by Bill Walker
The fifteen men drew straws to see who would be eaten; however, malnutrition struck three of them before anyone had to be killed. The other members of the Forlorn Hope wrapped their dead companions in packages and carefully labeled them so nobody would be forced to eat a relative.
Six members of the Forlorn Hope eventually survived and stumbled onto a cabin to tell the terrible truth of what had happened. Rescue teams were dispatched to find the rest of the party. When the relief party finally stumbled on the rest of the Donner Party, they were witness to one of the worst single scenes in human history.
“Half-eaten bodies” lay strewn all over the place. One rescuer reported that the survivors “looked more like demons than human beings, surrounded by the remains of their unholy feast.”
The PCT comes right over Donner’s Pass, where this tragedy unfolded. Predictably, hikers (including this one) refer to it as Dahmer’s Pass, named after the infamous modern day cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer. All jokes aside, the comparison couldn’t be more off the mark.
Jeffrey Dahmer’s story is a morbid tale of human evil. On the other hand, if you really think about it, the party of George Donner mostly exhibited what we would refer to as positive human traits—pursuit of dreams, enormous energy, bravery, loyalty, and amazing survival instincts.
One of the Donner Party members had convinced everyone to try a shortcut, which ultimately failed and cost them several days. If not for that, the entire party would have arrived intact. But for somebody that has been lost as much as me, I’m uncomfortable even second-guessing that decision.
Yes, cannibalism is among the most gut-wrenching prospects a human could ever face (whichever side of the equation you happen to be on). But who can honestly say what they’d do in such a situation? It’s a very sobering tale, indeed.
Chapter 30
Northern California Tales—
Psychological Crucible
“Somebody could steal our backpacks,” Fran said.
“Yeah, what else?” her fiancée, Double Barrel, asked skeptically.
“Maybe some injury that makes you get off the trail, but then heals quickly,” Fran suggested. “A foot or something.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Double Barrel responded, still unexcited. “How about if somebody stole our credit card. People have to get off for things like that.” This seemed to pick their attitude up, but it didn’t help mine one bit.
Fran and Double Barrel had been a couple days behind me most of the way. Now they had caught up. You might think they had a head of steam. But, in fact, they were absolutely miserable with this heat and endless hiking. They desperately wanted off the trail, altogether. But they wouldn’t allow themselves to do so. Why?
Like so many hikers, they had begun with great ceremony in their respective hometowns. Quitting—at least according to this logic—would be a humiliation. At least quitting for the sake of quitting. But if something strange happened to them so that they had to get off; well, that was another matter. Thus, this perverted conversation in Sierra City, that I sat there listening to with a kind of morbid fascination.
As you might expect, they weren’t around much longer.
“SkyWalker,” came a familiar voice from the top of the hill.
“No Pain,” I exulted. “I don’t believe it.”
He was the first PCT hiker I had seen in three days. But he was going south.
“Where the hell are you going?” I asked.
“I hitched up to northern California and am hiking south to tell everybody goodbye?”
“You’re getting off?”
“Northern California is endless, man. I want out.”
This was a bit depressing. Here was a multiple-time AT hiker that appeared to have become totally disillusioned with the PCT. Worse yet, some of the non-AT hikers had been repeatedly pressing the theme: “The AT hikers don’t do well on the PCT.” I didn’t have much ego as a hiker, but I didn’t want people gaining pleasure that another AT alum had bought the dust.
No Pain was the only African-American on the trail, as far as I knew. Both the PCT and the AT cast very wide nets in terms of their hiking populations. But there is one great exception. Both trails are vastly underrepresented by members of the nation’s two largest ethnic minorities—African-Americans and Hispanics. Why? My best guess is that it’s a matter of basic geography. Neither African-Americans nor Latinos have ever settled heavily in mountainous regions. Honestly, it’s a shame. Long-Distance hiking is a great unifier. Things like skin color and national origin fade completely into the background given the demanding day-in, day-out challenges that one faces. Which is why is was so disappointing to see No Pain quitting.
“You should see everybody—they all look like shit,” No Pain said. “Dirk’s all shriveled up. And everybody’s depressed, too.”
“Yeah, I’m just trying to hang in there, myself,” I said. “But, God, it’s impossible to stop the weight hemorrhaging.”
“Man, you look really frail,” he said staring at me.
We embraced and went our separate ways. From what I later heard from other hikers that he passed further south, No Pain used much more vivid adjectives than ‘frail’ to describe my physical appearance. He probably was right about that. But I liked the struggle. It had great clarity to it, and I planned to see it through.
My best friend at this point may have been Magic Man. This was in spite of the fact that I hardly ever saw him. He was more like Jack the Ripper. He operated in the shadows, and you never knew when he was going to strike.
Magic Man’s daughter, Boo-Boo (mentioned earlier) had tried to glissade down Sonora Pass, the last really snowy pass in the Sierras. Unfortunately, she was wearing shorts and picked up so many ice-shards in her legs that she was disabled for two weeks. Her father, Magic Man, had volunteered to come down from Washington State and help her make up for the lost time. In these remote, dry, and even lonely parts, he was constantly finding dirt roads in the middle of nowhere to leave water, Gatorade, and snacks. This was no ordinary water or Gatorade, either. Certain days it seemed like no matter how much water you drank, you still felt dehydrated.
