Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Bill Walker

  “We’re gonna’ have to go up,” CanaDoug said.

  “Where?” I asked anxiously. “That’s much steeper than anything we’ve ever climbed.”

  “You’ve gotta’ grab the scree and pull up using it.”

  “Man, this is dangerous as hell,” I said anxiously.

  “Just watch me,” he said.

  CanaDoug started grabbing rocks and hauling himself slowly up. I followed. It was steep and got steeper. It also was a lot longer climb than it had appeared from the bottom.

  “Watch out, Skywalker,” he said. “These rocks are loose.”

  Just like on Forrester’s Pass, my anxiety got the best of me, and I kept hurrying right up to CanaDoug’s heels.

  “Watch it Skywalker, these rocks could fall. Get back.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I’d pull back, but not for long. It was impossible to stay calm on a hill this steep. The rock scree we were using as stepping stones weren’t firm. It didn’t take much imagination to conjure up a catastrophe scenario. Finally, CanaDoug got to the top. The very last ten feet were the most difficult for me.

  “No, no, this way, Skywalker,” he said.

  I was plenty lucky right here. Since it was the last step I was able to take off my backpack and lob it up to the shelf, and then haul myself over.

  “Good job,” CanaDoug said.

  “What do you reckon was the angle on that slope?” I asked. “Honestly?”

  “Maybe 50 degrees,” he answered.

  Lauren came up last in an agonizingly slow ascent. Lauren was only 17 years-old with a Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm innocence about her. Unlike me, though, she was calm enough to take it slow and take breaks. Finally, after almost a half-hour of holding us in suspense, she pulled herself up. We had all gained Mather’s Pass, where we looked down on another heavily snow-laden field laced with hiker footprints.

  I sure was glad my Canadian hiking partner had put on his benevolent leader hat again. The high snows of the High Sierra had this lanky Georgia boy psyched out.

  Chapter 23

  Just a Survivor

  Lauren and I (see first chapter) stood halfway down the north slope of snowy Muir Pass, trying to figure out how in the world to get out of here. It was the third of July.

  “I’d give it a 60% chance the trail continues down through those lakes to the valley, a 30% chance it goes straight up these mountains, and a 10% chance it does neither,” I told Lauren. Silence.

  We had essentially narrowed our options down to two choices—climb the steep mountain ahead or descend through the lakes to the valley. The great problem is that at least one of these two options was drastically wrong and would lead to completely unforeseen consequences.

  The high snows (summertime included) of the High Sierras were at turns laborious, exhilarating, terrifying.

  “I doubt it goes up that mountain,” she finally said.

  “I tend to agree,” I said. “But it did go over something just like that two days ago at Mather Pass.”

  I’ve been involved in the stock market most of my adult life. The cardinal rule is that when everybody agrees on something, they are almost always wrong. Hopefully, decision-making in the mountains would be different!

  “Why don’t we head down through the two lakes,” I suggested.

  “I think it might be on the left,” she said.

  “But remember back at Pinchot Pass,” I countered. “The descent slooked through all those lakes.”

  “Yeah,” Lauren said skeptically. “I think it might run to the left of the lakes.”

  “I don’t see where,” I said.

  “I think I see it,” she said evenly.

  “Where?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Yeah, look down where the snow runs out,” she said. “Isn’t that the PCT?” Sure enough a footpath that looked like the PCT ran along the bank of the left lake.

  I had been gravely worried for the last several hours that we were seriously lost; so I was going to be the last person to realize we actually weren’t lost. I hurriedly stumbled over rocks to get to the trail. “Yeah, this looks like it,” I yelled back to Lauren, and rushed ahead. “And there’s Pat.”

  “Who?” she yelled forward, jokingly.

  “This way, this way,” Pat started directing the two of us over yet another stream. “That rock, there, there.” He was being unusually attentive. It had been about eight hours since he’d last seen his mapless hiking partner, Lauren. Perhaps, he was feeling guilty. If he was, he knew just the way to make it up.

