Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Bill Walker

  I was in the Idyllwild Library, and turned around to see who had asked the question. A sixty-ish lady, quite decked out for a public library, stood there smiling at me. Fortunately, I didn’t give her one of the sassy answers I occasionally employ. I gave her a straight answer. After all, I was going to be in town awhile.

  Every so often in trail towns you meet that rare person who is ga-ga over us smelly tramps. That was the case here with this woman, named Bettina. I was with Just Jack, who had very thoughtfully come by that morning and offered to carry my backpack to the Idyllwild campground, where I was now planning to stay the rest of my convalescence. But all I could think about was how difficult it was going to be to keep my wounded feet clean and properly bandaged at the campground.

  “How would you two guys like to come up to my place for dinner and a drink?” Bettina asked.

  No brainer. “Yes.” Let me say right off the bat, I had more than a drink in mind. But, it might not be what you think.

  We got in her Cadillac and she drove up a steep hill to a picturesque chalet (the smallest of her three houses), which was two streets down from Dolly Parton’s vacation home.

  “Has everybody in Idyllwild learned to stare at the pavement when Dolly walks by?” I asked.

  “No,” Bettina answered. “She gets mad when people don’t come up and greet her.”

  Bettina opened her house up to us like long-lost relatives, and we sipped drinks on her veranda which had a majestic view overlooking the mountains.

  I’m usually shy in these matters and operate through indirection. But this time was different; I was in a pickle. So I popped the question directly to Bettina.

  “Bettina,” I asked. “Is there any way in the world I could sleep a few nights out here on this veranda?”

  “Honey,” she answered, “I’ve got a whole second floor with two bedrooms empty. You can stay there until you learn to walk again.” Better yet, with Just Jack I had a witness to the great trail magic I had just scored. Hikers love swapping stories about what they’ve scored in trail towns. I had just scored a luxurious mountain chalet to recuperate. But Jack had greater ambitions than being a mere witness.

  All I can say is that it’s honest-to-God a shame that his feelings weren’t fully reciprocated by Bettina. He sure as heck would have been a step up from her three previous husbands. I know because I would hear one vehement monologue after another about all of them in the next two weeks at her house. Instead of making common cause with Jack though, Bettina took a strange shine to me. And it would play itself out in bizarre ways over the next couple weeks.

  You could have reasonably assumed I was Nurse Renee’s biggest critic in Idyllwild. Not by a long shot. Bettina was.

  “She almost cut a friend’s finger off, I swear to God. She’s worked for every medical clinic in southern California and keeps getting fired. She’ll be gone from here by the end of the year.” And on and on, day after day. It was depressing. But her tirades weren’t limited to Renee, either. I had chatted with a much older, much heavier woman in a restaurant the night I had hobbled into Idyllwild. Her name was Teva.

  “I know everybody in Idyllwild,” Bettina repeatedly said.

  “Do you know an older lady named Teva?” I had asked her and described Teva. It probably wasn’t a great description because I only met her that once for about five minutes and never saw her again. That last fact didn’t register with Bettina, however. Any time I went into town after that she would question me obsessively after returning about whether I had seen Teva.

  Another lady in town who puts up hikers came to Bettina’s house to bring me some get-well cake. The lady could barely make it up the steps to the veranda because she had gained 85 pounds in one year. But that didn’t stop Bettina from getting paranoiad about her.

  “Sky, when is your friend going to bring you some more cake,” she kept chiding me. “You miss her, don’t you?”

  “Renee, this is Bettina McAllister,” Bettina said. I couldn’t believe my ears. Renee.

  “I’m with Skywalker,” Bettina continued on her cell phone. “We all think you owe Skywalker a look at his feet.”

  Bettina paused for a comment on the other end and then answered, “Right now in Iberico Restaurant.”