One afternoon I approached a road, running very low on water. In fact, it was the second straight bad water day. The previous afternoon I had wound down some steep mountain and been excited to hear the Feather River roaring at full-speed, its white capped currents shimmering in the brilliant mid-day sun. I had hurriedly picked my way down a large series of boulders in order to dip my water bottles and chug up. The problem is that the water in these wide, gorgeous rivers can double you over almost the minute you finish drinking it. At the campsite that night I repeatedly had to rush to relieve my diarrhea.
On this second day, morale had been even more fragile from the beginning. I had been thirsty all morning. The only water source listed in our data books was a creek that was over a mile off the trail, down a steep hill. I was dreading the thought of having to go down and retrieve it, and then having to hump all the way back up.
But when I had turned the corner before the road, there was the blue cooler. Oh, man, oh, yeah, baby, yeah, yeah, be there baby, talk to me, talk to me, I kept saying to myself as I drew closer.
I opened it. It was full of ice-cold liquids. Oh sweet, Magic Man. Uncharacteristically, I pumped my fist. It allowed me to hike until dark and get in my 25 miles for the day, as well as to get a good and well-hydrated start the next day.
Perhaps, the case of Magic Man was instructive. On the face of it, he had everything a person could ask for, including a good job, a nice family, and plenty of money.
However, Thoreau’s famous remark—“the great masses of people live in silent desperation,”—comes to mind.
Magic Man was taking his annual two-week summer vacation driving up dirt roads, shuttling around nauseous-smelling hikers, and filling up coolers. Juxtapose this against the normally plush, but sedentary, vacation he typically took. Without a doubt, he will remember this more plebeian vacation in the summer of
’09 with much greater nostalgia. Trail life had caught his imagination.
“Thank you, honestly, we all appreciate it,” I said to all the AmeriCorps volunteers, gathered on their hands and knees carving away at the trail. I was racing past them at maximum speed on the steep 4,500 foot descent into Belden. But the lower the trail descended, the more suffocating the heat became.
“You’re doing great work,” I kept saying. “Please just make sure you drink enough water.”
“What’s the hardest part of the trail? When did you start? How tall are you?” came back the questions in rapid-fire fashion. I wanted to chat, but this was dangerous heat. So I hurried down the mountain to get to Belden.
Meanwhile, I was faced with a steep 4,700 foot climb out of this steamy valley in gripping heat. By this point, I had begun measuring a climb as much in terms of calories expended as the actual difficulty of the mountain. The only antidote I knew of was to try and stuff myself with hamburgers, milkshakes, and French fries at the Belden General store. In four hours, I was able to get down almost 4,000 calories. Of course, that can sometimes be different from keeping them down.
I unenthusiastically walked out, bloated belly and all, and hoisted my backpack.
“Where are you going?” another hiker asked.
“Gonna’ try to get this climb out of the way,” I said.
“It’s over a hundred,” he said. “Wait.”
“I wanna’ get to Myrtle Flat Camp before dark,” I said. So off I went, full of cheeseburger and milkshake. Too full. The results were predictable.
The trail followed steep ledges as it wound up the mountain. A steep embankment was on my right and a sharp dropoff was to the left. That left nowhere for an emergency bathroom run. It was painful. Most of all, it was frustrating. I probably lost all 4,000 calories within two miles of leaving Belden from fiery diarrhea explosions.
And I could just imagine my trailing colleagues coming up on this ghoulish scene, rolling their eyes, and muttering, “The poor fucking idiot.”
Chapter 31
California Fires
“Hey Ralph,” I yelled excitedly. “You goin’ back up to the trail?”
“Yeah, get in,” he said.
I ran across the street and threw my backpack in the back of his truck. It was always a relief to finally get a hitch, especially for us males.
“Did you hear about the fires?” Ralph asked.
“No.”
“You had to hear all that lightning last night.”
“Yeah, I was lying in my tent quaking,” I said.
“Well, it struck all along the trail just north of here.”
“Is it safe to hike?” I asked.
“Not from what I’m hearing.”
Like every American, I’m accustomed to watching television reports every summer of firemen doggedly battling out-of-control blazes in the West. However, since I had begun considering a PCT hike I had periodically worried about just what in the world hikers do in these situations. I was about to find out.
“Where’s Pepperoni?” I asked. Ralph was the husband of Pepperoni (mentioned earlier as attempting to be the first woman to ever thru-ride the PCT).
“Headed right for the fires,” he said, sounding concerned. “I don’t know if she knows about them or not.”
“How about if I hang with you?” I asked.
“Sure thing,” he said. “I’m supposed to meet her tomorrow at Hat Creek Rim. But the Forest Service tells me there may be some fires burning between here and there.”
Other than the melting of the two polar ice-caps, the best evidence of global warming may be found in the staggering increase in western wildfires. Since 2000, more than 7,000,000 acres a year have been burned by wildland fires, which is more than double the rate of the previous four decades. The greatest increase has been at higher elevations because of earlier snowmelt.