  The three of us hiked together to the banks of yet another gorgeous alpine lake. There Pat pulled out a fishing line he had been carrying in his monstrous backpack. Fifteen minutes later, he was back.

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  “Heck, yeah,” he chortled. “I caught seven fish. Your line drops the minute you throw it in.” We all went scavenging for wood and soon had us a roaring fire. Pat cooked the fish, wrapped them in tinfoil, and said, “Skywalker, you’re first.” He handed me two steaming fish.

  “Oh, come on, I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  Needless to say, it was just a pro-forma protest. I hadn’t eaten anything hot in several days and was running low on food again. In comparison with hiker food, this tasted like the ambrosia of the gods.

  I had never even been on an overnight hike until I was 44 years-old. It showed in my often erratic emotions. By contrast, I had started playing golf at age six. I instinctively knew that adversity was part of the game, and usually kept my cool no matter how I played. Maybe days like this would help me grow up as a hiker.

  “Two cannibals are having lunch together,” I said to HWAP. “One is complaining about the food. What does the other person respond?”

  “Beats me,” HWAP said.

  “‘Well then’, he advises ‘just push your ex-girlfriend over to the side of the plate and eat your vegetables’.”

  HWAP gave the obligatory laugh which encouraged me to continue.

  “Why don’t cannibals eat divorcees?”

  “Got me again,” HWAP said.

  “Because they taste so bitter.”

  Yeah, I know. But give me a break. Over the course of more than 2,600 miles anybody is bound to go cold for awhile. At least these lame, but morbid, jokes had a context. We were all running severely low on food.

  Nobody had enough to get to the next town, Mammoth. So everybody was hoping to get to a resort called Vermillon Valley Resort (VVR). However, this required taking a side trail for two miles off the PCT, and then a catching the twice-a-day ferry to the resort. VVR offered a free first beer to hikers, before ripping us off on whatever items we needed for re-supply.

  I had broken camp early and was hiking full speed, hoping to make the afternoon ferry. Surprisingly, I had run into HWAP. Surely the reader has already figured out that HWAP stands for Hooker With a Penis. It was obvious. Right? But in case it wasn’t, you’ve got company. Honest to God, I must have asked him four times how the heck he ended up with that trail name. He patiently explained it every time, but I never really understood the derivation. All I know is that Das Boots (whose trail name derived from the German-looking jackboots he wore) gave it to him, and it stuck. Remember, we’re out here a helluva’ long time.

  HWAP was in his mid-twenties and ex-military. Actually, he was such a strong hiker that I had never expected to see again. But he had come down with a severe case of Giardia (an intestinal disease from drinking contaminated water). Water treatment is always a bit of a roll of the dice. I had been so mesmerized by the rushing white-capped streams at the high elevations that I had just been sticking my bottle in and drinking up, without treating it with chemicals or filtering. So far, I had gotten away with it. However, HWAP had done the same and been laid low.

  Because of the extra couple days it took him to get through the Sierras, his food supply was running dangerously low—some peanuts and raisins. I needed to make it to VVR today. He had to make it. We were moving pretty good, and
as was usually the case when you haven’t seen somebody you know for awhile, we were vigorously gossiping about what our colleagues were up to.

  “I didn’t think we had a climb here,” I said surprised.

  “Yeah, there’s a climb,” he said calmly.

  It was a heckuva’ climb. Next thing you know, we were scaling rock walls and jumping streams.

  “Man, I’ve got doubts this is it.”

  “I’d be surprised if it wasn’t,” he said.

  Unfortunately, I ended up being correct and we had to retrace the steep terrain we had just ascended. Now we were at risk of missing the ferry.

  “Man, I’m really sorry,” HWAP said.

  And—even more impressive—he would later take responsibility for it in conversations in front of others.

  For several straight miles we hiked all out to try to make it. Along the way, I did my first-ever face-plant—falling straight forward on my face. We arrived just in time, at which point I stumbled again rushing up the ramp of the ferry in front of a crowd of amazed onlookers. Perhaps it was a fitting end to my journey through the High Sierra. It wasn’t pretty, but I made it.

