can feel like a 30 minute stroll while the last tenth of a mile during a long day can stretch into an hour. Nothing is as it seems.

3. Our personal standard for cleanliness has drastically decreased.

At the start of the trail I would wash all of my clothes in every town unless I literally hadn’t worn the item at all. Today after wearing the same clothes for a week through astonishingly high humidity and a muddy rain storm I rinsed only my daily wear items in a shower without any soap, which I was also washing myself in. Then I told Keith that we could skip laundry tomorrow if it was a pain and go another five days in the same clothes because, after all, we’d rinsed these ones out and gotten rained on.

4. The people who give you rides are really interesting; it’s worth the effort to ask them about their lives.

It’s a privilege to get to spend some time with a person you’d never would have had the chance to meet otherwise. Plus, it’s nice to talk to folks who aren’t in the isolated bubble that is the PCT.

5. Unfortunately, the folks who think there is one right way to hike the PCT and judge others for not conforming to the standards to which they hold themselves are totally out here too.

Luckily if you don’t conform to their strict rules they’ll basically start ignoring you and you won’t have to interact with them.

6. It’s worth it to always do your own research and check the data yourself.

People get things wrong or are told inaccurate information about the trail or water or the weather and they spread the bad beta around in an effort to be helpful. It’s not malicious, but it is rampant when hikers group up. We’ve all got the same apps and the same internet with weather reports, double check for yourself.

7. Stretching is your friend, remember to stretch!

Lots of folks will say that they never stretched on the PCT, and maybe that’s true for them, but it’s terrible advise. For most people, myself included, a thru hike represents a massive uptick in daily activity – your body needs all the help it can get in adapting to the new workload. Plus, stretching or self massage can make you feel better almost instantly. Why limp along with a tight hip for hours when you could feel better in five minutes.

8. Socially and culturally the PCT can feel very isolating.

In some ways it’s a welcome vacation from the daily barrage of news and and advertising and social media and the constant access to content. And I very much enjoy spending undiluted time in nature. It’s very pleasant to just check out from being an informed person. But then one day you’ll walk into a grocery store and you’ll overhear the clerk talking to the customer in front of you about the congressional vote to stop the repeal on Net Neutrality and you’ll realize that the world is moving on while you’re out here walking through the woods. And you’ll pause because you can’t recall what films are in theatres or which Whitehouse employee was fired this week and you’re not really sure when you last checked the news.

9. I miss route planning and navigating.

It’s very hard to get lost on the PCT, not impossible mind you, I’ve seen people do it, but it’s a very well marked trail. Both officially through blazes and unofficially through cairns and the footprints of other hikers. Because of this you rarely need to make any choices besides where you are going to stop to get water, eat snacks, and camp, other than that you just follow the trail as it goes north. In contrast, most of my hiking experience before the trail had me mapping out my own routes for weekend adventures. Even when using existing trails it’s fun to decide where you’re going to go and build a route to take you there. If I do another thru hike I’d like to try something where the route is only partially dictated and some navigating is required.

10. Finding a trail family is not as easy as it’s made out to be.

Unless you find people who hike the exact pace and style as you, and whom you like and like hiking with, you’re going to have to compromise in order to hike or even end up in the same camp sites as people. It’s not impossible, and making friends while traveling is always easier when you’re solo instead of in a group, but it does require you to give something of your hike in order to be around others.

11 – Bonus Lesson! People who have hiked the AT really love complaining about it.

It’s so strange, folks who did the AT before the PCT love to complain about how miserable hiking the AT was. They’ll say there are only four views in all of Virginia. How the climbs are heinous unrelenting. The tread is awful! Eaten alive by black flies! Humid, raining, snowed on in Maine! And then. And then! If you express that you’d never really like to hike the AT, they’ll turn right around and tell you that you have to! As though they didn’t just give you 16 reasons why the trail sucks. AT hikers, y’all got issues.

Campsite at mile 1450 to campsite at mile 1434

Total PCT miles hiked: 806

Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.

To my right the world drops into nothing. Only empty white space and angry wind. Only tossing rain and a gaping maw of weather that feels ready to swallow me whole. Grey plate morning skies have broken open and crashed down upon us, the world is a 20 meter white sphere, trees like dark bodies crowding the perimeter. And rain. A thousand kinds of rain from ethereal mist to slapping torrents.

This morning Keith had said “today is one of those days where if we had extra food and time we’d just huddle in the tent all day.” Gods I wish we could, I so wish we could just snuggle down in the tent against this leaden grey day. But we don’t have the gift of food or time. The only way out is through and so we head out into the waiting storm.

