Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Bill Walker

  “You see this ravine here,” one of them pointed further downstream. “A 1300 degree fire just jumped the banks. It was down in the water one minute and all the way at the top of that hill up there fifteen minutes later.”

  “How did you get it out?” I wondered.

  “That’s what we’re doing here—releasing the bladder of the dam to drown it out.”

  “So I take it you don’t reckon it’s a good idea for us to continue?” I said, speaking loudly so that Miles and Miner could digest this. Several of the dam workers shook their head. The three of us stood there on the dam looking up at the hill where the PCT went. There was smoke (and obviously a fire) on the other side of this hill. But how far over the hill, we didn’t know.

  “I’m for turning back,” I finally said. Perhaps that was predictable. I wasn’t going to win the Intrepid Hiker Award. But this wasn’t a junior-high spend-the-night party, either.

  “Think about it,” I reasoned. “We walk up there and the fire quickly spreads and engulfs us. Probably isn’t gonna’ happen, but it could. Okay. What happens then? In my case, my mother would investigate what happened and surely it comes out that a bunch of dam workers had explicitly warned us not to walk towards the fire. And what did we do? Walked straight into the inferno. So now my mother has to live with the fact that she raised not only a fool, but also a hopeless idiot.”

  “Yeah, I hear you,” Miles said. “I don’t want to go down in history as the guy who walked straight into a fiery death.”

  “But how do we know that fire isn’t two miles over that hill?” Miner dissented in game fashion. Some hikers had been put off along the way by Miner’s tics and quirks. But the more I had gotten to know him, the more I had started to like him. He was as authentic as the day is long.

  “You’re absolutely right,” I said. “We don’t know. But I’m not for finding out, either.” I started backwards. Of course, a leadership role in the woods is rare for me, and this was a dubious one. But the other two slowly followed, although Miner kept looking back seemingly in a state of existential angst.

  All the hotels in Burney were booked from firefighters coming in from all over the state; so we commenced looking for anywhere to stealth camp behind an office building or wherever.

  “Any luck?” I asked when we ran into one of the firefighters in town.

  His face said it all—utterly down in the mouth. “Wow,” he finally admittedly. “it’s got us on our heels pretty good.”

  Chapter 32

  The Art of the Possible

  Things happened fast.

  “Some people talk about doing things like the PCT,” the driver announced over the bus intercom. “Others do it.” The other passengers looked at us like we were Roman gladiators as we piled out of the bus in the pouring rain. What our adoring audience didn’t know was that one of was mud-pieing at this latest turn of events.

  We had been planning to catch the bus 80 miles up the PCT to Castella. There we would re-supply to get back on the hopefully fire-free PCT, tomorrow. But the bus driver had other ideas. When he had seen us with our backpacks back at the station, he had immediately begun sermonizing on his long-lost ambition to hike the PCT, himself.

  “I’ll drop you off under the interstate right by the PCT,” he volunteered.

  “Yeah, that would be great,” Miles said. Great, that is, if you have enough food. But the thing that worried me even more was it began to pour rain hard for the first time since we had begun the PCT. The firefighters had gotten a break. But had we?

  Underneath the interstate bridge, I pulled out my wallet and convinced Miner to sell me some food. Then we took off on a hundred mile stretch with nary a town in between. Immediately, the specter of hypothermia appeared on my radar screen, as we climbed 4,000 feet up an exposed mountain. Taking care of one’s extremities is extremely important in these situations. That’s why my mind was on the Lake Tahoe Post Office, which was 400 miles back. I had sat there with a package open, agonizing over whether to send my gloves forward to Ashland, Oregon. Finally, I had reasoned that it was blazing hot and I needed to get my backpack weight down. So I had put them in and saved myself two ounces.

  In northern California with Miles, who got my nomination for the PCT True Gentleman Award. Why is he only wearing one glove?

  “What an idiot I was,” I said to Miles, “sending my gloves forward in Lake Tahoe.” Hint, hint.

