by Bill Walker
I’m not an aesthete. To me there are very few places in the world that are worth traveling to for the sole purpose of seeing a sight. I’m a firm believer that it’s the people you meet that make a trip.
However, there is no denying that there are a few places on this earth that command overwhelming awe at first sight (Grand Canyon, Yosemite). Until 7,000 years ago, Crater Lake was no such wonder. It didn’t even exist. Rather, Mount Mazama was one of the volcanoes on the arc of the Cascade Range. But suddenly, around 5700 BCE, there was a massive volcanic explosion that transformed the landscape forever. After millions of years, Mount Mazama was suddenly no more. In its place was a massive crater that measured six miles wide. Given that the area gets an average of 533 inches of precipitation per year, it quickly filled up and became known—appropriately—as Crater Lake. At 1,949 feet, it is the deepest lake in the United States, and bigger than all but Lake Tahoe and the Great Lakes.
The initial view is magical—not because of the size, but, rather, the intense blue color. Because most of the massive precipitation it receives is from snowfall, it is one of the clearest lakes in the world, with clarity readings of 120 feet. A twenty-mile circular ring of cliffs, crowned with Douglas firs and hemlocks, provides a stunning backdrop.
A big group of PCT hikers stopped at the very tastefully done Rim Lodge, a Depression Era CCC construction. Soon, everybody had stretched their tight hiker budgets to enjoy shrimp and beer while gazing out at this national wonder. It was as idyllic a moment as I’ve ever experienced. Everything was perfect. At least, it was until OSG’s (Orange Shirt Guy’s) cell-phone rang. A grave look soon came across OSG’s face.
“Guys, you’re not gonna believe what I just heard,” he said, and then proceeded to relate a heart-rending tale.
Pepperoni and Ralph, of course, had left the bubble of northbound thru-hikers after the chaos of the forest fires, and driven to the Canadian border where she was going to ride south. Unfortunately, a major bridge-crossing was down in northern Washington. In the especially desolate stretches Pepperoni always had two horses—one to ride, and one to carry supplies—tied together by rope. When she had arrived at a ledge with an especially steep falloff, she had jumped off her riding horse and carefully led both horses with the rope.
Unfortunately, she had stumbled over some jagged terrain and went down hard on her face.
“It was just one of those things,” she later recalled. “One minute I was walking along. Next thing you know, I’m on my face.”
“You’re lucky the horses didn’t trample you?” I suggested.
“They saved my life once again,” she quickly replied. “They jumped over me, but that sent them down the ravine.”
“How long did you hold onto the rope after you fell?” I then asked her.
“Only a second, it was impossible.”
But that one second was enough to send her 75 feet down the ravine. As she lay there woozy, she heard her horses crashing further down the hill.
Not only were her horses’ lives on the line, but so was hers. All her food, water, and camping equipment were on the horses.
“I knew what had probably happened,” she said with great emotion, “when I started seeing things strewn along the hill.”
The two horses she had raised from birth were dead (They would soon be devoured by grizzly bears). Moreover, she was stranded in one of the most isolated areas in the United States. The thing that may have saved her was the controversial SPOT button. She hit it and several hours later an emergency rescue team arrived to evacuate her.
A noticeable pall fell over everybody gathered on the terrace at Crater Lake Lodge. Pepperoni’s attempt at a thru-ride had earned our admiration. In various respects, it was both more and less difficult than what we thru-hikers were doing. However, it was unquestionably more dangerous. Many times along the way when passing through hair-raising or sketchy parts of the trail, I had remarked, “I’m damn sure glad I’m not trying to get through here on a horse.”
Pepperoni didn’t have any kids, and these two horses had been her pride and joy. I couldn’t help but thinking that she was going through some guilt-ridden angst over what had happened. But she really wasn’t reckless. After all, she had turned around back at snowy Forrester’s Pass and re-traced the two previous days of riding to find a safer route.
Then there was Ralph. Our first introduction to Ralph had been when he—over a point of honor concerning his wife not being assisted while stranded one day—had threatened to kill the husband of the other woman attempting to thru-ride the PCT.