Soon it’s raining. Soon the trail is nothing but rain and wet and at a certain point there is nothing we can do but keep walking. Keep moving or else we’ll start to shiver. Breaks are dangerous when it’s too cold to sit still. Filtering water, agony; cold hands like claws squeezing ice water through a filter. Water too cold to drink. The rain is just barely rain, a few degrees colder and it would be snow, which might be better or at least less capable of permeating everything; sinking down down into our packs and clothes. The best we can hope for now is damp.

The only way out is through.

And so we sing. We make up silly lyrics for the Alanis Morissette song “Ironic,” for no other reason than it mentions rain. And, I suppose, if you’re going to trudge through the freezing rain you might as well be doing it with the person you love while making up absurd songs about famous magicians. Again, the trail teaches me that this is not real tragedy, this is something I have chosen, something I can make the best out of. I’m partaking in a vacation for bored affluent folks, this trip only has the value I ascribe to it. I am not a martyr unto myself. Despite the misery, despite the hours spent walking in the cold, despite everything – it is a privilege to choose one’s method of suffering.

It’s like David Blaine at your son’s birth-day

He’s a creepy guy, but he already paid

He did his act and it seems he just wants to stay

Who would’ve thought – it figures!

McCloud River (mile 1471) to campsite at mile 1450

Total PCT miles hiked: 790

Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.

You know that old phrase: if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? It’s a silly idea, because of course the falling of a tree makes a sound; human observation is not required for something to have happened, to have gravitas, to exists. The world is so much more grand than what we can see and hear. So much more wild and untamed than we could ever imagine.

Today we climb a ridge so massive and wild that our human form and motions are dwarfed by the scale. All day we climb through a forest so dense that one could easily be forgiven for losing their sense of direction. A forest that stretches to the horizon and beyond, far beyond what our limited human eyes can see. Past trees that reach so far into the sky that I nearly lose my balance trying to see the tops of them. Trees that seem to say “I have stood in this exact same spot, reaching my branches into the never-ending sky since before your great great great grandmother was born.” The trees tell us that we know nothing of time, nothing of what it is to endure. To the north, towering above it all is Mount Shasta, breaking the hazy skyline and dominating the entire scene. A being so old as to appear immortal when taken in contrast of a human life, a decaying tree, a curious deer. Shasta exists, as all the old sentinels do, on a timeline that is incomprehensible to anything alive today. The mountains, the land, they are beyond time. And what are we in comparison to a being such as that mountain?

Small.

Small in a way that hurts to accept. Perhaps insignificant would be a better word. But oh my stars do we like to believe otherwise. All around us are the marks humans have left in this forest, from the very trail we’re walking on, to the overhead power lines marching into the distance. But already the forest is growing back below the metal forms. Life moves on, growing back over our footprints.

This endless forest, this enduring mountain, they force a sort of inward refection. A sort of search for meaning within what Mary Oliver so eloquently called “your one wild and precious life.” A life that will be my absolute everything, and yet will be less than nothing when compared to the giant mountain looming over my shoulder. Mary who asks us “are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?” But pray tell, Mary, how can I tell if I’m breathing just a little? How do I know if I’m living?

To go out, then. To lie in the grass as though we are the grass, to jump into the ocean an marvel at how it parts to let us in, to leap into the air, that is how Mary tells us we are to live a life. To venture forth, to observe, to cherish all that is around us. To look without, not within. And isn’t that what I’m doing here? With my limited time, for I know it won’t be forever.

Well, there is time left —

fields everywhere invite you into them.

Campsite at mile 1487 to McCloud River (mile 1471)

Total PCT miles hiked: 769

Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.

Keith would like me to inform you that he came up with the pun for today’s blog post. If you have the chance please tell him how funny he is, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.

And now to our regularly scheduled programming.

What is the most honest thing I can say about today?

Probably that it wasn’t very remarkable. At the same time it was beautiful and challenging and physically fun. But in another way today was just another day in the course of a thru hike. There are a fair number of these days, and they’re rarely talked about – they don’t make for epic social media posts. But a lot of hiking is really unsexy. It’s getting up early and pooping in the woods, it’s eating the same breakfasts and lunches and snacks you’ll eat all week, and then it’s walking through the mountains for like, six to ten hours. I wonder if people would be disappointed to know how much of hiking is sameness interspersed with moments of intense emotion. That hikers aren’t walking around in a blissed out nature-gasm all the time, but sometimes uncomfortably meandering up a steep climb trying to decide if that hot spot on your toe is a blister or if you can just ignore it.

Here is literally what I did today, it’s a decent representation of an average day. Also interspersed are some nice pictures that I got to take.

