Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Bill Walker

  She hesitated and then said, “I’m supposed to meet a guy I’ve been dating at Rainy Pass.” This seemed a little odd. She had just decided to hike out today. Shouldn’t it be clear or not, if she was meeting a guy at Rainy Pass?

  We headed off and predictably hiked late. It seemed to elude us that darkness would quickly swoop down on us in northern Washington in October. But then again, I was hiking with the night-hiker non-pareil, Not A Chance. These next several days could be interesting.

  It was dark when we came to a turn in the trail. No sign. “What do ya’ think?” I asked. “Let’s try this way,” she said. But after a few feet the trail turned scraggly.

  “This is what the trail has usually looked like when I’m lost,” I said.

  “Well, let’s go back and give the other a try,” she said in a calm, work-womanlike way. We gave it a try. A cold, incessant drizzle—the hallmark of the Pacific Northwest—began to sock in. Nature was, if anything, patient. These next few days, I needed to demonstrate the same.

  When we emerged from the woods onto the highway at Rainy Pass, there was no sign of the PCT going forward.

  “Maybe that left we headed down at first was the right trail after all,” I ventured.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said, lolling around looking for a path.

  “What’s the name of that guy you’re meeting?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “I’ll yell his name.”

  “Ricardo,” she answered hesitantly. Soon the shouts of “Ricardo, Ricardo,” in a southern accent reverberated through Rainy Pass in northern Washington on a cold, wet October evening. But to no avail. We started walking straight up Highway 20 in a steady drizzle. Finally, we found the PCT, but not Ricardo, and quickly set up camp near the road.

  I awoke early after sleeping in fits and starts. Today, I had my game face on.

  “It’s gonna’ be tough to make big miles with it getting dark so soon,” I said into Not a Chance’s tent.

  “Guess so.”

  “I’m gonna’ get out early,” I said. “What are your plans?”

  “Oh, we’ll just have to see,” she said non-chalantly.

  My confusion was clearing up. Ricardo—if he did exist—wasn’t to be found anywhere around here. Not a Chance simply didn’t want to hike with me. Fair enough. Needless to say, anybody has the right to choose their own hiking partner. But it was a bit disappointing that she felt she needed to use subterfuge to rid herself of me. She had the look of someone who had been on the short end of all kinds of horrible relations with all kinds of males, ranging from her elders to peers. I had actually gone out of my way lecturing Five-Dollar to treat her more civilly, after their torrid trail romance had crashed and burned. Most importantly, I had absolutely no designs on her as anything beyond a hiking partner. But I sure as heck didn’t want to make myself a nuisance.

  “See ya’ up the road,” I said quietly after getting everything packed up.

  “Enjoy your hike,” came her voice out of her tent.

  Other than a brief encounter with a southbound hiker a couple days from now, it would be the only human voice I would hear the next four days.

  Chapter 42

  Splendid Isolation

  All nature is your congratulations.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Over a journey this long you could fairly say that one becomes a student of beauty. The stucco beauty of the desert had evoked a certain timelessness. The majestic beauty of the High Sierra has blown away mortals throughout the ages. Now, the rolling evergreen forest and white snow-capped peaks of the Northern Cascades connoted a beauty of rugged bleakness. I had never been this alone in my 49 years. Feeling ran high.

  At any given time on the PCT, a thru-hiker is bound to have his or head down in a hangdog position, and the brain in neutral. But not now. My overwhelming mission was to not get lost. Every time I saw the trail veering towards snow and ice—which was more times than I could possibly count—a certain dread set in. A fleet-footed hiker named Blue Eyes was traveling a day ahead of me, and I was to strain to follow his footprints every step of the way.

  On the third day, I arrived at Hart’s Pass running low on water. Because this was a popular campground, I even held out the faint hope of some kind of trail magic. Heck, even talking to somebody would be nice. But the season was over with, and I didn’t see any people or cars when the trail entered the campground. Worse yet, I wandered all over the parking lot and down a hill, but came up empty searching for water.