  But it doesn’t capture the Sierras one bit. It’s easy to over-romanticize something like this. Yet I have got to believe that the snow-capped peaks, rushing streams, lush green meadows, and sharp granite faces of the High Sierra put it in the category of one of the most beautiful places on the entire earth.

  The idea of a gift to yourself sounds inherently narcissistic. I’ve never been much for birthday celebrations (ask some of my ex-girlfriends!). But by immersing myself so deeply in such indescribable beauty for the last few weeks, I honestly felt like I had given myself one of the great gifts of my forty-eight years.

  Chapter 24

  Three’s Not the Charm

  Bad things happen in threes. Right?

  HWAP and I had spent a day re-supplying in Mammoth Mountain. Everything about this resort town had been new and cool. The roads, the post office, the free trolley system—it was all brand spanking new. The Great Recession never seemed to have even happened in these gold-plated environs.

  HWAP and I were on the the bus going back to the PCT at Red’s Meadow, when I suddenly blurted out, “Oh, shit.”

  “What?” he said calmly.

  I began frantically rifling through my backpack.

  “%#* dammit, I left my tent poles in the room,” I steamed.

  Apparently—at least in HWAP’s later recounting of the scene to other hikers—the entire bus had gone hush over this giant’s (my) temper tantrum.

  “This stop,” I yelled out to the driver.

  “I’ll wait for you at Red’s Meadow,” HWAP said.

  “No, just keep going,” I said, realizing how bad I’d screwed up. “I’ll try to catch up with you in Yosemite.”

  HWAP had been the ideal hiking partner, and I hated getting separated from him like this. In fact, it was to be the last time I ever saw him. I flagged down a car that was going down the mountain. “Stop here, please.” I then practically announced to the elderly couple in the car they were going to give me a ride. They took me back to the motel where I went into chicken-with-my-head-cut-off mode. The front desk clerk gave me a key to the room, but the tent poles weren’t there.

  I rushed back to the front desk, and said, “The maid must have thrown ‘em away. Can I look in the dumpster?” They assigned a Mexican maid to take me out to the dumpster, where I frantically rummaged through garbage without luck. I’m screwed. No way I can find a two-person tent long enough for me in this town.

  “Who cleaned the room?” I peppered the people at the front desk. They all concerned themselves with trying to sort the problem out.

  The more cynical reader might just have become suspicious the problem lay elsewhere. I became suspicious of that possibility, too. I hurriedly dug deep into my backpack. Of course, angled off to the side of my backpack were the bloody tent poles.

  Particularly strange things can happen at high elevations.

  I had run into CanaDoug leaving Mammoth the second time.

  “Where’s HWAP?” he asked.

  After I coughed up the embarrassing explanation, he said, “Don’t worry. We should make it to Yosemite by tomorrow night.” Indeed, we hiked until dark and got off early the next morning.

  “I’ll catch right up,” I said to CanaDoug as he headed off. “I’m going to dry my tent off.”

  I began flailing the tent in every direction to wick any moisture off it. Whap. One of the tent straps hit my finger and opened a crease. Blood began flowing freely. I anxiously rifled through my first aid packet, and tried applying band-aids. But the blood kept oozing. My fingers were biting cold up here above 10,000 feet.

  Why won’t it quit bleeding? I began to suspect it had something to do with the high altitude. I also began to panic. There had been a couple unexplained deaths on the PCT in 2006. One guy apparently had a heart attack and was found in the middle of the trail. The other was found down a steep hill where he had fallen. But wouldn’t this be the freakiest death ever—bleeding to death on the trail from a minor cut?

  I had no idea what to do. Finally, being a creature of hope, I just decided to hike forward and hope like heck to find somebody with some bandages. I kept the bleeding finger in my little towel, but it kept gushing and turned the towel a shock of red. Finally, I spotted a family camped up the hill and approached them.

