Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail Read online

  SKYWALKER

  HIGHS AND LOWS

  ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL

  By Bill Walker

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-62112-206-7

  Dedication

  My mother, Kathleen Malloy Walker, who has

  never given in to the surely strong temptation to

  crane her neck up at me and cry out in horror,

  “What hath I wrought?”

  Disclaimer

  This book describes the author’s experiences while walking the Pacific Crest Trail and reflects his opinions relating to those experiences. Others may recall these same events differently. Some names and identifying details mentioned in the book have been changed to protect their privacy.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Disclaimer

  Chapter 1: Worst Lost Ever

  Chapter 2: Why Long-Distance Hiking?

  Chapter 3: The Pacific Crest Trail

  Chapter 4: The Mexican Border

  Chapter 5: The Kickoff Party

  Chapter 6: The Desert

  Chapter 7: And They’re Off

  Chapter 8: Trout Lily

  Chapter 9: Caches, Ledges, and Trail Repartee

  Chapter 10: Seeds of Disaster

  Chapter 11: Renee

  Chapter 12: Bettina

  Chapter 13: Comeback

  Chapter 14: Donna

  Chapter 15: The Andersons

  Chapter 16: The Mojave Desert

  Chapter 17: Final Desert Surprises

  Chapter 18: Going Up

  Chapter 19: Two-Miles High

  Chapter 20: “Fifty Feet”

  Chapter 21: Scott Williamson PCT Superstar

  Chapter 22: CanaDoug—Snow Maven

  Chapter 23: Just a Survivor

  Chapter 24: Three’s Not the Charm

  Chapter 25: Scottish-American Beacon

  Chapter 26: “Worst Bug Day in PCT History”

  Chapter 27: The ‘Root Canal’ Aspect of Hiking

  Chapter 28: Alone

  Chapter 29: Donner’s (Dahmer’s) Pass

  Chapter 30: Northern California Tales—Psychological Crucible

  Chapter 31: California Fires

  Chapter 32: The Art of the Possible

  Chapter 33: California Leavin’

  Chapter 34: An Eastern Man of the West

  Chapter 35: Uber Bitch

  Chapter 36: 66 Hours

  Chapter 37: Pretty Boy Joe

  Chapter 38: The Corps of Discovery

  Chapter 39: The Evergreen State

  Chapter 40: The Northern Cascades

  Chapter 41: Northwestern Hospitality

  Chapter 42: Splendid Isolation

  Epilogue

  Suggested Readings

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Worst Lost Ever

  The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  “Is this the worst you’ve ever been lost hiking?” Lauren suddenly asked me.

  It was the afternoon of July 3, 2009. All across America people were heading off in packed cars to barbecues, beaches, and sunny vacations to celebrate the upcoming Independence Day holiday. Lauren and I, however, were confronted with a stunningly contrarian scene. All we could see, for miles on end, was a heavy blanket of snow interspersed with frozen mountain lakes. The last few miles had been up to our waists, at times.

  Lauren was seventeen years old, and we were hiking together completely by accident. Her mother had heard from a co-worker that his son was planning a hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. Because Lauren had shown some nascent interest in hiking, her mother had inquired—perhaps against her better judgment—about the possibility of Lauren joining her co-worker’s son. That had led directly to this mess.

  Weeks earlier Lauren had joined up with this proposed hiking partner. His name was Pat, and he was a 26-year old male of extraordinary athletic ability. The two of them had set out together on the hardest part of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). It is called the High Sierra and reaches the very highest points on the American mainland. By everyone’s appraisal, Lauren and Pat were making a game effort.

  Having a hiking partner allowed them to share several items, including a tent. This critically reduced their backpack weight. However, because they slept in the same tent, there had been some murmurings on the trail grapevine about Pat trysting with the 17-year old Lauren. But I had seen them up close for several days and nights running, and it seemed all business. All about miles.

  A hiking partner also reduces one’s chances of getting lost. Theoretically. But Pat was perhaps the fastest hiker I had ever seen, despite having a backpack that looked like it was loaded down with sandbags. He appeared so rhapsodic about hiking in this magnificent mountain setting that I had begun to think he was afflicted with the Icarus complex. Pat habitually blasted off ahead of Lauren first thing in the morning. She repeatedly sacrificed breaks, hiking for hours-at-atime, (earning her the trail name, No Break) to keep up with him. One could objectively say she was being courageous.

  At the end of the day, when Pat and Lauren were finally reunited at some distant campsite, he often had a slightly embarrassed look on his face—like he couldn’t help himself. Maybe he couldn’t. Like so many mortals who had preceded him over the eons, he was utterly in the thrall of the High Sierra.

  Long-distance hiking is inherently conducive to mood swings. But on this 3d day of July, my morale was especially fragile. The previous night I had camped alone, about a half-mile ahead of Pat and Lauren. I had gotten up this morning at first light prepared to clear Muir Pass, the last really difficult, snowy pass in the High Sierra. For days I had been anxiously debriefing south-bounders passing in the opposite direction about what exactly lay ahead. One after another had reported that the Pass was covered with a thick blanket of snow for miles on each side of the summit.