  “You can have my mittens,” he offered.

  Problem solved. At least, solved for a few miles. The trail continued winding up to even colder, more exposed areas. By now, I had on several layers. And Miles’ mittens.

  “Any way we could share those mittens you’re wearing?” Miles asked me self-consciously.

  “Are you kidding?” I said embarrassed. “Take ‘em. Thanks.”

  “No, no,” he said, “we’ll share them.”

  It would have been nice to have absolutely insisted that he take both his mittens back. But I needed it and rotated the mitten from one hand to the other for the next couple hours.

  “Hey, Skywalker,” a girl yelled down the hill.

  “Hey,” I said squinting my eyes at the girl crawling out of her tent. “Oh, Poet. What are you doing camped up there?”

  “I couldn’t quit shaking along this ridge yesterday,” she said plainly.

  “You alright?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I definitely think I was at least a little hypothermic.”

  “Come hike with us,” I suggested.

  “That would be great.”

  It was good timing.

  “I was 95% sure I was quitting when I got to town,” she said. “I’ve been alone practically the whole time the last 500 miles.” As it was, she and Miles hit it off immediately, and were destined to hike together the remaining 1,200 miles.

  Poet was in her late twenties and lived in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, where she worked for the Fishing and Game Service. The temperature never exceeded the mid-fifties on this outer island, but she was sturdily built. I had wondered if she was gay, and she quickly removed that mystery in one of our free-flowing conversations.

  “I’m not a Christian anymore,” she said, “because they’re the reason I can’t marry my girlfriend.” While I came down on a different side of that issue, we were able to discuss it rationally. Actually, from what I’ve seen, hiking trails are pretty good places for gays in general. Narrow-minded bigots are an endangered species out here.

  You never saw such a mismatch. On the one hand, you had a couple dozen members of a historical society. They had car loads full of food and beer, and were well-rested and clean. On the other hand, there was a group of famished, dirty hikers that hadn’t seen town in several days. Who had the advantage? The hikers by a long-shot.

  Miles, Poet, and I had hiked our 25 miles and arrived at the Scott Mountain campsite just before dark. This group of Shriners had camp all set up as they tossed back beers. Barbecued chicken, corn and potatoes were being cooked. We didn’t say anything to each other. Everybody instinctively knew what to do. Develop camaraderie. Quickly.

  “Would ya’ll like beers?” one fellow soon asked us.

  “Oh gee, if you’ve got an extra.”

  “Sure, we’ve got plenty.”

  They riddled us with one question after another, and our answers sounded like they came out of a travel brochure. I was reminded of how a wolf attacks a pigpen. They come up and begin licking the pig’s ear warmly to draw it out of the pen. At that point the wolf goes for the kill. We weren’t quite as ruthless.

  But soon one of the more inebriated members mouthed off, “You know, we brought lots of chicken. We might have some extra.”

  “Golly,” I said as if it had come as a surprise, “that would be incredible, but please don’t feel obligated.”

  I had one concern, though. It was a selfish one and completely out of the spirit of the PCT. We had passed a foursome called the Dog Pack that morning. Their names were Five Dollar, Strider, Oz,
and Waffles. They often slept cowboy style in the middle of the trail. This morning, we had stepped over and around them to get past. This young foursome had become legendary for a couple different things: hiking very long distances at a time and chasing women in trail towns like there was no tomorrow. They were erratic, and you never knew quite where they were going to show up.

  Right as the Shriners were counting out the number of hikers and pieces of chicken, the Dog Pack showed up. They sidled up to me and Five Dollar whispered excitedly, “Hey Skywalker, who are these guys?”

  “They’re handing out beers,” I let on.

  “Yeah cool,” Waffles said. “Are they gonna’ feed people?”

  Ultimately, my sense of obligation won out over my craving for the food.

  “It’s looking like we’ve got a beachhead,” I said choosing my words carefully. “But we’re not feeling completely secure yet.”