“I’ll blow his head off,” he had screamed repeatedly in a red-faced rage. “And I’ll be raising my hands in triumph for the cameras when they lead me into the courtroom.”
We hadn’t known what to think of him. Apparently, the object of his fusillade hadn’t either. The man had fled back to Arkansas, where he had put out word on the internet that a dangerous madman was loose on the PCT. The God’s honest truth, though, is that the more you saw of Ralph, the more you realized he wouldn’t hurt a flee. His biggest problem, as far as I could see, was that he would do absolutely anything for anybody. This left him totally at a loss over how to understand somebody like the other husband, who was a man of means and wouldn’t go out of his way for others.
“I can only imagine what Ralph is going through right now, given his emotional nature,” several people commented. The tone was one of unmistakable affection. Ralph had gone from trail freak to a trail favorite.
“I had been looking forward to seeing them when they passed us going south,” Whiskey Jet said.
“Yeah, I thought about that too,” others said.
The amazing thing, though, is that we hadn’t seen the last of them. Pepperoni would soon dust herself off, arrange for more horses, and continue south. As the ancient Greeks said, character is fate.
The arid terrain continued to amaze me. We passed the length of the rim of Crater Lake the following morning gazing continuously into its heavenly blue waters. Yet the area for the next forty or fifty miles was dry as a bone despite also receiving 44 feet of precipitation per year. I couldn’t understand it. Was the intensity of the summertime sun so that it dries out the soil that quickly?
A trail angel resolved our plight with dozens of containers of water stashed where the PCT crosses Highway 138. The following day in the middle of a long dry stretch, Uber Bitch found us another diversionary route along a series of lakes. I was getting used to drinking this lake water, but it wasn’t something to savor. A lot of the day I simply had a feeling of low-level thirstiness.
Finally, we came to the McKenzie Highway. Uber Bitch and I had planned to hitch from here to the thriving trail town of Sisters, Oregon.
“Hey, why don’t we go on and hike the 17 miles today to Santiam Pass?’ Uber Bitch said.
“Yeah,” I said unenthusiastically. “We could do that.”
Meanwhile, a lot of the hikers who had boasted they were going to hike all the way to Santiam Pass today, got off 17 miles early and hitched into Sisters from the McKenzie Highway so they could get the alcohol flowing early. Better (or worse) yet, many of them never did the seventeen miles. When they left Sisters a couple days later with various degrees of hangovers, they hitched back to the trail 17 miles north at Santiam Pass. Perhaps our parents were right, after all, about seeking good influences.
The problem, though, was that this seventeen miles was hellish. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“The trail goes over that?” I said in disbelief.
“Yeah,” Uber Bitch said. “Those are lava beds from another volcano explosion.”
It felt like a heat furnace as we strained to pick from one charred, lava-formed rock to another in the mid-day sun. There should have been some alien-planet novelty to the whole experience. But I was thirsty and exhausted, and barely spoke another word the rest of the day. This time I was the one struggling to keep up with Uber Bitch. Finally, we made it to Santiam Pass where her husband w
as waiting to take us in to Sisters.
The endless varieties of terrain on the PCT is staggering.
Hiking should be about something other than miles. But, let’s face it, sometimes that’s exactly what it’s all about. Uber Bitch and I had hiked 288 miles in twelve days. That had it’s own feeling of fulfillment, and I was a little bit proud of myself upon reaching Sisters (an always dangerous feeling!)
It was now September 1st, and we had 650 miles to get Canada. It had seemed unlikely I could make it there before the October 1st recommended guideline. But now it seemed doable, if only Uber Bitch and I could keep up our inexorable pace. If only.
Chapter 36
66 Hours
What could break our seemingly unstoppable momentum? The most unlikely things.
It was the Friday before Labor Day weekend, and the perfect day to hike. I had been looking forward to seeing lots of Oregonian outdoor-types gamely taking to the woods for the holiday weekend. Unfortunately, in the first fourteen miles, diarrhea chased me to the bushes at least once an hour.
