Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Bill Walker

  “I’m Trout Lily,” she introduced herself to her mostly male audience.

  “Where are you from?” I asked, resume talk being the domain of the lame and unimaginative.

  “Memphis, but I live in Hood River, Oregon.”

  “Wow, everybody I’m meeting is from Oregon.”

  “Yeah,” she laughed. “we’re all escapists.” Good line, even if it is true.

  “My parents were totally pissed when I told them about this,” she confided to this crowd of theretofore strangers. That quality of openness would serve her in good stead in the reigning trail culture.

  “I move back home to Memphis every few years, decide I can’t live there anymore, and then head off with my dog in my pickup truck to places like Asheville, Hood River, or Antarctica.”

  “Antarctica?” I exclaimed. “What the hell did you do there?”

  “Worked in the kitchen?”

  “Did you like it?”

  “It got boring,” she said. “All people did was drink and have sex.”

  “What’s so boring about that?”

  “I mean,” she laughed, “you just had to see it. They filled the jars in the men’s and women’s bathroom with condoms. The janitor told me she had to refill ‘em every morning.” So far, Trout Lilly was checking all the boxes of the perfect trail iconoclast.

  “Have you ever hiked before?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I did the AT a few years before.” That figured. I’d already spotted her on the trail a few times and wondered what she was up to. One place you’d see her jiving with people; the next time she’d be galloping along.

  “I’ve only done three miles today,” she said. “I’ve gotta’ get goin’.” That was her style—entertain a little while and then get on with it. She was bound to be a formidable presence.

  Everybody took a side trail at mile 44 to get to the Mount Laguna Post Office. By the time I got there it looked like hikers had formed a sit-in inside the post office. Stove, clothes, cameras, food, shoes, tents—you name it, people were sending it either to a post office further up the trail or all the way home. In some cases people had bought the wrong thing. Others were shedding weight as fast as they could. Worried about setting the desert on fire, I bounced my stove 660 miles forward to Kennedy Meadows.

  Unfortunately, one of the hikers tooling around the post office had a different mission. Just Jack was 68 years old, and coming off a gutsy southbound thru-hike of the AT the previous year, that had taken him eight months. This year he had shown up at the Kickoff looking to pull another rabbit out of the hat. Unfortunately, an asthma condition was driving him nuts in the desert.

  “The desert’s not for me,” he simply said.

  “Hate to see you go,” everybody sincerely told him. He had already distinguished himself with his delightful cracker barrel sense of humor.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. He bought a car and started following the bubble of hikers to the various trail towns, and soon was the most popular person on the trail.

  The PCT considers shelters a sissy, East-Coast thing; the trail figureheads take great pride in their bootstrap philosophy. But if there is one single place on the entire trail they ought to build a shelter, it’s at the Pioneer Mail Campsite. It is dominated by gunshot winds that come barreling over the horizon.

  There was absolutely nowhere else to camp here that remotely offered any protection from the wind. Trout Lily and another girl sought cover in a ditch down the hill, even though they were unable to set up their tents down there. Thereafter, anytime she was in a bad mood, we accused her of being ditchy.

  I tried pitching my tent in a different ditch from the one where Trout Lily was hiding. But it wasn’t even remotely level, and I finally decided to erect it right next to St. Rick’s tent, hoping his would create a windshield. However, it was impossible to set up alone, as the wind bullied the various parts of the tent all over the place.

  “Hey Rick,” I called into his tent. “Could you just help hold this thing in place for a second.” It was embarrassing to ask for help. But I was a realist. St. Rick jumped out of his tent, hammered away at some stakes, and was back in his tent within a minute. He always played it smart.

  All I could do now was jump in my tent, put on my maximum of seven layers, and hunker down for a sleepless night. The dominant melody of the evening was these gunshot winds moaning a dreary tune.

  Was the desert ugly or beautiful? That quickly became a matter

  of heated debate.