  I began introducing them and trying to integrate them in with the Shriners. Fortunately, these folks found a way to feed all of us, with second helpings and desserts included. Then, the toastmaster announced, “Let’s have some campsite humor.”

  Immediately, a man to my left who looked to be pushing 80, asked, “What’s the difference between a peeping-tom and a pickpocket?”

  No answer. “A pickpocket snatches watches,” he announced logically.

  Not bad. My turn.

  I couldn’t control myself at joke time any better than at food time.

  “They took a poll of how many women smoked after sex,” I announced. “Ninety-nine percent of women said they did not know, because they never had looked.”

  More racy humor followed (I even felt the need to make an awkward apology to Poet the next day). You could feel the Shriners becoming weary, and probably wondering if they had made a good food investment. We hikers silently filed away—with full stomachs to be sure—to pitch our tents.

  In the morning, though, we noticed they had brought out mountains of bacon and eggs. Again, we all went into action. Individually, everybody walked up to where they were cooking the food, all with the express purpose of thanking them for the previous night. Of course, we had ulterior motives.

  “Can’t thank you enough,” I ritually said on my passage up. “We’ll be bragging about this to all our colleagues on the trail.” But they all held firm and bid us crisp, “happy hiking” farewells.

  Back on the trail after about five miles, we all took a break together at a water source. Everybody unenthusiastically pulled out our pop tarts, crackers, and peanut butter, and went about their business.

  “Wonder why they didn’t offer us any more food this morning?” Five Dollar asked.

  “It looked like they just kinda’ decided we were all fucked,” Waffles opined.

  “Yeah.” Everybody shook their head matter-of-factly. Nobody spoke of it again. Just trail business.

  Fortunately, we had the powerful white-capped eminence of Mount Shasta at 14,179 feet to console us today.

  “When I first caught sight of it,” John Muir memorably said, “my blood turned to wine, and I haven’t been weary ever since.”

  At twilight everybody got stuck out on another narrow saddle for several miles. There was nowhere to camp, which seemed like a theme playing out more and more in surprisingly rugged northern California.

  Poet and I were in the vanguard and kept throwing out ideas as the last daylight dimmed.

  “What about there?” she would ask.

  “Too steep to sleep.”

  “I just don’t see anything flatter,” she correctly observed.

  “My map shows a dirt road coming up somewhere here,” I said. “There is usually somewhere to camp near those.”

  Finally, I dropped my backpack and ran off to do some reconnaisance. Soon, I found the dirt road. But it had a steep shoulder on one side and a dropoff on the other.

  “Hey, why don’t we put our tents up on the road,” I suggested. “That’s the only flat spot.”

  “Yeah,” she said unenthusiastically, “but look here—see the fresh tire marks.” There was absolutely nowhere else to camp. However, I did see some downed trees.

  “Hey Poet,” I suggested, “how about helping me haul some of these trees out here. We can lay them across the road about 50 yards above and below us. A car would crash into the trees before us.” She was skeptical at first, but soon we had our sleeping territory in the middle of the road cordoned off from any vehicle traffic. The other hikers liked it as well, and about ten of us camped right in the middle of the road. In fact, it was a technique I would end up using several times further up the trail when I couldn’t find anywhere to camp as dark approached.

  Heck, even I could be a little creative out here when necessity demanded it.

  Chapter 33

  California Leavin’

  It was undoubtedly the worst seven miles of the PCT—paved road walk—to possibly the worst trail town on the PCT. But I was desperate to get there.

  For starters, hiking on steaming asphalt with the sun beating down on you is simply no fun. But more importantly, was the great hiker obsession—food. There was a restaurant in Seiad Valley that closed on Sunday afternoons. But I didn’t know what time. It was a classic tradeoff. The faster I went, the more calories I would burn; but the better chance I had of eating some real food. So I walked at maximum speed.

  A southbounder appeared in the distance. I hadn’t seen another hiker in days (after finally crying uncle in my strenuous attempt to keep up with Miles and Poet), and normally would have been quite chatty. But today, I was all business.

