Pacific Crest Trail: Initial Thoughts

Water Tanks on the PCT. Where squirrels go for a swim

I’m about at the 200 mile mark of my PCT SOBO flip flop (just had to get some thru hiker lingo into the first sentence). I now have enough perspective to offer a few thoughts on my hike thus far. Most of this will be comparing it to my Appalachian Trail experience.

Cat Holing – on the AT this is a nightmare. Everywhere you try to dig you find roots of all sorts. Getting a cat hole dug “to code” is nigh well impossible. The PCT in contrast is a cat holing paradise. Nothing seems to grow here so all you are doing is shoveling sand – just like you are living in a giant litter box. I guess this is a plus for the PCT?

Trail Grade – I kept hearing how the PCT grade was easier because it was designed for horse traffic and thus limited to an average 10% grade compared to the AT. So far I am not impressed. I can report that there is indeed plenty of horse poop on the trail but nary a horse have I seen. Perhaps the poop is planted to perpetuate the myth about the grade on the PCT being easier? Time will tell but so far there have been plenty of steep inclines and places where I’d never take a horse, even if I owned one.

Wind – hands down the section on the PCT from Tehachapi to Hikertown takes the cake. On the day I got into Tehachapi the wind was gusting at 75 mph as I hiked over the final mountain top. I crab walked for a while as I tried to prevent myself from being blown over. I heard later that another hiker crawled through this section on his hands and feet. In contrast all I had to deal with on the AT was the misfortune of my pack cover being ripped off my pack by a wind gust while at the top of some mountain in Maine. But that is more just about Maine than anything else. Remember that in Maine they don’t believe that it is manly to have a bridge for you to walk over a stream – water is meant to be waded through not walked over.

The Bubble – both the AT and the PCT have them, i.e., groups of hikers heading north in a bit of a pack. As a SOBO flip flopper (more hiker lingo) I get to observe the bubble but am not in it. I prefer it this way even though I have to endure jokes like “hey you do know that Canada is in the OTHER direction, right”.

Green Tunnel – This refers to the trail going through a dense grove of trees. This is pretty much everywhere on the AT. No where to be found on the PCT however. Desert hiking is a different animal. The greatest concern is water because this section of the PCT doesn’t have much of it (more on this below). Not much water means not many trees which mean no green tunnel. At times this is an alien environment. Going through the Lake Hughes burn area made me feel like Matt Damon in “The Martian”. Pretty much nothing growing except for poodle bush which appears to be SoCal’s answer to poison ivy, only worse.

Water – I admit it. I am suffering from Water Anxiety. My initial solution was to carry 7 liters of water. Folks, believe me, this is close to insane. Adding 15 pounds of pack weight does not make Jack a happy camper. Gone are the days on the AT when you carried a liter, maybe 2 and just about always camped at a place with a water source. In contrast, on the PCT, you get to read comments like this in the Guthook PCT app: “next reliable water source is a tank in 15 miles. Last year Fred found two dead squirrels floating in the tank. He managed to fish one out but did draw water from the tank anyway since he was very thirsty. Be sure to filter and treat the water. Fred did and he apparently is still alive”. Note to reader – I did not take water from this tank.

Blazes – these are the paint slashes on tree trunks that let you know you are headed in the right direction. the AT has thousands of these. The PCT? Apparently they are non existent. Of course it is hard to put a blaze on a tree that doesn’t exist. And splashing paint on the sand doesn’t work well either. Still, route finding on the PCT can be difficult. I’ve come to intersections multiple times with no external clue as to what to do next except to observe where the foot prints seem to be going. Without my trusty Guthook app I could still be out there wandering around (or waiting to be rescued after punching the SOS button on my Garmin Mini).

Not sure if I am keeping score here in the great PCT vs AT debate. I’ll let the reader tally things up for themselves.

Flip Flopper

Notice: No politicians, past or present, were harmed in the creation of this post

 I first met Eddie Spaghetti in Vermont.  I was cruising along on my Appalachian Trail (AT) thru hike, excited to have finally entered this state.  I had almost 1,700 of the 2,189 trail miles under my belt. 