  I got my first taste of truly high desert the next morning, and it rocked me big-time. The minute I cleared the ridge from the campsite, I was confronted with a breathtaking landscape. A cold wind clobbered me for miles while walking on an exposed ridge. Nonetheless, after hating the desert all frigid night long, I was suddenly enraptured. Mesas, canyons, red cliffs, and arid tablelands extending out into the distance stood out in high relief. To me, it is these vast open spaces that give the American West the overwhelming feeling of unbounded freedom.

  The high desert proved very different from my

  pre-conceived image of the desert.

  After several miles I descended again to the more familiar low desert. About the only thing they had in common, as far as I could tell, was their overwhelming aridity. Fortunately, there was a well. But the water looked grotesque.

  “What the hell,” I said peering down into it.

  Big John came over and examined it. “Yeah, all the muck has risen to the top.”

  “But look at the bottom,” I said. “There’s crap everywhere down there too.”

  “I guess you just have to get it out of the middle,” he said good-naturedly. I pulled out my filter, carefully placing the tip of the funnel right in the middle, and started pumping.

  Despite its relative simplicity, the low desert wears its own veil of mystery.

  “Life is not crowded upon life as in other places,” wrote Edward Abbey, in his classic tome, Desert Solitaire, “but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree. Abbey staunchly maintained that, in fact, there is no shortage of water in the desert. There was just the right amount of water to insure open, generous spacing between plants and animals, and even homes, towns, and cities. The problem came, according to Abbey, when you built giant cities where they shouldn’t be (sorry Las Vegas and Phoenix!). This growth for the sake of growth was a cancerous, obsessive, madness.

  Abbey, himself, had been a park ranger and probably knew of water sources in the desert that no other human did. But he also said that there were magical springs that only animals knew. At night the mammals came—first deer, next bobcats, followed by cougars, and finally coyotes—to drink, not to kill.

  Later in the day, I dropped to the desert floor for the first time. There stood the most well-known symbol of the desert—the cactus bush. It’s the toughest, most well-fortified plant imaginable, and I could only guess how long each one has been standing. Perhaps centuries; perhaps millennia.

  I had been alone the last few hours, but as the sun fell I ran into an attractive Canadian girl setting up her tent just off the trail. What is it about these trails that all the girls are so attractive? Maybe it was because the PCT had only one girl for every four guys (The AT was probably 2.5 to 1). I honestly don’t know. In any event, this was the same girl whose tent I had accidentally poked my head into last night at the Pioneer Mail Trailhead, thinking it was St. Rick’s tent. So she must have been wondering just who the hell this peeping hiker was who always turned up, wherever she happened to be, at bedtime.

  “Kinda’ cool the way you can just pull off to the side of the trail here in the desert and set up camp,” I said.

  “Yeah well, I seem to remember some ridges,” she laughed. There was a spot right next to hers to set up my tent. Having already hiked twenty miles, I thought about it. But I decided otherwise. Hike your own hike was the fundamental paradigm amongst hikers. So I headed on.

&n
bsp; The most pleasant hour in the desert is at sundown, after the awful heat of the afternoon. The sinking desert sun resembles a flaming globe and leaves behind fanciful lipstick sunsets. It was very pleasant following the trail as it serpentined through countless cactus bushes. A few minutes before dark, I simply pulled five yards off the trail to set up camp. I did have one concern, however.

  There were holes everywhere. Rattlesnakes. So I wandered around grabbing big rocks to put over all the nearby holes, marveling at my improvisation. However, somebody later told me this wouldn’t thwart a determined snake from surfacing.

  “How do rattlers get water in the desert?” I had asked.

  “They burrow down in the holes and drink the blood of the rodents they find down there.” This was the time of day they liked to emerge.

  Sleeping near snake holes is simply a fact of life in the low desert though, and I occupied myself in my tent pulling scores of burrs out of my socks.