Yet the increase in average temperature has been just one degree Fahrenheit. That is especially troubling for the simple reason that there are projections for even greater temperature increases in the future. In fact, burning wildfires may soon become one of the central facts of life in the West. To be sure, with my lack of scientific background, I’m a pretty easy lay when I read these articles and statistics. But now I was seeing it with my own eyes.
And I’d never seen anything quite like it. On the highway down to Old Station, black halos rose from various locations towards the sky. The firefighters had one highway blocked off and the town of Old Station was shut down.
Ralph and I camped along a dirt road, and got up early to try to find Pepperoni. When we got to the Hat Creek Rim parking lot, tourists were gathered around the overlook checking out the valley below, which was smothered by dark fumes. This was the same valley Pepperoni needed to ride through to get here.
“Ralph, there’s no way she’s gonna’ go through that,” I said.
“You don’t know my wife,” he shot back.
“I know she’s determined,” I said, “but she’s not crazy.”
“I’m telling you,” he said red-faced. “you don’t know my wife. She will not quit.”
For the next forty-five minutes we debated, increasingly intensely, whether his wife would try to ascend up to Hat Creek Rim. As the smoke became denser and people started to scurry off in their cars, I began wondering just how smart it was for the two of us to be hanging out here, ourselves.
“Ralph, let’s go check out the hiker hostel down in Old Station,” I suggested. “Somebody’s probably seen Pepperoni.”
“I told her I’d meet her here,” he said tensely.
“She’s not coming up here,” a bystander piped in.
“I’m telling the two of ya,’” he raged. “You don’t know my wife.”
Finally, as the smoke became a black pall, he relented and pulled the horse truck out onto the road to head down into the valley. I’d better be right about this.
“Hey, there’s Miles,” I said excitedly. “Let’s see if he knows anything.”
“Have you seen my wife?” Ralph asked.
“Yeah, we were together all morning, but she wanted to ride to the next road.”
“See,” Ralph said, “she never quits.”
“Well,” I said relieved. “we should be able to find her.
“Mind if I get in?” Miles asked.
“Yeah, load your pack up,” Ralph said. Great. Miles was about my age and the perfect trail gentleman. He’d be a good guy to hang out with the next few days as I tried to figure out how to navigate theses fires.
Ralph parked the van off to the side of the highway and we headed out in three directions searching for his wife. Just in the last fifteen minutes a new halo of black smoke was coming from what looked like no more than a few hundred yards to the north of where we were. Finally, Pepperoni appeared nobly on her horse.
“Did you see that fire burning just up the trail?” she said amazed.
“Yes,” the three of us said in unison. Ralph and she hugged. I went over to begin throwing out suggestions for what we should all do next.
“Hey Skywalker,” Miles wisely whispered, “Come here for a second. Just give ‘em a little time together.”
Ralph and Pepperoni quickly decided on a plan they had long considered. They were going to drive to Canada so that Pepperoni could begin riding south on the PCT. That would lengthen her riding season.
“Aren’t you going to miss everybody?” I asked Pepperoni. “You’re going to be alone all the time.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have any choice. I need more time.”
Pepperoni had really gotten her sea legs the last few hundred miles. She was maneuvering her horses much better through the mountain ranges. Most importantly, every fiber of her being was wrapped up in her attempt to thru-ride the PCT.
This inimitable twosome had defied the odds so far. But now, the two of them—along with their two horses—were heading off on a journey that would be of great import.
It was surreal�
��almost like a sick joke. I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Man, this is worse than Old Station,” I lamented to Miles. “We’ve gotta’ get the hell out of here.”
Miles and I had followed the suggestion of the Forest Service and caught the bus to Burney, California. But the closer we got to Burney, the smokier it was getting – almost like being in a steam room inundated with smoke. Where is it coming from?
But when we entered Burney Falls Park, we came upon a lady who had picked up a reputation as a hiker-friendly ranger.
“Is it okay to hike in this?” I immediately blurted out.
“Other hikers have gone out into it,’ she said.
“Today?”
“Yeah, this morning.”
“But the park looks abandoned?” I noted.
“Yeah,” she said. “But some of the PCT hikers hiked out.”
That was not the answer I wanted to hear. Nonetheless, I reluctantly set off north on the smoke-filled PCT. This is the strangest thing I’ve ever done.
I reckon a lot of hikers would make good poker players. By its very nature, long-distance hiking carried certain existential risks—snakes, bears, hypothermia, getting lost, serious injury—that your average person didn’t confront regularly. A stiff upper lip was almost a like an unwritten code. I was trying to get there myself, but had quite a ways to go. And hiking with forest fires raging in the vicinity was a new danger that I simply wasn’t mentally prepared for.
After two miles, Miles and I—along with a third hiker, Miner—arrived at Britton’s dam, where scores of dam workers were hard at work. An especially black halo of smoke flared up somewhere over the top of the hill we were fixing to ascend.
“Excuse me, sir,” I rushed up to a group of the dam workers. “Do you think it’s safe for us to hike north from here?”
