Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Bill Walker

  Excitement was pulsing through the trail as we neared the critical mile 703 point. There, of course, the landscape would dramatically change. All kinds of rumors were flying around about the critical variant—the snowpack levels in the High Sierra. But then I ran into Chopper and Savior.

  “We’re out of food,” Chopper said. Out of food. We’re still thirty miles from Kennedy Meadows. There is nothing between here and there. What more, he said it in a conversational manner.

  Chopper and Savior were, of course, the two brothers who had run out of water the first day on the trail, at which point Chopper had been helicoptered out after hitting his SPOT button. Murphy’s Law seemed to literally stalk them. All along the way I had been hearing about their mishaps and exploits. Now I had come upon them lying off to the side of the trail and spontaneously decided to take my lunch break right there. Bad decision.

  I’m embarrassed to say I hesitated before deciding what to do. Of course, there is no real decision here. Besides, I was planning to make it to Kennedy Meadows in about 28 hours, and estimated I had two days worth of food. So I judiciously ladled out a few food items to each one. The way they said thanks reminded me of a politician seeking votes. They were good at this.

  We all ate some lunch, and began hiking along together. They were really quite colorful, and seemingly very knowledgeable on all manner of outdoor topics. I walked along listening respectfully.

  Then we came upon one of the most popular people on the trail, Attila. He was a scrawny little fellow with a dark-black ayatollah beard, and a lightning quick hiker. Attila had just completed his doctorate in hydrology. I loved listening to him converse on a variety of water issues. What made him especially popular though, was the large bong packed away in his backpack. It was named after Attila the Hun, because of all the punishment it meted out.

  Attila had been loading up his bong when Chopper, Savior, and I approached.

  “Skywalker,” Attila offered in a good-natured manner.

  “Thank you,” I laughed. “But hiking is difficult enough as it is.”

  Chopper and Savior weren’t daunted one bit, however. Ten minutes later they lay with their heads on their backpacks, and minds back in the Stone Age. Next came a ravenous case of the munchies, as Chopper and Savior tore through every morsel of food I had just given them a couple hours ago. Reluctantly, I parceled out a few more spare items to them. Then, I quickly headed off alone, to protect my remaining food!

  I was thinking about camping at Fox Mill Spring, tonight. However, the closer and closer we were getting to the mountains, the more moist areas were appearing. The swampy spring area here reminded me almost exactly of Joshua Tree Spring last night. Worried that I might again have the same hungry company as the previous evening if I camped here, I continued on.

  Soon I was back in a more desert-looking area. At dark, I found a place to pitch my tent between some chapparal bushes for my last night in the desert. It was a typical spartan desert setting. However, in the middle of the night I heard a loud, spine-tingling screech, perhaps a hundred yards away. Then another shriek. Cougar.

  I wasn’t about to stick my head out of my tent. Instead, I lay inside paying rapt attention. However, I did hear footsteps of something running down the hill; in fact, it was running much faster than anything I’d ever heard. Blood-curdling screeches continued all the way down into the valley. Assuming it was a cougar, its screeches might have been to terrify the competition and establish territory. Or perhaps it was just thirsty and running down the hill for a midnight drink of water.

  Like most hikers, I had both loved and hated the desert passionately. One thing was for sure, though. I was never going to forget it.

  Chapter 18

  Going Up

  “Good gosh,” I said frustrated, “what good does this thing do if it protects your food from a bear, but I can’t get in the damn thing myself.”

  “You can usually open it this way,” Snake Charmer patiently said. He took out a knife and pressed down on the tab. Slowly, he unscrewed the top of my bear canister. Now I had to figure out just how much food I could stuff in there. Then came the worst part—jamming the awful thing in my backpack.

  “Skywalker,” Ingrid said. “Try some of these German chocolates.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Here Skywalker,” Laura rushed over to say. “Take these Lara bars. They cost too much to throw them away.”

  “Well, if I’ve got room.”

  Kennedy Meadows is a small, lonely redoubt at the foot of the High Sierras. Like everybody else, I had sent a food drop here because of the lack of available supplies. But if I had to do it over again, I don’t think I would send anything. Hikers had wildly over-shipped food here. People I had never seen before were trying to hand off dehydrated meals. The sad thing is that several days from now in the most remote mountainous areas, when everybody was running low on food, they would have paid a pretty penny to get this food back. But here at Kennedy Meadows they couldn’t fit it all into their bear canisters.

  “Bears are a bigger part of hiking in the West than the East,” everybody kept saying. “They’re smarter and more aggressive.” Hiking trails are full of bear experts. From what I’d seen, though, you simply couldn’t make sweeping projections about bears. Most of them seemed to have quite different temperaments and personalities. The one three nights ago had surprised us twice; first, with its boldness, and then its inexplicable flight in fear.

  These self-anointed bear experts did have one undeniably valid point, though. Because of the extreme aridity in the West, vegetation is not as dense. Since bears are 80% vegetarian, they have much less to eat. They make up for it by becoming more aggressive in trying to steal hiker food. It’s not irrational. All the plants and logs and berries bears gnaw on all day have low-calories densities. But, if they can get their paws on a hiker food bag, they can score 15,000 or 20,000 calories in a jiffy. So stealing hiker food is only rational. But given that you were often days away from an emergency bailout, it was a disquieting prospect.