  I stood there taking in the gigantic hush. The lonely wind blowing through the mountain passes was the only sound besides the crunch of my slow footsteps (I may not have been as alone as I had thought, however. A few days later in Canada, a former U.S. Army Ranger, traveling a day ahead of me and carrying a sidearm, informed me he had spotted the footprints of a grizzly bear right here in this parking lot—awful glad I didn’t see them!).

  I meekly munched on some bagels and cold tuna. But I held back on the peanut butter in order to not exacerbate my thirst. Then, with great uncertainty, I hefted my backpack. I had gone 12 miles for the day, and hoped to make at least 10 more. But I needed water, and the data book didn’t show any water for those 10 miles. If nothing else, I would have to start filling my bottles with packed snow off the ground and hope for the best with my stomach.

  After a half-mile, I heard the welcome sound of tumbling water. Snowmelt was tumbling over rocks and I was able to stick my water bottles in and get a perfect fill-up. I drank almost two liters of cold water right there on the spot and filled up with three more liters. This was a relief. If absolutely necessary, this water should be able to carry me all the way to Canada.

  Normally, hikers look for streams to camp near. But not in grizzly country. Here, you find less attractive places. As the sun fell over the hills, I was starting over an area called Devil’s backbone. I spontaneously decided to pitch my tent right there a few feet off the PCT. Per hiker convention, I urinated all around it to mark my territory from other animals and got in for the evening. Like a metronome, mother nature called in the middle of the night. Using a urine jar in order to preserve warmth in the tent was a no-brainer in this type of situation. I had long since gotten over my self-consciousness in executing this. But I damn sure wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

  Per custom, I unzipped my tent and emptied the contents outside of the vestibule. This always made me feel safer as the night wore on and the urine around my tent built up. After all, what animal wants to get near urine. I was about to find out.

  Immediately, I heard the breaking of branches and heavy steps coming in my direction up a steep hill. All my efforts the last few days at maintaining a positive equilibrium were suddenly in shambles. Instead, I lay there in white-knuckled terror banging my hiking pole against a water bottle. In the fall of 1978, I had read an article in Sports Illustrated about a grizzly attack on a man in Colorado. When the bear had entered the man’s tent, he had weighed 180 pounds. By the time the bear left the tent, his remains weighed 75 pounds.

  As luck would have it, however, a few weeks before in southern Washington I had run into a couple at a campsite and asked them what northern Washington was like.

  “It gets so cold and barren up there,” the lady had told me, “the deer come running up when you urinate. The minute you unzip your tent, they head straight for you.”

  “Why?” I had wondered.

  “The salt,” she had answered.

  Thank God, she was right. Two deer came right up to my tent and began lapping away at the salty urine as I lay there in amazement. Other than that, it was an uneventful evening!

  “Skywalker,” a familiar voice called out.

  My heart jumped, at the sound of a human voice.

  “Five Dollar,” I responded. “What the hell?” We had had these spontaneous run-ins all along the way. But this time was different. He was now headed southbound.

  “I applied for the entry permit to Ca
nada” he replied unhesitatingly, “but I’ve got way too many things on my record. So I had to hike out the way I came in.”

  “You’re going all the way back south to Stehekin?” I asked in amazement.

  “No, my girlfriend is picking me back up at Hart’s Pass.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Who’s your girlfriend?”

  “Pink.”

  Pink.

  “Hey, congratulations,” I high-fived him. “I remember she was at the top of your list. What happened to Hollywood (her prior trail boyfriend)?”

  “Well, you know how it goes,” he laughed. “All I can say is that the last two weeks have been great (Unlike most trail romances, this one is still going).”

  “Where are you going from here?” I asked.

  “I met a guy on the trail back on the trail in northern California that offered me a job at his medicinal marijuana farm. He’s paying me $100 a day with a free place to live. Heck, I’m in.”