I woke up naturally just before 6am. I say naturally, but I think I woke up because I really had to pee. So I got up and took care of that, noticing on the way that the tent was nice and dry – a pleasant surprise after yesterday’s rain. I then returned to the tent where I saw Keith was only sort of awake, and so I went to pull down the food from the tree. Since we’re in an area with very few hikers on the trail, and this area is active bear territory, we’re electing to hang our food every night. Doing a bear hang right is actually a real pain in the butt – both getting it up and taking it down. In the time it takes me to get our food down from the tree, I’ve sustained five or more mosquito bites. Yeah, we’re definitely eating breakfast in the tent today.

Breakfast is a gluten free bagel with cream cheese, a cup of instant coffee, and one of the remaining gluten free stroopwaffle that my sister sent me. Keith eats granola and milk. After breakfast we waste some time hanging out just the two of us, Keith is feeling lazy this morning and while I want to be on the trail quickly, I’m not actually motivated enough to get us moving. Especially since I know that as soon as I’m out of the tent the mosquitos will come for me. Time together with your partner while thru hiking is really different than I expected it to be. In one way I’m literally spending all day and all night for basically this entire trip with Keith. On the other, physical intimacy is pretty scarce. Most of the time we’re sticky, smelly, wearing a backpack, and won’t be able to shower for at least a few more days. It doesn’t lend to closeness. Try hugging somebody wearing a full backpack loaded with gear, I’ll wait here while you do that. See how awkward that was? Now multiply that by 150 days for the average thru hike.

We’re finally on the trail at 8:45. It’s cool and overcast and we’re hiking through a dense green forest. The trees are massive, a positive explosion of green shooting into the sky. Below our feet the trail is a solid red-brown clay with soft pine needles on top. We climb all morning, talking of nothing in particular, until we’re both hungry and stop for our first snack break of the day. Snack is a hodge podge of Cheetos, gummy worms, a cookie that’s like an Oreo but gluten free and only 80% as good, some M&Ms, and I throw some powdered Gatorade into the water we just filtered. On the climb after snack I try to decide if I want to hike 16.5 miles with 4,500 feet of climbing and call it a short day, or go 20 and add an additional 1,400 foot climb. I don’t love either option, but the terrain here is so steep that there aren’t any camping options in between.

At lunch less than two hours later we decide on the short day. I woke up tired this morning, my sleep schedule thrown off by extra time spent in town, where an 8pm bedtime isn’t as acceptable. For lunch I eat summer sausage sliced onto a gluten free bagel with garlic and herb cream cheese that I pair with Cheetos. It’s ok, but the cream cheese doesn’t bring as much to the table as I’d hoped and Cheetos are good but overwhelming. Next time I’ll go back to regular cheese and potato chips. Live and learn!

After lunch we drop all the elevation we spent the morning climbing up, descending closer and closer to the McCloud River roaring below us. As the trail winds us down towards the river, we’re entombed in a tunnel of trees, the sun and clouds playing games overhead, neither one winning. Keith entertains me with his usual litany of puns and half baked jokes. With no preamble he says “what if instead of a coat of arms, you had a goat of arms? Maybe that’s just a goat with a small saddle with like, some maniquin arms attached?” Laughing and hiking downhill in the warm afternoon we ramble along with the joke until it’s well and truly dead.

We’re in camp at 4pm, which is still early enough to hike on but we decide to set up camp anyway and use the early evening to reset our sleep schedule. Vowing for what is probably the 40th time this trip that we’ll get up early tomorrow. I sometimes think we might actually be fast if we hiked full days. Camp is at a real campground, which just means there is a pit toilet. It’s very exciting. Two rivers confluence below us, providing the perfect white noise generator which should conceal the sound of approaching bears coming to eat us. And also dictating that all activity is done either in, or within the immediate vacinty of the tent, because there are hella mosquitos here too. I get about seven more bites.

Dinner is mashed potatoes and chili, to make up for the fact that we forgot to buy tomato paste for the chilli and it’s a bit crap without it. But this is thru hiking and there are no other options for dinner and we’re hungry enough that most any food qualifies as pretty good. I fall asleep reading while Keith giggles to himself while watching an episode of Flight of the Concords on his phone.

I-5 at Castella (mile 1501) to campsite at mile 1487

Total PCT miles hiked: 753

Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.

We drove out of Reno under leaden skies – the same ones that had tailed us since Lone Pine. It’s astonishing how quickly one can dispatch miles when traveling by car. Within four hours we’d crossed over the mountains, past small communities and long, shallow lakes, reaching the town of Redding, CA where we’d returned the rental car and taken a Lyft to the trail near Castella. In the four days since we’d left Lone Pine, we’d skirted around nearly 750 trail miles – just about the same number it had taken us six weeks to walk. If our only goal was expediency we would never thru hike.