  Chapter 9

  Caches, Ledges, and Trail Repartee

  Ten by ten was the thru-hiker’s motto in the desert. The idea was to try to hike ten miles by ten o’ clock in the morning, then maybe eke out a few more miles before noon. At that point a hiker should spend several hours under any possible shade he or she can find. The reasoning was that you used up so much water during the middle of the day, that the miles you gained from it aren’t worth it. Then, at 4:00 or so, you should resurrect yourself and hike until dark. It made sense. But would I really want to just lie under some bush for several hours in the middle of the day?

  World’s most important resource. The average hiker like me might not even atempt the PCT without dedicated trail angels stashing water caches.

  I was in the middle of a 24 mile waterless stretch, followed by another 25 mile waterless run. The only water re-supply in that 49 miles was at Scissor Crossing. And it was not a natural water source. Rather, it was a cache. At the Kickoff, the speakers had repeatedly reinforced the point that we should carry enough water to get by in case the cache is not stocked.

  Nonetheless, like most hikers I arrived at Scissor’s Crossing low on water, and high on expectations. Some trail angel, or maybe an entire trail club, had built a sturdy construction of wooden cabinets. Inside, were scores of gallon containers of water. The rule of thumb is to take only what you need. But there was so much water here, I was able to chug all I wanted and lug several liters with me into the rugged San Felipe Hills. Being so well hydrated, I decided to go ahead and tackle the mid-day desert sun.

  Here, the trail took on a different character as it inexorably wound its way up a barren mountain. Soon, I found myself out on a narrow ledge along a steep canyon. Ledge walking takes some getting used to; it was easy to become anxious and hurry. But patience was the real virtue because these ledges often went on for miles. Finally, the trail did a sharp u-turn and next thing I knew I was out on another ledge walking in the opposite direction, not that far from the ledge I had just been on.

  A break would have been nice, but there was absolutely no shade at all in the middle of the day. So I just kept hiking nakedly exposed to the full wrath of the sun. The only thing I could do now was continually drink a lot of water, hoping to ward off that silent visitor—dehydration. My goal was to make it to another water cache by this evening.

  Finally, I saw the lonely figure of Jerry, a member of the threesome from Detroit. To the naked eye, it was apparent his bulging gut had already deflated, due to monsoon-like perspiration. He was once again digging deep to try to keep up with his two friends.

  “Man, I really don’t like this,” he said in as friendly of a way that a complaint can be registered.

  All I could offer was a dry-throated cliché: “Hang in there.”

  A mile further up I came upon his two partners, Tom and Paul, sitting in a crouch on the ledge. I immediately dropped to as supine of a position as my almost 7 feet could manage on the narrow ledge —head up against granite backstop, butt on the hot trail surface, and feet dangling off the cliff.

  “How long have ya’ll been waiting?” I asked.

  “About a half-hour,” Tom said. I was impressed while chatting with them that they didn’t use the occasion to gripe at Jerry for his tardiness.

  “You know, these things usually work themselves out,” I said, broaching the subject that was surely on their minds. “The trail actually decides who you eventually end up hiking with.”

  “Well, there is another issue involved,” Tom said diplomatically. “Jerry is a manager at the outfitter where we all work in Detroit. He decides if we get hired back.”

  They stayed together.

  Some hikers swear that their fellow hikers get to know more about them than their boyfriends and girlfriends. Whether or not that is an exaggeration, one thing is undeniable. You bond deeply, and often instantaneously, out there.

  I finally got to the campsite I had hoped for and my mood immediately lifted. Another trail angel had driven dozens more gallons of water up a jeep road. The person had tied a thin rope through each jug and around a tree to keep it all tidy.

  Better yet, Trout Lily was one of those on hand. The topics of shoe brands, backpack weight, food, water, snow levels, blisters, etc. get saturated during the daytime hours. As has been known to happen at campsites, the conversation turned to the opposite sex. I had been living in Florida for two years before coming out for the PCT, and treated them to some fare of Florida-style dating.

  “I was dating a woman almost twenty years older than me down there,” I said.

  “Nuh, uh,” Trout Lily said in disbelief.