  Not surprisingly, soon after I began trooping this morning, Pat had come jackrabbiting past me.

  “Wait for Lauren and me,” I yelled ahead to him playfully.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said self-consciously. “I’ll, uh, see you up at the top.”

  Yeah, sure!

  The biggest problem was simply figuring out where to go. The vast amounts of snowmelt had created more surging streams than I could have ever fathomed. This morning I had been able to follow Pat’s footprints through the snow along the western edge of a couple of alpine lakes. But as the PCT started up the face of Muir Pass, the placid lakes and footprints gave way to the heavy rush of water crashing down a ravine. I saw footprints on the far side, which meant I needed to somehow get across.

  Tentatively, I edged down the icy bank to get to a large rock. But my feet came out from under me, and I did a base-runner’s slide right into the icy running water. I frantically thrashed around attempting to reach the next icy boulder. I didn’t completely careen over, but splashed wildly the last several feet in the rushing current getting to the far side. At least I’m over.

  When I looked back down the hill I spotted Lauren, scoping around trying to decide on a route. Instinctively, I started waving her to come up my way. Lauren dutifully followed my footprints up the left bank, and soon stood at the precipice of the tumbling rapids.

  “Here, here” I kept shouting. She looked dubious. For good reason. The spot I was pointing out was shallower, but the current even stronger.

  “Right there, there,” I kept shouting over at her. “That rock.” Finally, we gave up any cross-stream communication, as she hun
g in suspense atop a jagged boulder, plotting her next step. Water roared by her on all sides, and she took on plenty of it. But soon enough she, too, was across.

  “Good goin’,” I tried encouraging her. “We’ll stick together until we catch up with Pat.”

  “Alright.”

  When her mother had arranged a hiking partner for her, it was probably just this type of situation she had in mind. But in this case it was just as necessary for me. For starters, we were in one of the most isolated areas in the entire United States. Any kind of civilization was days away in any direction. The biggest problem, though, was that—due to a post office glitch—I didn’t have any maps.

  “Could I take a quick look at your maps?” I asked Lauren.

  “Pat borrowed them last night,” she said. She doesn’t have any maps either. We exchanged worried glances.

  “Well, this must be Helen Lake,” I motioned at yet another gorgeous, but frozen, alpine lake. “My data book here says it’s only a half-mile from the summit.” “Good,” she said, sounding relieved. But after another half-mile of humping through the snow, lo and behold, another open expanse of frozen water appeared. The silence was pregnant.

  “I guess this here is Helen Lake,” I finally said in resignation.

  Beautiful alpine setting. Hard to believe it is July.

  “Well, at least we know we’ve only got a half-mile to the top,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “As long as we don’t get lost.”

  Of course, that was just a fallacy. We had been effectively lost for several miles. Sure, we were following Pat’s footprints. But Pat was obviously improvising, himself, given that the PCT was completely invisible under the snow. Finally, we followed Pat’s footprints up to a steep precipice that led off a cliff. I stepped back and looked at Lauren in disbelief. But not because of the steep dropoff.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “What?” she wondered in wide-eyed fashion.

  “Helen Lake,” I mourned.

  “Gosh, I don’t know,” she said, temporarily flushed. But quickly she led us down the precipice to better treading.

  “Oh, there they are,” she said in work-womanlike fashion, when she spotted more footprints. The grades became steeper, which was further confirmation that we were well off the PCT. Then we came to a steep ravine bisected by a rushing creek.

  “Look at those footprints up on that icy ledge,” I said in amazement. “Those look like Pat’s footprints,” Lauren said.

  “Man, he could have bought it right there,” I said with a sense of dread stirring.

  I quickly dropped my backpack and ran off to look for another route. But nothing revealed itself.

  “Anything?” Lauren asked, when I got back.

  “Nope.”

  “What if we cross that creek down there,” she suggested.

  “Then what?”

  “Well, let’s just see.”

  We scurried down to our right, where rock-hopping across the stream proved to be easy. Soon, we were laboring heavily in a snow field heading straight up the face of Muir Pass. Good breaks are rare this deep in the mountains. But we got one, when we came upon a modest-sized stone hut at the top of Muir Pass.

  “Hey, did you know there was a hut?” I yelled back excitedly to Lauren.

  “No,” she answered.

  “Forty-nine percent chance Pat is waiting in there,” I ventured.

  Fat chance.

  Lauren and I sat there feasting on mediocre hiker fare within the friendly confines of Muir Hut. Suddenly, she blurted out, “This might not be the summit.

  “Why would they build the hut here then?” I quickly countered.

  “But look ahead,” she pointed straight north up the PCT. “Those mountains out there look like they might be higher than where we are here.” This might not be the summit. My God.

  Silence reigned. If this isn’t the summit it might take hours to get to the real summit. We’ve already been told there is heavy snow for at least the next three miles. There may not be enough time to get down today. My disaster-prevention instincts were now on high alert. It was time to broach a delicate topic.