A Walk Across Wisconsin

Where it begins (or ends):  Western Terminus of the Ice Age Trail

It was supposed to be the second National Scenic Trail that I thru hiked.  Instead, 17 months later I finished the Ice Age Trail (IAT) as a section hiker.  It was an eventful and, at times, frustrating period.  The IAT runs for over 1100 miles, totally contained within the state of Wisconsin from its eastern terminus just outside the city of Sturgeon Bay to the banks of the St. Croix River along the border with Minnesota.  Its “raison d’être” is to trace the terminal moraine of the last glacier to cover Wisconsin, roughly 10,000 years ago.  The trail itself is still very much a work in progress.  Over 500 of its miles are euphemistically referred to as “connecting routes”.  Translation?  For those miles you walk along the side of a road, sometimes dodging cars, the odd piece of farm equipment or the occasional semi.  Thankfully, the rest of the time is spent in fields and woods on “hiking segments”.  As I contemplate my next undertaking in the outdoors I have been reflecting on this experience.

In the Footsteps of Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage – “After”

“Hey Kevin, that rock is a trip hazard.  Get a tamping iron and pop it out.”  Recently, I was in Central Wisconsin, part of a work crew helping to build new tread on the Ice Age Trail (IAT).  Trail building, as it turns out, is pretty hard work and I was rapidly gaining new respect for what it takes to create the trails on which I have been so happily hiking for the past few years.  But, when the crew leader of my tread team issued this order, it gave me reason to pause.  You see, this was a lone rock on a new stretch of trail I had been assigned to prep.  Being concerned with a trip hazard on a hiking trail seemed a little, well, overly zealous?  I wondered what he would think if we were suddenly transported to the Appalachian Trail (AT), in say, Maine.  Using his definition of a trip hazard, one could think of the entire 281 miles of the AT in Maine as one continuous trip hazard.  What might it do to his mental state if he was forced to contemplate clearing trip hazards from all 281 miles of the Maine AT?  Not a pretty thought.

Point – Counter Point

First Course

Your watch alarm is beeping faintly, dragging you out of a fitful night of sleep. You roll over, and slide off of your thermorest mattress onto the floor of your tent. From constant twisting and turning in the night your sleeping bag now looks more like a pretzel. You pause briefly and sniff the air. What is that terrible smell? Did a skunk somehow manage to crawl into your tent in the middle of the night and then expire? Suddenly it strikes you, that smell is … you.

The Appalachian Trail Hostel Hustle

Greasy Creek Friendly

Hikers Welcome

 

Running a hiker hostel is hard work – your clientele arrives smelling to high heavens, their clothes are filthy, their equipment is filthy, they are filthy – do you see a theme emerging here? 

Reintegration

After 152 days and 2,189 miles I’m finally done with my AT thru hike. 152 days is a long time to be gone from home.  By the end, I was pretty much a well-oiled backpacking machine.  I knew where everything was in my pack.  I had a regimented routine for how I started my day, hiked and ended my day (people who know me will probably say “well, hiking the AT didn’t change THAT about him”). 

What In Blazes Is Horizontal Rock Clmbing?

White blazes mark the AT in Pennsylvania

 

I’m currently in Stroudsburg, PA recovering from finishing the Pennsylvania section of the AT.  I’m now certain that the northern PA section of the AT was designed and built by sadists, but perhaps that is a topic best explored at a different time.  Anyway, when I woke up Monday morning at the Leroy Smith shelter I decided to make a mad dash for Delaware Water Gap, just to be done with Pennsylvania once and for all.  I made it, walking over an endless series of rocks and boulders for at least 90% of the 20 miles it took to get to the end of the line.  The AT gods punished this lack of appreciation by drenching me in a thunderstorm just as I entered town.

After 12 days hiking in Pennsylvania, I’m now taking time off to learn how to walk on flat surfaces again.  I’m not kidding.  My gait was transformed by the AT in PA.  I still pick up and put my feet down as if I were traversing rocks and boulders.  This ends up looking a bit odd when you are striding down a sidewalk.  The people in town must look at me and think “I wonder how long this man has been in rehabilitation since his stroke?  He is very brave to be walking around like that in public”.  This is the price you pay for getting through Pennsylvania.  On a map the Pennsylvania AT looks like it should be “easy” – only modest elevation changes.  But, it involves a huge amount of rock climbing.  But it is almost exclusively (Lehigh Gap notwithstanding), horizontal rock climbing.  That is what you do – each step is climbing over rocks.  If you hike the AT in PA you are a rock climber.  No ifs, ands or buts.