Our driver dropped us at an unremarkable under pass on the I-5, likely completely unaware of how drastically different this environment was to the one we’d left just a day before. We’d lost the gradual shift in climate that one savors during days and weeks spent walking, having instead been plunked from one place to another via the miracle that is modern automotive technology. But my stars is this new place amazing. Steep hills rising from stream-cut valleys. Dark green trees dripping with humidity and sunshine covering every square inch. Shade! Deep, obscuring shade through which our perfect trail cut. Shade like this doesn’t exist in the desert. Shade like this has been but a memory the last eight years in Los Angeles. I savor this feeling as I make my way up the trail.

And it does feel like our trail. We’re likely some of the first thru hikers to come through this season as evidenced by the general debris of rocks and sticks carried onto the trail by melting snow. Also, and somewhat less pleasantly, by the innumerable spider webs that I walk through. All afternoon we climb through this lush forest, so different than what we’d grown accustomed to in the desert. Off our shoulder stands Mount Shasta, it’s giant form reaching far into the sky, attracting an afternoon thunderstorm that sent rumbling thunder peeling across the valley while the trees overhead are showered in pure sunlight, stray rays slicing to the dark earth.

We don’t see another person all day. Our only companion is the fleeing backside and tail of a young mountain lion we lucked to glimpse as we round a corner to a water source. The forest is so quiet without the hustle of fellow hikers, it’s something I’m looking forward to having more of in the coming weeks.

Two zeros in Bishop, plus a drive to Reno – No Hiking

I wake up in our stuffy hotel room in Lone Pine and check Instagram – a bad habit I’ve fallen into during our town stops. I see a post from Bean Dip showing an excited looking Moonshine, her pack loaded down with the extra gear required for early entry into the Sierra’s – bear cannister, micro spikes, and an ice axe. An ice axe that’s fastened to her backpack backwards.with the pick pointed towards her back meaning that if she falls with her backpack on, she’ll likely impale herself with her own tool. I quickly message her “turn your ice axe around or you’re going to stab yourself in the butt!” I hope she sees it. I’ve known these people long enough to care what happens to them, but not long enough for our words of caution about entering the Sierras in a snow storm to have any clout. They don’t know what they don’t know, and I haven’t earned the right to do anything but watch and hope they’ll be ok. It’s an impotent and frustrated sort of feeling, one that I’ll feel a lot over the next few days.

I can see the storm rolling across the mountains as Keith and I pack up our bags, getting ready for the hitch to Bishop – the bigger town to the north where we’ll spend the weekend resting, ditching our Sierra gear, and renting a car for our drive north. We get a ride just as it starts to rain, it’s already snowing on the peaks surrounding the deep valley through which we’re now driving north. Our driver today is a woman named Mary, a school teacher from Reno who has just gotten back from a group trip to Channel Islands National Park where she learned that despite being a 70 year old hiker she detests the sedate nature of group hikes consisting of fellow 70 year old hikers. The best way I can describe Mary is spunky, the kind of young rad septuagenarian that I aspire to be. The 40 minute drive to Bishop passes pleasantly as we discuss what it is to make a life. How to prioritize what is important to you. “Don’t spend your life chasing things that don’t light you on fire.” Well said, Mary.

When Mary drops us in Bishop I’m sad to see her go; I’m beginning to miss conversations with folks who aren’t PCT hikers.

Predictably the hostel in Bishop is full of other hikers. Though, this early in the season there are only a dozen or so, most familiar faces. A friend who thru hiked the PCT in 2017 told me that the first day of the trail is a lot like the first day of middle school. Everybody is nervous and new, trying to figure out who their friends will be, who they fit in with. After being on the trail for close to two months I can say the parallels between hiking the PCT and middle school don’t stop at the first day. By this point on the trail cliques have started to solidify and while there is some permeability, some common ground of being hikers, there is a definite sense of who is in your group and who isn’t. The sense that we’re walking away from the rest of the pack is heightened by the other hikers milling around, planning their return to the Sierra. Lady is here! Her and Treeline are total speedsters crushing the trail and whom Keith and I had the pleasure of hiking with out of Scissors Crossing. These folks have already done 90 miles through the high alpine, their faces scrubbed and pink from the exposure and bright sun; sharing wild stories and images of granite slabs covered in snow with hikers like ants down below. I remind myself again and again that I’m making the right choice, that their type 2 fun is my type 3 fun. It’s one thing to tell an epic story and another thing to live it and I only want the story, it’s not a good enough reason to push into the mountains early.

The next two days pass in a rush of planning, cooking and eating. Outside wind and rain gust through the afternoon and the towering mountains lose their heads in the dark clouds. The whole sky is a bruise. Come Monday we’ll find ourselves in a rental car pointed towards Reno and eventually Redding, Castella, and a return to the trail. Come Monday the rest of the hikers at the hostel will be heading back into those brutal rustling winds, facing the pattering wind turned snow by elevation. I hope they’ll be ok.