  We were in the finest restaurant in Idyllwild, which happened to be about the only place Bettina ever ate. Bettina had convinced the couple, Ron and Dana, whom we were eating with (who were actually friends of Renee’s) to give her Renee’s home phone number. Mega-blunder. Fifteen minutes later Renee arrived in the restaurant. It was a weeknight about 9 o’ clock so she had been working all day. She stood right in front of our table, uncomfortably shifting weight from one leg to another.

  “Well,” she asked sheepishly, “what does everybody want me to do—look at his feet?” Ron, Dana, and Bettina nodded gravely. When I started taking off my shoes the waiter saw what was going on and rushed up.

  “Sir, could you please do this away from all our other guests?” he asked. Renee and I dutifully went to an empty table where I put my feet up on the table cloth. But that had the waiter rushing over again pleading, “Please, please, keep your feet off the table.”

  “They look a little better,” Renee said quietly. “Keep soaking them and airing them out.” She again sounded defensive. It was pretty clear there were two people in Idyllwild that were very worried about my feet. But for very different reasons.

  We walked back to the table, where I sat down and Renee remained standing. But Bettina, who was not feeling the least bit of pain by this point, wasn’t going to let Renee’s long day end.

  “You don’t belong in Idyllwild,” she loudly said to Renee. Renee froze, which allowed Bettina to sucker-punch her some more.

  “You’ve been fired,” Bettina continued, “from at least two health clinics I know in Long Beach and Santa Barbara.” Ron and Dana were listening to this in disbelief. We all wanted to crawl under the table. Finally, Renee struck back.

  “I haven’t got to take this,” she fired at the whole table.

  She turned to me, “You’re going around telling all the hikers I screwed your feet up.” I didn’t offer any protest because her charge was true. I had been.

  “People on the Appalachian Trail start off hiking nine miles a day and work themselves in. But here everybody starts trying to do twenty miles a day from the beginning. Then they all get to Idyllwild and come to my office wondering why their feet are all screwed up.”

  She continued, “I don’t care what you tell the hikers. But I don’t want some drunk lady spreading lies here in Idyllwild that hurt my reputation.” She then turned to reprimand her friends Ron and Dana. “Please don’t be giving out my phone number to any more drunks.” More silence from our table.

  “I’ve gotta’ work tomorrow,” she said to herself, as much as any of us. With that she turned and off she went. The entire restaurant had gone silent over the whole drama.

  The whole thing reminded me a little bit of Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny. He had started off looking like a nutty character in charge of the ship. But as the extent of his challenges became more clear, he began to look a little more sympathetic (In fact, a few months after I was in Idyllwild, Renee was fired. That same week her daughter hung herself from a tree outside town).

  I became desperate to get out of Idyllwild. My feet were slowly getting better. But it would have been suicidal to go out in the desert and try hiking on them just yet. I started hitchhiking into town every morning. There I would hang out on a shaded bench in front of the post office and let my feet air out.

  Meanwhile, I had new pairs of shoes coming in from all over the country. I would pick up a pair practically every morning at the post office. But none of them seemed suitable for desert hiking, and I sent them all back. Repeatedly, I checked the REI website to see if Vasque had any size 15’s. Forget it. What in the world am I going to do?

  Several people had counseled me to just take my Vasque 14’s and cut the front out of th
em to allow my feet some breathing room. Many hikers performed such surgery on their shoes, and I was tentatively planning to do it myself. Then, I idly typed in Vasque Size 15 into the Google search box. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Right there a list of Vasque Size 15’s came up, including the exact brand I wanted, from Dick’s Sporting Goods. I had them over-nighted to Idyllwild and my shoe problems for the next 2,500 miles were now solved. But what an excruciating price I had paid for my lack of due diligence.

  The whole bubble of thru-hikers had already passed through Idyllwild. I would now be hiking alone in the desert.

  Chapter 13

  Comeback

  Of all the kinds of silences—the stillness of snowfields—none is as total as the desert. It is the hush of antiquity.