Finally, we arrived at Rockpile Lake, which, with its bucolic, serene setting, presented a scene out of Norman Rockwell America.
“Unfortunately, I’m gonna’ have to call it a day,” I said to Uber Bitch.
“Well, this looks like as good of a place as any,” she agreed, and we pitched our tents on the far side of the lake for the night. That was nice of her, because she was in an especial hurry. She missed her husband terribly; it appeared to be that rare happy marriage. Apparently, he had labeled her Uber Bitch because of a rush of surliness that had overcome her when she had given up caffeine in preparation for this hike.
But a hiker is like an army; we move on our stomachs. My stomach was turning somersaults and not going anywhere. Do I have Giardia? This intestinal disease is the dread of even the most intrepid of long-distance hikers; it often seemed like luck of the draw who got it.
Giggles, who had already gotten Giardia twice, passed by. When he saw what was up, he immediately pronounced, “You’ve got Giardia, Skywalker. You need some antibiotics.” But I wasn’t convinced, although I did have to rush out of my tent a few more times in the evening. Am I going to be able to hike tomorrow?
“How are you feeling?” Uber Bitch asked when I got out of my tent at first light.
“Better,” I said, and began packing up my backpack. I even dabbled in another crummy hiker breakfast.
“I’m gonna’ start slow,” I told her, “and try to catch you midday.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No, it should be alright.”
Off she went. I never saw her again.
The beautiful weather of the day before had given way to heavy cloud cover. It started raining. I used my stomach and the rain as an excuse to unpack my backpack and re-erect my tent. There I was to lay for the next 54 hours.
Sitting in a tent listening to the pitter-patter of rain can be one of life’s pleasures. Or it can be like the ninth circle of Dante’s inferno. Depends on the circumstances. In this case, my initial comfort was diminished by guilt. I told her I was going to catch up with her. Guilt ended up being the least of my problems, however. Unsurprisingly, cold weather did. And boredom. Unlike many hikers, I didn’t carry a book because I was so weight sensitive.
I was bolstered when the familiar faces of Carhartt (hiked in Carhartts) and Not a Chance arrived late on the first afternoon. Carhartt was an Iraqi veteran of the stiff upper-lip variety. He stubbornly refused to believe he couldn’t start a fire, and practically set an entire stump on fire to prove it. It was a fabulous relief, and greatly reduced my shivering before I got in my tent. However, I had become sleep greedy, and made a basic mistake in setting up my tent. In wet weather, it is always best to erect your tent on an incline so that the water will rush past it. But I had set mine up in a flat spot. Water was able to gather underneath the tent and easily penetrate its fabric. My down sleeping bag became soaked. Down, of course, is the cat’s meow of fabrics; that is, until it gets wet.
Bitter cold weather doesn’t usually lead to hypothermia. Cold and wet, however, is the perfect recipe. By morning I was both, and desperate to get the hell out of there. But there was one big problem. The weather had gotten a helluva’ lot worse overnight. It never was to get over forty degrees all day with heavy gusts of wind tearing across the lake. I knew only two things: I wasn’t going anywhere today, and this was potentially dangerous.
Finally, in the early afternoon Rocket Man jumped out of his tent and—God bless him—attempted to show some leadership. “I’m gonna’ set up a line between two trees and we can put these wet sleeping bags up to dry, and get a fire going.” That gave me a glimmer of hope, and I emerged from my tent for the first time. But it quickly became obvious it was all useless. The rain and wind got worse, and Rocket Man retreated to the safety of his tent.
Carhartt had actually headed out to hike in the morning. Knowing him, he was either going to make some decent miles or die. Not a Chance, like so many, was infatuated with Carhartt’s bluff style. She had tried heading out too. However, she soon turned back and by the time she reached our campsite was shivering uncontrollably. Her tent had leaked even worse than mine last night and her sleeping bag was drenched.