  Trailside breaks are a hiker’s best friend.

  “Excuse me, do you know what time the restaurant closes in Seiad Valley?”

  “I think 2:30,” he said.

  “Do you have the time?”

  “2:00.” “Thanks.” A half-hour later a truck came up from behind me.

  “Would you like a ride, sir?” the driver asked with a knowing smile.

  Without hesitation, I threw my backpack and myself in the back of his truck for the last three miles. When we neared what looked like the restaurant in this two-building town, he yelled back, “Usually hikers have me drop ‘em off a couple hundred yards in front of the store, so nobody can see they got a ride. Do you want me to do that?”

  “No thanks,” I said. “To the store please.” I practically burst into the air-conditioned restaurant where a few hikers were finishing up their lunch.

  “Are you still serving?” I asked the lady behind the counter.

  “Just finished up,” she said.

  I looked deeply into her eyes, somehow trying to show a passion—or craving—for food theretofore unknown to her.

  “Would it help if I beg?” I finally asked. Unlike the shriners, this woman had seen her share of hikers. She wasn’t outmatched.

  “No it wouldn’t,” she answered me crisply. “We’re through today.”

  There were only 35 miles left in California, but that included a 5,400 foot ascent. At least calories weren’t a problem, though. Tradition requires hikers to try the five-pound pancake challenge in Seiad Valley. That’s a tall order in any event. And it was made more difficult by something I had kept hearing on the trail.

  “I hear they’re not very good.” They weren’t. A strapping hiker from New Zealand named Heaps had knocked out 3½ pounds, but nobody else even came close. My effort was abysmal.

  I was wobbly from pancake mix as I wandered down the road out of Seiad Valley in 100 degree-plus weather. My backpack was running about 45 pounds from carrying five liters of water. Some hikers had hauled alcoholic spirits out of Seiad Valley to celebrate the border crossing. Not me. To be sure, it was a pretty big deal. After all, I’d been in California 3 ½ months, which was at least two weeks longer than I had anticipated.

  Within a mile of the border, the trail was running high along a ridge overlooking Donomore Creek. Suddenly, I heard a ruckus of heavy crashing and thrashing on the steep hill that
lay between me and the creek. There was only one possible explanation. Where is it? More importantly, which way is it running?

  Fortunately, I heard more thunderous steps and commotion further down the hill. Finally, a medium-sized brown bear tumbled out of the woods into Donomore Creek. Many times in the day while hiking (but never at night!) I had fantasized about what the perfect bear encounter would look like. This was it. I was no longer scared to death of bears on a daily basis, which I guess is an accomplishment of sorts. But to see one is to respect their awesome power.

  Unfortunately, the older couple I had camped with the previous evening had been planning to camp here at Donamore Creek. I left them a note on the trail alerting them to the presence of a bear in the neighborhood. They later told me it convinced them to hike on.

  I then crossed the well-signed border, but could find nowhere better to camp than alongside a fairly prominent dirt road with ravines dropping off on both sides. This time it was a much smaller animal I heard tiptoeing around my tent in the dark—cougar, coyote, raccoon? At first I though I was imagining it, because the steps were so light.

  “Who’s that? Who’s that?” I kept calling out.

  Silence. Then I would hear the unmistakable steps of a four-legged animal. I had company. This animal probably traveled this road every night, but had never seen a tent alongside it.

  I was now in Oregon. But I had been in California so long my mind still lay there. All my life, I had gotten bent out of shape listening to Californians describing their state as the be-all, end all—a veritable earthly utopia. Now, however, after traveling the length of the state I could at least see where these people were coming from.

  “Everything starts in California,” is the state’s reputation. Objectively, they have lived up to their billing. In the 1960’s, the antiwar protests and sexual revolution received their greatest impetus here. In the 1970’s, California Governor Ronald Reagan spearheaded the nationwide revolt against higher taxes. In the 1990’s, California became the first state to outlaw smoking in all public places, a trend that was soon replicated across the country. What’s next?