  The High Adventure of Eric Ryback

  The silence was deafening. It was the middle of the day with the temperature well over 100 degrees. My foot, while not completely healed, actually felt pretty good for “regular” life. The calluses wouldn’t be completely grown back for another few weeks. But it was only going to get hotter in the desert. So I had heavily taped up my feet, packed up my backpack, popped some Advil, and hitched back to the trailhead after seventeen days in Idyllwild.

  To the left, right, straight ahead, and behind was a scene of monolithic desert—brown, sandy dune hills with chaparral bushes. The austere landscape matched my mood.

  Jack London had vividly written about the Alaskan Yukon:

  A vast silence reigned over the land. There was a hint in it of laughter, but a laughter more terrible than any sadness. It was the masterful wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life.

  Timeless desert scene

  The Alaskan back country and the desert, of course, couldn’t be more different. But they did have one thing in common. They were inhospitable to humanity to the point of downright mocking us. I wasn’t scared, but rather in a sort of low-grade depression. At times like this you have only yourself to fall back on, and it’s best to stick to fundamentals. I concentrated on taking measured, cautious steps in my new Vasque Size 15 trail shoes. They were big to be sure, but I was wearing two pairs of wool socks (hikers should never, ever wear cotton) to help fill them up and cushion the impact on my feet.

  In some basic ways this was a purer than normal outdoor experience for me. I had no idea how far I was going to go today, where I was going to camp, and no expectations of any human encounters. I was just going to follow this 2 ½ foot-wide trail through the desert and take what comes. On my back were about 45 pounds, including a week’s supply of food and five liters (almost 11 pounds) of water, the most I’d ever carried. Every time I heard the water sloshing around in my bottles, it reminded me they were my lifeline.

  I quickly became winded and had to take frequent breaks. At first I thought it was from the layoff, but actually the trail was climbing up to 7,000 feet and high desert. But with nobody to chat with, I kept the breaks short. By dark I had done about 15 miles, set up camp, and felt like a PCT hiker again.

  Unfortunately, when I got in my tent and removed all the tape and bandages from my feet, they were covered in black dirt. Further, the filth didn’t just cover the bandages, but reached under where the calluses had been. Infection. That was my greatest fear. I decided to use some of the precious water I had been carrying to try to clean the open wounds off. But it would be impossible to prevent it from happening again the next day in the grimy desert.

  Thru-hikers are renowned for breaking camp in the morning at breakneck speed. But now I had to carefully administer ointment, pads, and surgical tape to each foot in my tent before breaking camp. The balls of my feet where Renee had cut deepest were throbbing. That was bad news because day two is the key day when coming back from an injury.

  I focused on making every single step with as little pain as possible. Needless to say, that is a losing proposition. While rock-hopping on my heels across Holcomb Creek, I bought it—splash— straight into the drink. After quickly pulling myself out of the stream I thought, Hey, try to turn this into a positive. So I decided to take an extended break right there to soak my feet in this rare desert stream, hoping to numb them. However, the bees were utterly ferocious in the shade where I leaned on a rock. That was another dilemma of desert hiking. On your breaks you had a choice between roasting in the broiling sun or let the bees molest you in the shade. It was positively hellish.

  Struggle is one thing. Damaging your physical self is another. And that’s what I was doing. I needed to get out of here. But I had no idea how. So I fell back on the automatic default position.

  When in doubt a hiker hikes. We are creatures with great faith that if we just continue moving forward, somehow, something good will happen. My steps were stiff and clodding, with heavy emphasis on the heels. I was lucky to make a mile at a time before having to take a break. While reclining glumly up against my backpack I heard the first voices in a couple days coming from the opposite direction. It was a couple carrying daypacks. Immediately, the old hiker Yogi-ing instincts surged to the forefront.

  “Excuse me,” I said to this pleasant-looking middle-aged couple, “Could you tell me if there happen to be any roads or any towns around here at all?”

  “Well, yes,” the man said. “Where are you trying to get to?”

  I didn’t want to overplay my hand too quickly. First, I had to cajole them into letting me into their car. They described a complex series of dirt roads, turning into paved roads, into other paved roads.