This brings me to today’s other topic – blazing.  The trademark characteristic of the entire 2,190 miles of the AT are the white blazes painted on trees (and, yes, on rocks as well) to show you the proper path.  Someone with some serious issues actually counted all the blazes he saw as he did his thru hike a few years ago and reported that there are over 80,000 blazes.  That’s a fair number in my book.  So “white blazing” is an active verb, suggesting that you are hiking the AT.  However, there are other types of blazing as well.

Blue blazes mark the path off the AT to springs, shelters, alternate trails, outhouses, etc.  “Blue Blazing” as a verb refers generally to taking a short cut on the trail to cut down on the miles or to avoid ominous features that misguided trail designers have worked into the AT.  For example, to continue picking on Pennsylvania, one can avoid “Wolf Rocks” by taking a blue blazed bypass trail.  For someone wanting to assert that they have thru hiked the AT, “blue blazing”, as it is called, is in kind of a gray zone.

Less sporting for those claiming to thru hike the AT is “yellow blazing”.  This involves getting in a car to avoid pesky features like a 900 foot rock scramble of the vertical kind out of Lehigh Gap, or just cutting down on the total miles you want to hike.  In the Shenandoah, there is a lot of talk about “aqua blazing”.  Here you completely stop pretending to be on the Appalachian Trail and instead float down the Shenandoah River in a kayak or raft.  You can get pretty much all the way to Harpers Ferry this way.  I’ve been accused in some quarters as being a bit rigid at times, but I think even these detractors would agree with me that this isn’t playing by the thru hiking rules, so to speak.

Finally, we come to a type of blazing that doesn’t cause arguments about whether you are “really” thru hiking the AT.  I refer here to “pink blazing”.  Color aside, this type of blazing refers to the art of romance on the trail – and there is a lot of romance going on even when everyone is dirty, sweaty and hasn’t showered in 3, 4 or even more days.  Speaking of which, TBS (“time between showers” for the uninitiated) is a way to prove how macho you are and does come up in conversations in the evening around the campfire.  I impressed my shelter mates recently when I mentioned that my max TBS so far was 10 days.  No one else had more than a 5 day TBS.  I owned that night.  A word of caution however to those seeking to improve their TBS – maxing out your TBS just before meeting your spouse for a day off the trail does not “max out” your chances for romance.

Okay, yes, I’ve digressed again.  Back to romance, even with the TBS factor.  Some pink blazing is obvious – for example when you are spending time at a hostel and can observe your fellow hikers at closer quarters (no, I am NOT some creepy stalker).  More subtle is noticing the pairing up of hikers who previously seemed to be on solo thru hikes.  As in “real life”, the romance on the trail can be long lasting, or tragically cut short.  A hostel owner with whom I was chatting told of a hiker who showed her an engagement ring he was carrying, while passing through Hot Springs, NC.  He planned to give it to the woman with whom he was currently hiking when they made it to the end of the AT – the summit of Mt. Katahdin in Maine.  Very romantic indeed.  Alas, by the time they reached Damascus, VA (200 miles north), the romance was over and his betrothed-to-be was pink blazing with another.  Such is life.

So, I must make a confession.  When I decided to write about blazing, I desperately wanted to cleverly work into the entry a reference to Mel Brooks’ movie masterpiece “Blazing Saddles”.  I thought long and hard about how I could do this.  Surely there was a connection to be made between white blazing on the AT and Alex Karras punching a horse, cowboys sitting around a campfire eating their fill of beans, or Cleavon Little looking smart on his horse with his Gucci saddle bags.  But, alas, I must report that I failed.  So, there will be no reference in this entry about AT blazing to “Blazing Saddles”.  I promise.

What’s in a (Trail) Name?

I rolled into Damascus this morning, glad to have now finished with 3 of the 14 states that the AT meanders through.  It gives me the opportunity to reflect on exactly one month of being out on the trail.  Today a complete stranger gave me a ride to and from a Walmart 13 miles away so I could get my eyeglasses repaired.  This is typical of the acts of kindness that occur on the trail every day. All this guy would take from me in return was my heartfelt thanks.  But for me, it solved a big problem (being able to see).

This picture shows some of the folks with whom I shared space at the Greasy Creek Hostel last week as 5” of rain fell in less than 24 hours.  It was only my second rest day since starting my hike (tomorrow will be my third). The hosts at the Greasy Creek are really nice folks. Interestingly, they said that when they first started the hostel they had complaints from neighbors (yes, they have one) that landed them in court. It seems that the neighbors saw AT hikers coming to the hostel and thought that the owners were taking in homeless people. I’m not sure why that in itself is a problem but such is the impression that an AT thru hiker makes after weeks on the trail.