  Nevada is a spanish word meaning snowy. By that translation, the state of Nevada’s name is an abomination. It is the second driest state in the United States (only Arizona is drier). On the other hand, the early Spanish explorers named this mountain range ahead, The Sierra Nevada. It means “snowy mountain range.” They got that dead right.

  The annual snowfall in the Sierras is several times that of the Rockies. Some of it—a lot of it actually—never even melts. Other parts don’t melt until late July or August. This can be problematic to the point of dangerous for PCT hikers.

  A couple weeks earlier, while it was raining on us in the Mojave Desert, a heavy snowstorm had hit the Sierras. The early pack of hikers into the Sierras had been forced to retrace their steps back to the safe haven of the Kennedy Meadows Campground. A lower-thanaverage snow year had now turned into an average snow year. Fair enough. When in the Sierras, hike in the snow.

  The landscape immediately changed. In place of scraggly desert bushes covering a relentlessly brown and stucco landscape, we were now engulfed by lush green meadows and bursting flowers. It was a welcome change. My mood was an excitement, filled with trepidation. In fact, this day—entering the High Sierra—was a day I had been anticipating for years.

  The ascent was slow at first. White-capped peaks appeared in the distance. Of course, it was the snowmelt from those same peaks that had created this brilliantly verdant setting.

  My new hiking partner, CanaDoug, a stocky, 53 year-old Canadian, and I arrived in Menarche Meadows. It was a beautiful, wide-open meadow, but nakedly exposed to a strong current. Immediately, I made a bone-headed mistake.

  The Kern River flowed out of the mountains and through Menarche Meadows, in an almost lyrically beautiful way.

  “Hey, that sand bar along the river looks perfect for our tents,” I said to CanaDoug.

  “Are you kidding?” CanaDoug asked.

  “But shouldn’t the wind die down at dark?”
I asked hopefully.

  “I don’t know,” he said skeptically. “I’m going up on that hill.”

  I pitched my tent on the sand bar, only to be clobbered by gales of wind all night. No sleep. Bad start.

  I followed that up by getting lost second thing next morning. Head down and leaning forward into the powerful current, I had barged across Menarche Meadows and was happy to get to tree cover. But then I went the wrong way.

  Every other time I had been lost, I would simply backtrack angrily and soon find out where I had blundered. But here I thrashed determinedly straight up the bank of a creek, surprised at how rugged and steep the trail had become. A grave feeling set in. This wasn’t a careless mistake. When you worry constantly about something for days and weeks, even months and years, but it happens anyway, it takes on a different type of gravity. Not anger, because you were doing your damndest to avoid it. A more profound negative feeling sets in. Maybe I’m in over my head.

  I kept walking. Finally, I came upon a well-maintained trail running at a right angle to the direction I was climbing. But I had no idea if it was the PCT. Unlike the desert, the Sierras have an extensive network of hiking trails. And if this was the PCT, should I go left or right? I went left and soon came to a fork.

  I dropped my backpack and spent almost an hour running sorties in various directions. But I worried about straying too far from my backpack, given the bear-dense environment. My reconnaisance only left me more confused. Finally, I decided to sit down and eat lunch, and hope another hiker came along.

  I soon heard singing. That meant it was probably Backtrack, the brainy college professor from Alaska. What a study in contradictions this man was. He had an utter fear of bears.

  “If I saw a bear,” he insisted, “I would feel like I’ve done something wrong.”

  “I thought Alaskans treated ‘em like pets,” I said surprised.

  “No,” he corrected me, “I had a friend in Alaska that got attacked and killed by a bear while riding his bicycle.”

  Despite this, Backtrack hiked at night more than anyone else. He compensated by keeping up a lively repertoire of evening tunes.

  “Where in the world is the PCT?” I asked Backtrack. “You’re sitting on it,” he said.

  “That way,” I started down the hill to the left.

  “No, this way,” he headed right up the hill. The only solace I could find from my haplessness was that Backtrack had gotten his own trail name from similar mishaps.

  We soon came upon CanaDoug, who had corralled three other hikers who had taken the same errant route as me.

  “Skywalker,” CanaDoug laughed, “you’re lucky you took the wrong trail. I ran into a big bear—350 pounder—right on the PCT.”

  “Oh great, he must have wandered down from Canada.”

  “We’ve already decided,” CanaDoug said in pep-talk fashion, “everybody needs to hang with another person, at least until we get through these mountains.”

  That was music to my ears. As I was to see on several occasions further along, this rugged Canadian had some latent leadership skills that surfaced on impromptu occasions.

  Chapter 19

  Two-Miles High

  Being over 10,000 feet takes some getting used to. There is the obvious reason—the air is thinner. I seemed to do alright here, while others gasped, as we climbed and climbed the second and third day into the Sierras. Maybe the years I had spent getting and staying in shape for this trail were helping.