  “Is there any way in the world you could give me a lift up to that first paved road?” I earnestly asked.

  “Sure, sure, we’d be glad to drop you off up there,” he said.

  Slowly, but surely, I drew snake eyes with this couple. He was a preacher at some remote hamlet called Mount Gregory. After I began talking rhapsodically about the wonders of the PCT, he suddenly said to his wife, “Honey, we haven’t been to Big Bear Lake in awhile. Would you like to have dinner there tonight?”

  They drove me 1 ½ hours south on a winding mountain road, and dropped me at Big Bear Lake Hostel.

  Deep down I knew I had to do it. In fact, I had known it for some time. The three-day comeback hike had been almost proforma—to prove to myself that there was no alternative. I was going to have to skip forward. I had hiked every blaze of the Appalachian Trail and dearly wanted to hike every step of the Pacific Crest Trail. This was supposed to be my hike-to-end-all-long-hikes. Now it wouldn’t be pure.

  My mother and brother consoled me with phone calls. “Bill, that’s great you take such pride in the whole thing,” my mother reasoned. “But does it really matter to anyone else whether you do the entire trail or not?”

  Sound reasonable, to be sure. Was there an egocentric element to thru-hiking? Probably, and to that extent it is not a terribly worthy endeavor. But there was another big issue.

  Knowing you have a long journey to complete forces you to keep hiking on low morale days, if the weather is crummy, or maybe you feel like lingering in a trail town. It was a great motivating force. Now that I would no longer be a virgin, would I be able to muster that same sustained effort?

  Fortunately, I was able to catch a ride to the one place more than any other that exudes the spirit of the PCT. Suddenly, I was surrounded by swarms of hikers and couldn’t have been happier about it.

  Chapter 14

  Donna

  You know—if we males just didn’t have such damn egos, we’d be alright. I stood there with another male hiker with another male ego taking in the whole scene at the Saufleys.

  It was a brilliant tapestry. You couldn’t help noticing the number of truly fine-feathered females flitting around all over the place. They were loving the attention and having the time of their lives.

  “What are these girls,” this guy commented to me, “cheerleaders or hikers?”

  “Yeah,” I said light-heartedly, trying to make conversation. “I bet some of ‘em don’t even have backpacks and are just trying to act
like they’re hikers.”

  I said ego, right? You’re welcome to label us with stronger adjectives.

  In any event, the girls were damn good-looking and having a damn good time. This guy and I also were proven to be dead-wrong. The next morning I noticed some very noticeable girls packing up their backpacks and preparing to head off, while the guys were taking their seats in a circle of chairs. Among the girls leaving was Luna, who we would all see a lot more of. She had just given a guy a Mohawk haircut to great applause, at which point she proceeded to head off alone into the desert.

  She was soon followed by the dynamic duo of Root Canal and Color Blind. I looked at the physiques of those two and thought, “I’d be lucky to keep up with them for even a day.” Male hikers soon started calling Root Canal by a different name—Turbo Puss. Guess which name stuck?

  Again, I wish we weren’t such pigs. Maybe this Chinese-style confession will make me less so.

  The best place for a hiker hostel is in the middle of nowhere. By that measure, the Saufleys in Agua Dulce are perfectly located. Their hostel, Hiker Haven, lies slap-dab in the middle of perhaps the most featureless part of the entire southern California desert.

  Hiker morale is often low upon arrival. And once you arrive on the main street in Agua Dulce there ain’t a helluva’ lot in the way of civilization, including no motels. Into this vacuum steps the strong, determined personality of Donna Saufley.

  Immediately, Donna reminded me of Nancy Pelosi, only minus twenty years and a half-million dollars in cosmetic surgery. The similarities were not just in physical appearance, but also in style. Pelosi is renowned for running the U.S. House of Representatives with an iron fist; but cross her at your own risk. Donna was nowhere near so ruthless. But it was very clear from the beginning that you were a guest at her house and to play by her rules. Fortunately, she was determined, seemingly to the point of obsession, to make it a pleasant stay.