But the topic of today’s post concerns one of the more curious aspects of the AT hiker subculture – trail names. I emphasize that none of the folks in the above picture are associated with any of the trail names discussed below.

Despite that, let me assure you that the following conversation really did happen as I wandered about Hot Springs: “Hey Cur Dog, is that you?” “Gray Mountaineer! Good to see you again. Let’s get together for dinner tonight.  I’ll see if Witch Doctor can join us.  Tinkle and Doc might be around as well.” “Good, see you tonight around 6?” “Excellent.”

When I told the people with whom I worked that I was planning to retire and hike the AT, one of the first questions I was asked was “what’s your trail name”?  Honesty, I hadn’t a clue at the time that this was so important to thru hiking.  But I caught on quickly and learned that there are certain rules associated with it. For example, they are supposed to be given to you by another hiker.

I’ve now been on the trail long enough to get thoroughly acquainted with this aspect of AT hiking.  It is kind of like going into the witness protection program – at least for the period of time that you are on the trail you assume a new identity, tied up with your trail name.

It is just another aspect of thru hiking that seems pretty strange when looking in from the outside.  I mean, what is this phenomenon that leads grown men and women to clamor to be known not as Gloria or Jerry, not Brittany or Fred but instead as Zip Code, In Flux, Goddess or Thunderbuns?  I’m not making any of this up by the way.

Each name presents a mystery.  Did Gas Monkey get his name because of a propensity for flatulence? And does that make him proud of his name? What about Black Widow – certainly a disturbing name to be given. It turns out that she got that name when she discovered a black widow spider nest in a shelter.  Loyal readers of this blog, especially the recent Gimmee Shelter post, will understand that this is yet another reason that I am reluctant to stay in AT shelters. The etymology of Whistler seems straight forward enough but what do you make of someone named Drinkles? Ultimately, people don’t seem to really care about origins, just that they have a name.

Thunderbuns got his name for an act of heroism.  In the night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, he responded to multiple calls for help from fellow hikers who had not properly pitched their tents. Getting out of his own tent to help was noble but doing this dressed only in his skivvies bordered on the heroic.

Witch Doctor gets my vote for best trail name and the most interesting person that I’ve met so far on the trail.  Born and raised in Africa by missionaries, he returned to Africa as a missionary himself (and also played the role of physician’s assistant) before returning home to the US to retire.  His trail name is a natural.

At a trail magic event the other day the trail “magician/angel” turned to me and said “hey, are you Gray Beard”?  I was not amused.  Gray Beard is trying to set the age record for AT thru hiking – he is 81 (I hope I don’t look 81, at least not yet).   Putting that aside, Gray Beard has assumed legendary status on the trail. Most everyone knows of him and his record attempt.  I’ve run into him on several occasions.  His name is well deserved – he has a very full, very gray beard, kind of like what you’d expect to see on a California gold prospector from the 1800s.

But let’s talk about Tinkle for a moment. I met her and her newly wed husband, Doc, when I went out for dinner with Cur Dog and Witch Doctor.  Under what other conditions could you turn to an adult woman and say, perfectly innocently, “Hey Tinkle, how’s that double cheeseburger you ordered?” I mean, what makes someone willing to accept such a name and even freely introduce herself “Hi, my name’s Tinkle, what’s yours?”

In what other universe is this possible?  I’ll tell you – that universe is called the Girl Scouts of America.  Both of my daughters went all the way through scouts and are now life members. I am proud of their dedication to scouting and impressed with what the GSA does.  They take girls and foster their development into confident, adventuresome, independent thinking young women – tomorrow’s leaders.

Despite that, I am ashamed to admit, I relentlessly mocked their use of camp names – Cookie, Cricket, Sunflower, Chocolate Chip – I think you see the similarities.  As they would leave for girl scout summer day camp I’d tease them with something like “be sure to say hi to Turtle Fart for me today.” They did not find this amusing.

So here is true irony – not that many years later, I am sitting in a restaurant with a Witch Doctor, having a conversation with a Tinkle.  My daughters must feel that they have been vindicated.  At least my trail name isn’t Turtle Fart.