  The cold was another story. It must be noted that mammals living in cold climates (ex. polar bears) tend to be short-limbed and thick trunked. Humans can adapt over time, as well. Eskimos are the most short-limbed people on this planet. This minimizes the surface area and helps them retain heat. Giraffes, on the other hand, have massive surface areas, which makes it difficult to retain heat. Surely not coincidentally, this is why they are found exclusively in warmer climes. Thousands of lame giraffe jokes over the years aside, it is obviously the animal I most closely resemble.

  The weather is almost always perfect this time of year in the Sierras. But when the sun goes down, the temperature plummets forty or more degrees. I was to spend a total of ten nights camped above ten thousand feet, and the pattern was always the same—start the night off reasonably warm and end up shivering in seven layers of clothing.

  On the third day, we entered Sequoia National Park, where the scenery bordered on ethereal. Being from Georgia, I was partial to pine trees to begin with. But I had never seen anything like these gigantic Sequoia trees. In fact, they are the largest living things on this planet (a few things in the ocean are bigger). Sequoias can measure over 300 feet in height and have been around since Biblical times. California’s redwood trees, found in the coastal region, are actually taller, but Sequoias have much larger trunks and branches. Despite their weight being in the neighborhood of two-and-a-half million pounds, they retain a graceful beauty about them. It doesn’t take a dewy-eyed tree hugger to realize that cutting them down would be worse than a crime.

  That evening we arrived at Chicken Spring Lake, a gorgeous alpine lake that had obviously been fed from the snowmelt in the mountains hovering steeply on three sides of it. I just took my nalgene bottle and dipped it straight into the lake for a drink. Attila was on hand and rhapsodic at the whole scene.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again,” I said to the fleet-footed hydrologist.

  “Oh man,” he said wondrously, “a place like this shows the world has hope.”

  Attila had gotten here last night and spent all day just gazing at the water. He would repeat this habit of taking a zero day at the best water sources all the way to Canada.

  “But bundle up,” he added, “it got down to seventeen last night.”

  Although I obsessed over the approaching cold night, the excitement was palpable around the campsite as a dozen-and-a-half of our comrades arrived on the scene. Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States, was only two days away.

  Luna, the young girl I had seen at various points along the way (who hadn’t!), was also on hand.

  “Skywalker,” she asked, “are you going up Mount Whitney (Mount Whitney is a side trail off the PCT)?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t have an ice axe.”

  “Oh, come on now,” she scoffed. “You’re going up with me.”

  I would have loved to have climbed a marquee mountain such as Mount Whitney, but it would add an extra day-and-a-half before getting to the next food re-supply point. But I was soon to find out that, for whatever reason, this young girl wanted me to summit Whitney even more than I did.

  “It’s a little sketchy in a few places,” Dirk said.

  There was that damn word sketchy again. Hikers loved to use it. But I would soon learn to fear this god-awful word, whenever I heard it. For whatever reason—perhaps not to appear cowardly—hikers don’t like to say the word “dangerous. So they use “sketchy.”

  Dirk, Snake Charmer, and Laura, were descending from Mount Whitney as we were headed up to the ranger’s base camp. Ingrid had sensibly chosen not to go up because she was having breathing problems at this altitude. The other three looked flushed in the face. We’ve all seen that kind of flushed look before.

  “Why don’t we start up at three in the morning,” CanaDoug suddenly suggested to everyone at base camp.

  “Why?” I asked perplexed.

  “We could watch the sunrise from the summit.”

  “Man, that would be cool,” said Donovan and several other hikers.

  “Come on, Skywalker,” Doug exhorted me.

  “Forget it,” I said, uncharacteristically decisive. “I may try for the summit tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re going up,” Luna again insisted. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  “I don’t know if I have enough food for the extra day,” I grumbled.

  “You will be fed, Skywalker,” HWAP said amused.

  All I knew is I’d be shivering all nig
ht here at the base camp, which was at 11,500 feet, and higher than I’d ever been in my 48 years. By contrast, Clingman’s Dome, the highest point on the entire Appalachian Trail, measures 6,700 feet.

  I expected to hear all kinds of racket in the middle of night as everyone headed off. But to my surprise, I heard nothing. And it sure wasn’t because I was sound asleep. When I emerged from my tent, there was CanaDoug.

  “My foot’s really banged up,” said Canadoug. “I’m giving it a rest today.”

  Sitting next to him was Spare Parts, an older guy who had practically killed himself the last few weeks straining to keep up with Luna. Because Mount Whitney is not part of the official PCT, he was also planning to rest in his tent all day.

  “That leaves you and me, Skywalker,” Luna said confidently. “Are you about ready?”

  Luna was a physical specimen, pure and simple. I honestly don’t say that in a prurient sense. Describing her any other way would be like trying to describe me without using the word tall. She was of Scandinavian ancestry and had the type physique one routinely sees in winter Olympic athletes. She also had the most upright, purest stride I’ve ever seen in a hiker. I was sentenced to trying to keep up with her the entire day. And that—putting in your maximum effort, or more commonly said, hiking your ass off—isn’t necessarily a good idea at such high elevations.