  “What else are you gonna’ get in South Florida,” I said. “At least she didn’t live in a damn nursing home.”

  “But then one day I’m strolling along the beach and run into this girl (Liz) half my age—24 years old to be exact. She had trained all her life to make the Olympic swimming team, but missed it. That was it. Next thing you know she’s gone from an ascetic lifestyle to drinking and dating older men. She really didn’t know how to handle either.

  “After several months of going out with Liz, I’m walking on the beach with the older lady who had morphed into my friend. All of a sudden, this older guy walks up with an alarmed look on his face, and says, ‘Bill Walker?’. ‘Yeah’, I answered. He grabbed me by my elbows and says, ‘come with me’. ‘Can I bring this lady with me?’ I asked. ‘No’, he said. ‘I want to talk with you’. I’m thinking, what the hell is happening here.

  “‘I’m Liz’s father’, he proceeds to tell me. ‘She died in her sleep last night with her ex-boyfriend’. Liz had just told me the week before that this same ex-boyfriend—who was 62 years old—had stalking tendencies. So that’s Florida-style dating for you.”

  “Sounds like swapping out Florida for the PCT was a good trade,” Too Obtuse incisively observed.

  Trout Lily didn’t blanch one bit.

  “I date this big, old surfer. I swear he’s got the most unbelievable body. I can’t quit thinking about it.”

  After listening to her rhapsodically describing his many bona-fides as a modern-day Romeo, she said, “But he keeps having sex with his ex-girlfriend.”

  Nobody said anything, so she added, “I don’t care, though. I just wish I didn’t have to pay his rent.”

  Poor fella’. Life sure is a bitch. Unfortunately, however, this same guy was to play a seminal role in derailing Trout Lily from the PCT.

  Chapter 10

  Seeds of Disaster

  There are three things in life you don’t want to do:

  1. Play poker with somebody named ‘Slim’.

  2. Buy a Rolex from somebody who is out of breath.

  3. Go hiking in the desert with a pair of shoes that are too small.

  A PCT hiker, who wasn’t even a nerd, could write an entire book on shoes. The treadway is very different from the Appalachian Trail, especially in the desert. For that reason, most people wear trail running shoes. They were breathable for starters (if you have t
he right damn size!). And they were lighter, so you could go further. But Yogi and others repeatedly stressed that your shoes had to be at least one size bigger than you normally wear.

  It’s the one decision you have to get right from the beginning, and I had gotten utterly neurotic beforehand about it. Yet, I still ended up screwing it up. I’m normally a 13 ½ so I had ordered Vasque Size 14 low cuts. But the minute I tried them on, they had felt snug. I checked the REI website, but 14 was the largest size they offered for Vasque shoes. Like many hikers, I thought REI was the center of the hiking universe. If they didn’t have size 15, then I assumed Vasque didn’t make Size 15 shoes. This would prove to be a grievous blunder.

  I had wandered with my backpack all over the beach in Florida in that pair of size 14 shoes. One day I’d think they were big enough; the next day I’d change my mind. Not until the day before I left did I make a final decision to wear the Vasque Size 14’s. Maybe they’ll stretch had been the final tiebreaker.

  Now here I was in the worst of the desert heat. The temperature in the sun was well over 100 degrees. But the ground surface temperature was probably in the neighborhood of 140 degrees. It was like a modified version of walking on coals, and turned hikers into kangaroos. But instead of my shoes stretching as I had hoped, it was my feet.

  It was becoming more and more clear that I had a serious problem. I was alternating between one and two pairs of socks, trying band-aids, mole skin, duct tape, elevating them on breaks, you name it. For good or for bad, I was even trying different ways of taking steps. But my feet honestly felt like a furnace. This was alarming. Hot and moist are the perfect breeding conditions for blisters.

  Actually, all kinds of people were having foot problems. One girl picked up the name Blister Sister, and another guy was called Dead Man Walking due to the blisters ringing his feet.