  We exchanged info on water and campsites in each direction.

  I’m old-fashioned in one respect; I rarely hug other males. But as we readied to depart for the final time, I felt this sudden urge to embrace, which I initiated. Off we went.

  Some people just take longer to figure out. In retrospect, the problem may have been that I just haven’t seen many quite like Five Dollar. Maybe that’s my loss. He was one of the most authentic and honest individuals I’ve ever met.

  John Kennedy once said of Lyndon Johnson, “It’s not so much that he’s a liar, as he doesn’t know how to tell the truth.”

  Five Dollar was just the opposite. He didn’t seem to know how to even nuance or hedge, much less lie. It wasn’t always pretty, to be sure. But he wasn’t the type guy to keep you awake at night. Come to think about it, that is a general characteristic of the hiking population.

  The West had had me off balance from the beginning. There was clearly a harshness and unpredictability that I was simply unfamiliar with (Perhaps I should have read the history of the Westward Exploration a little more carefully!). Intermittent negative surprises had set me back from the very outset. At this late stage, I had only one mission—get the ship to port; avoid blunders.

  My stomach had sunk when Five Dollar had told me, “There’s a steep snowfield you’ll hit in a couple miles. Don’t try anything fancy.”

  The northern Cascades have their own brand of beauty and treachery. Quite a stirring way to finish, if you beat the snow.

  “You haven’t got to worry about that,” I had told him. I was moving along fine when the PCT cleared a narrow crest. I looked straight down at a packed field of snow and ice. A gunshot wind dominated the bowl-shaped landscape. Damn. This could be the game here.

  I rushed back below the ridge line and hit my knees. Quickly, I put on additional layers, gulped down some food and advil, and said a quick ritual prayer for faith. Where does the trail go?

  “There’s a trail off to the left,” Five Dollar had told me. “Don’t take it. Trust me.” I started down to the right.

  The first few steps were the most treacherous since the worst parts of the High Sierra. Getting off balance could easily send a person careening down the steep snow banks. But there was no alternative, so I dug my legs in as deeply as possible, hewing close to the ground. Gales of wind blasted me. Twenty minutes later I was at the bottom of the snow bowl, and felt like I might have just cleared a major hurdle.

  Another complication immediately presented itself. I had been following Blue Eyes’ footprints intently the last few days, and knew the size and shape of them by heart. However, when the trail came to an unmarked fork, his footprints appeared to go to the right. But that led to a narrow ledge which couldn’t possibly be the PCT ( I would later learn that Blue Eyes, who was a truly brilliant outdoorsman, had decided to traverse this ledge as one last challenge). I anxiously studied this fork for several minutes looking for footprints. Finally, I very tentatively decided to go left, and was soon ascending up another snowy mountain pass. The only footprints in the snow were going southbound—presumably those of Five Dollar. These would have to guide me through these nether regions.

  When I look back on my two long hikes on the AT and then the PCT, one of the things most strongly engraved in my mind is the all-out efforts late in the day. For a person to do big miles, these late pushes were absolutely necessary. I cherish the memory of digging deep to make these twilight surges. This was the last climb on the PCT, and looked like one of the most important of all. If I could just get to the top, it would be all downhill to the Canadian border.

  The trail kept winding and winding through the snow. I fervently hoped no more surprises lay ahead—unmarked forks, footprints giving out, steep snow fields, whatever. The PCT serpentined all over the place. I had long since given up trying to predict where it would go. Finally, however, it appeared the trail was going down. Soon I spotted the welcome sight of the lake mentioned in the guidebook and the trail zigged and zagged in that direction. Home free. A few miles later at dark I found a flat spot right in the middle of the PCT, just three miles from the Canadian border.