“I need somebody to share body warmth with,” she said simply. Fifteen feet away, ensconced in his tent, was Five Dollar, with whom she had struck up such a torrid romance with back in the desert. However, it had been of the high-passion, high-conflict variety. Alas, conflict had won out. The relationship had been reduced to screaming matches in front of the hiking community and hate mail left along the trail (“Five Dollar eats live golden retriever puppies.”)
So Five Dollar was out. Instead, she went to Leprechaun’s tent and asked if she could get in. Leprechaun was a Georgia mountain boy who spoke with a slow drawl; but you’d have sworn he was a New Yorker he accepted so fast. There was nothing diabolical about this. Dealing with bad weather was the art of the possible. They had to move his tent in the middle of the night it got so swamped with water.
It wasn’t going to be possible for me to sleep tonight. Nor was it going to be possible to stay dry. I had one overriding mission—avoid the Big H. In fact, I probably already had a case of the mild H, but I knew from past experience that a person could recover from that. I had on eight layers up top (two sets of long-johns, hiking shirt, desert shirt, wind shirt, fleece, down vest, and marmot jacket) and three layers on the bottom. Because my sleeping bag was a wet rag, I put it over me, instead of getting in it. My socks were wet, so I decided to keep my wet shoes on. I’m not gonna’ panic. I’m gonna make it.
Then the weather took an unexpected turn—for the worse, yet again. Torrential storms ripped at the flaps of my tent, and I began to wonder if it might blow down altogether. The leaking in the tent became rivulets coursing in various directions through the tent. I changed positions from the left side, to the right side, to my back about every half-hour. Each time I would see just how much water had accumulated on each side. It was spilling over my Z-Rest sleeping pad. Soon, I would be lying in a puddle. I need to get out of here.
Where can I go? I damn sure couldn’t disturb Not a Chance and Leprechaun, unless I was really at death’s door. Giggles and Rocket Man were nearby. Both had done a sporty job of setting up their tarps to avoid water runoff. But both were tight fits, with no room for an extra body of even average size.
That left only one option—Five Dollar. On a personal basis, it was by far the most embarrassing. He was very unusual to begin with. He had grown up a Mormon, but had harshly rejected the religion. I had periodically scrimmaged with him over this (Five Dollar—“They’re all a bunch of crooks and pedophiles.” Me—“You can’t condemn ten million people in such a general way.”) But for the most part, we had gotten along well. In fact, along the way we had gotten in the habit of swapping jokes about the inflatables that we both claimed to be carrying in our backpacks, as well as other pe
rverted humor. It was all par for the course. But the prospect of now having to approach his tent in the middle of the night and beg him to let me in was mortifying. However, this situation of getting wetter and colder by the minute was ominous. I was desperate.
I don’t want to do it. But you’ve got to do it. I don’t want to do it. You have to. This is a once in a lifetime emergency. He will understand.
But I desperately didn’t want to do it. Try something else. I began doing deep-breathing exercises, and alternated stretching exercises for various parts of the body. I normally kept my backpack and food bag in the vestibule of the tent, if only to keep a little distance between me and a bear that might steal my food bag. I grabbed the backpack and moved it into the tent as a headrest, and resolved to periodically eat some snacks.
Finally, the storm climaxed and its intensity began to abate. What time is it? I didn’t have a watch, but spent the next few hours trying to guess the time and hoping to divine the first ray of light. At least it kept me thinking, which is critical in avoiding hypothermia. Slowly, the sun came up and the rain completely died off.
I didn’t even get out of my tent until about 10 or 11 o’clock. Continuing north on the PCT was out of the question. I needed new gear—a tent that didn’t leak, a synthetic sleeping bag instead of a down bag, and some new gloves. Not a Chance was in even more dire straits than me, and we separately re-traced the fourteen miles back to Sisters.
There, I called Uber Bitch’s husband to explain why I hadn’t kept up with his wife. To my surprise, he put me on the phone with her. She had found a steep side trail during the ferocious second day of storm and called her husband to pick her off.
“I’m off the trail,” she said heavily. “Sorry.”
“No worries,” I said. “But I’ll sure as heck miss you as a hiking partner.”