  “Maybe, the safest thing would be to just stay right here for the night,” I said gingerly. Silence.

  “I don’t know,” Lauren finally said in downcast fashion. This young girl was a hiker, not a pretender.

  I didn’t fancy staying here above 10,000 feet in a damp hut either. I knew the way my long, thin physique would react—shivering and miserable. My heart was for getting out of here. But my head said something different. If we headed out, we were going to be exposed for hours and our chances of getting completely lost were prominent. One regularly hears reports of hikers getting stranded in snowy mountains, followed by search and rescue operations that arrive too late.

  Awkward silence. I sensed another subtle factor. How many times had I had witnessed male hikers practically prostrating themselves as they found novel ways to hang around female hikers. Usually it was harmless, and at times actually seemed synergistic. But Lauren was attractive enough, and the breach in ages yawning enough, that my conservative instincts dictated extreme caution—especially in a setting this remote, even intimate.

  “I’d rather try going, if it’s okay,” she said tentatively. One of the great things about long-distance hiking is the way sociology gets turned completely on its head. Many times I had taken my cue from much younger people, and it didn’t bother me a wit.

  “Alright,” I finally said. “But, honestly, if it looks really bad the first mile, I’m just gonna’ head back to this hut for the night.”

  “Okay.”

  The blanket of snow was thicker than anything I’d seen in twenty years. Every so often I’d fall through the crust of ice—postholing—and straight down a shaft of snow reaching my upper thighs. Lauren fell behind me as she occasionally postholed all the way up to her waist.

  Fortunately, we were easily able to follow Pat’s footprints. Down in the valley, Sapphire and Heron Lakes shone brilliantly in the afternoon sunshine. My mood began to lighten and I was glad we had gone.

  But then we reached a dogleg in the route we were following. Streams from the snowmelt led wildly through the cavernous valley in all manner of directions. Pat’s footprints weren’t anywhere to be found. A pattern quickly developed.

  “Those look like footprints over there,” our navigator, Lauren, would say. I’d drop my backpack and go ricocheting through streams or rushing water to locate footprints on a ridge, only to have them give way to another stream. It was quite tiring, and even more maddening.

  Despite the failure of these reconnaissance efforts, we now needed to make the crucial decision. Had we summited Muir Pass at the hut and, thus, should follow the valley east down towards the lakes? Or was the summit of Muir Pass these steep peaks lying straight in front of us?

  We didn’t see footprints on either. More ominously, both routes appeared to disappear into a forbidding, Arctic-like wild. If we chose the wrong one we were likely stranded, at least for the rest of the day, if not much longer.

  “What’s your gut tell you, Lauren?” I asked. “Up these mountains straight ahead or down to the right in the valley?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t believe they didn’t put any signs or cairns to give you some idea where to go.” Valid point, to be sure. But I was worried about only one thing—how to safely get the hell out of here.

  “What about that bank of snow over there?” she wondered. “Weren’t there some footprints on that side before.” But my adrenaline-fed sloshing around streams was beginning to flag.

  “Let’s go scout out that side together,” I suggested.

  “I don’t want to fall in the river,” she plainly said.

  “Where?’ I asked.

  “There’s a river under this snow.”

  This conjured up a horror story making rounds in the hiker community. A solitary hiker in the High Sierra had decided to camp on a f
ield of snow. Unfortunately, and completely unbeknownst to him, a waterway lay beneath the snow. During the night, his weight and body heat combined to submerge his sleeping-bag enveloped body in the water. He had drowned trapped in his sleeping bag.

  I was bent over catching my breath. Lauren had all but lost her eagle eye for footprints. Stasis had set in. This is when Lauren blurted out her question (“Is this the worst you’ve ever been lost hiking?”).

  She sounded uncharacteristically forlorn. The greater part of valor would have been to give a working response that referred to various options, fallback plans, etc. If ever there was a time for a Jesuitical lie, this was it.

  Unfortunately, my gut—or perhaps cowardly—instincts reacted decisively. “Never even been close to this lost,” I quickly answered.

  Chapter 2

  Why Long-Distance Hiking?

  “Our nature lies in movement. Complete calm is death.”

  Pascal’s Pensees

  If the world has a future, it has an ascetic future.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Wandering is very human. We are essentially nomadic organisms and peaceful by nature. So postulated Britain’s notorious travel writer, Bruce Chatwin, in his epic tome, The Songlines.

  Chatwin had closely followed the migratory patterns of Australia’s aboriginal people. Specifically, he noted that they maintained peace with other tribes by singing different verses depending on what natural landscape they encountered. As long as all the tribes kept walking and kept singing, harmony was maintained. However, “civilization took a wrong turn,” he nostalgically concluded, “and chose the inferior option.” Instead of nomadic wandering, humans have strived to adopt sedentary lifestyles.

  Chatwin, himself, was a rather mercurial character. The Guardian noted he had “a horror of houses, possessions, fixed abodes”, and believed that settlement is “degenerative for humankind.” Dead of AIDS at age 49, Chatwin, nonetheless, remains in respectable company regarding his deeply-held belief in the power of continual movement.