  The walk down to the Canadian border the next morning was dominated by an ice-cold wind. I tried all manners of wrapping clothing around my fingers to get them functional; but none were successful. The frost felt like it extended almost up to my elbows. I could take pride in one thing, though. I had definitely made the right decision 90 miles back at Stehekin to hike out ahead of the big group, which had spent the last few days following my size 15 shoe prints. Tonight the temperature was going down to 11 degrees with a chill factor well below zero.

  Suddenly, I turned a corner and there was the PCT monument, which any PCT hiker could recognize in an instant. In trail town after trail town along the way, there had been photos of hikers celebrating at this monument, with the narrow swath of tree cuts separating the two borders in the background. The first few trail towns I had gazed at these photographs enviously. But then I had disciplined myself to quit looking at them. I honestly hadn’t known if I would ever make it this far.

  I had probably worked harder to get here than for anything else in my life. Yet, it ended up not being very memorable at all. Apparently there was a trail register in some compartment of the monument. But even if I had been aware of it, I probably wouldn’t have been able to sign it. The motor skills of my fingers were virtually non-existent at this point. The main thing I was worried about was the eight miles to get to civilization at Manning Park. So instead of the customary border celebration, replete with hugs, kisses, merriment, etc., I took the standard five-minute break to gird for the 1,200 foot climb that lay immediately ahead.

  That probably says as much about me as a hiker as anything else. It wasn’t pretty . . . but I got there.

  Epilogue

  Those who dream by day are cognizant of things which escape those who only dream at night.

  Edgar Allen Poe

  I distinctly remember descending Mount Katahdin after finishing the Appalachian Trail and thinking, “This trail is a perfect match for me.”

  Now as I loped north from the Canadian border on October 9, 2009, towards civilization at Manning Park, my train of thought was different. I had never developed the level of comfort with the PCT that I had with the Appalachian Trail. My inadequacies in matters ranging from gear to maps to camping skills had frequently stuck out like a sore thumb. So often I had been afflicted with uncertainty about what lay next.

  Then there was this stark fact. I had hiked every single step of the 2,175 mile-long Appalachian Trail in 2005. Then I had spent the next few years with one overriding goal—to do the exact same thing on the 2,663 mile-long Pacific Crest Trail. Regrettably, I wasn’t able to completely pull it off. Due to my foot injury in the desert, the fires in northern California, and the snowstorm in northern Washington, I had to skip a total of 435 miles. That means I hiked a total of 2,228 miles, which was 53 miles more than I did on the AT. I lost 43 pounds to 33 on the AT. So, it wasn’t per
fect by any means.

  Yet when I’m asked the question, “Which trail did you like better—the AT or the PCT?” my answer is always the same.

  “It would be like asking a parent to choose between two children. They’re very different, but I could never decide between the two.” It is an honest answer.

  The PCT experience offers the priceless experience of intense immersion in the West. The overwhelming feeling is one of liberation, starting with the wide-open vistas, vast spaces, and majestic scenery. Better yet, the geography seems inculcated in the the western people, from their unhurried cadences and strides, to their healthy appetite for the new.

  Another day at “the office”. By the way, if you have office envy, there is plenty more office space available!

  Rare is the individual whose mind hasn’t been captivated by the great explorers of centuries past. Christopher Columbus, Captain Cook, and the Pilgrims all crossed oceans on far-flung peregrinations. Countless others made history in the Great American Westward Expansion. Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, and John Wesley Powell, to name but a few. Not for a second would I rate hiking the PCT in the league with these intrepid souls. That age is long gone, and never to return. But that doesn’t mean that a person should lose one’s adventurousness or curiosity. Quite the contrary.

  Consider for a moment the tragic case of Chris McCandless, the protagonist in Jon Krakauer’s, Into the Wild. So young, but so earnest and thoughtful, McCandless had headed off on foot across the country after college graduation. Given a literary diet overly rich in the Yukon adventures of Jack London, it was perhaps inevitable he would end up in the Alaskan bush country.

  “Nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future,” he wrote. “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.” Obviously, McCandless took his wanderlust too far, for he ended up trapped in the nether regions and starved to death.