  If nature is your thing, the PCT is tough to beat.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you have any wrapping tape. I’m losing a lot of blood.”

  It was a family of Mexicans and my question was greeted with blank stares. So I repeated it in a brand of spanish that Forrest Gump would be extremely proud of, and held out my pouring red finger for emphasis.

  “You need pressure,” he said, and pulled out some gauze pads and tape and wrapped it brilliantly.

  “Wow, do you have medical training?”

  “No, but blood no stop at high elevations.”

  “Golly, I can’t thank you enough,” I said. “I don’t need all the food I’m carrying. Please let me share it.”

  “No thank you, mister,” his wife responded. “You want hot burrito.”.

  Needless to say, I craved the possibility of a hot burrito. But this guy conceivably had just saved my life.

  “No thanks,” I lied. “I just ate a big breakfast.”

  Off I went trying to make up for lost time.

  I proceeded to lose a helluva’ lot more, walking for miles along shimmering Thousand Island Lake, thinking of my good luck and the beautiful scenery. I wasn’t seeing any footprints. Usually, when I was worried about being lost, I was just being over-vigilant. But this trail was a talisman. It was well-maintained enough in various places to keep suckering me along. I followed it for miles along this massive lake. Finally, it just completely gave out. All I could do is angrily retrace my steps for over three miles. Now it was going to require 29 miles, instead of twenty-two to reach Yosemite National Park today. But given everything I’d always heard about Yosemite, I really wanted to get there.

  Donahue Pass lay between here and there. Worst of all, someone had described it with that god-awful word, sketchy. Fortunately, it didn’t rise to the level of sketchiness—or even gnarliness—that some of its kin had. Now it was a matter of gliding at my maximum speed of perhaps a little over three miles-per-hour along the gorgeous Tuolomne River, which flowed the entire way to Yosemite. My amateur outdoorsman’s eye was able to notice that the deer in the meadow on the other side of the river stayed out in the middle of the pasture. Undoubtedly, that was to give them good sight lines for where their attackers (bears and wolves) habitually emerged from late in the day.

  Finally, I took the side turn directing me to the well-known Tuolomne Meadows Campground. Parked campers and throngs of tourists filled every nook and cranny of this monstruous playground. It was a scene straight out of Americana. And I was licking my chops.

  Let
me just say this. Plenty of these road trippers were surely better versed in outdoor matters than this here hiker. But in one area, they were no match for any long-distance hiker. Food.

  Ninety-nine percent of road-trippers pack 200% or more of the food they need. Long-distance hikers have a very different philosophy. And the longer the distances you cover, the closer you learn to cut it. I never met a hiker who wasn’t a total opportunist. Give him or her any opening, and they will make Robin Hood proud in re-distributing food from those who have lots of it, to those who devour lots of it. I was no slouch at this myself.

  I wandered through the Tuolomne Meadows Campground attracting various stares. Finally, I got the question I was waiting for. “Gosh, you must have a big advantage with those long legs?” some lady asked nicely. “Just how tall are you?”

  Two delicious hamburgers and some vegetables and blueberry pie later, she and her family had all the answers.

  “You can stay right here with us,” the family offered.

  However, I wanted to find my colleagues somewhere in the campground.

  “Well, we’re having a big breakfast, please come back.”

  “Oh please, now,” I joked.

  But I just managed to stumble down there and run into them again the next morning, where ample helpings of pancakes, bacon, and eggs greeted me. Yeah, folks. Life sure is hell on the PCT.

  It was dark, but I thought I spotted Ingrid in the distance.

  “Ingrid, is that you?”

  “Skywalker,” she yelled back.”

  “Is there anywhere I can camp here?” I said.

  “Yes, right there,” she said. “And you can lock your food up in the locker here.”

  “Where’s the rest of Team Hustle (Dirk, Laura, and Snake Charmer)?”

  “Team Hustle has broken up,” she said in a downcast fashion.

  “What happened?”

  “Laura and Snake Charmer went back to his house in Los Angeles for a week. Dirk is meeting up with his girlfriend.”