Becoming A Thru-Hiker-1

I was cold. Not frozen, but definitely cold around the edges. I curled into a tighter ball in my hammock and adjusted my quilt. My watch said 4 a.m. I shut my eyes and started to drift off again.

At least the deer was gone. She had been pestering me most of the night. Pushing her nose under my tarp and eventually her head. She would sniff and lick the air until I yelled at her. Then she would run away, but not very far. Before I knew it, she was back under the tarp sniffing and licking. Salt! Someone back at Lake Morena at the beginning of the trail had told me that deer would steal your shoes for the sweaty salt they could lick from them. Luckily, my shoes were zipped inside the hammock.

Lake Morena and the beginning of the PCT seemed so far away, and they were. Far away in time. I had been on this trail for a week more than five months. Far away in distance. I had walked a couple thousand trail miles to this point. And a lifetime away in experience. I was not the same person that I was when I started this trail.

Thinking back, it was the Fall of 2013, I was just starting to wonder what I might do after I retired at the end of the year. Somehow, hiking one of the long trails in the U.S. seemed like a fun thing to do. To be clear, prior to this I had never hiked more than 7 miles in a day and had never been out backpacking more than 6 days in a row, but I liked camping and I liked hiking and a long trail would just be a lot of that. The Appalachian Trail (AT) sounded too crowded and lacking much wilderness. The Continental Divide Trail (CDT) seemed not crowded enough and maybe too wild. That left the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), which seemed to be about right for a first time long distance hiker. I decided to try and hike the PCT in one go. This, I learned, was called a “thru-hike.” I assumed that if I could do it, I would be a “thru-hiker.” Which was a fair, but not quite complete conclusion.

I woke up again. My watch said 5 a.m. and it was still dark. I slipped on my rain pants, my windbreaker, my puffy coat, and pulled my knit cap down over my ears. With my headlamp in place I slipped on my shoes and I got out of my hammock. Looking around there was frost everywhere and the little creek had ice along the banks. The stars were still out. A light wind nipped at my cheeks. I had a quick breakfast, and packed up with near frozen hands. At 6 a.m. I started out along the PCT for the last time. I was 21 miles from the Canadian border. I would finish the Pacific Crest Trail this afternoon.

The beam of my headlamp cut through the dark and the sky was so cold and clear you could almost reach up and touch the stars. As I walked my breath came in vaporous puffs like an old steam train chugging up the track. This brought back a memory from earlier this year.

It was January 2014 and I was on a training hike back home in San Antonio. It was a cold winter day and I could see my breath. I had been slowly increasing my distance weekly and I was up to an astonishing 10 miles in a day, three times a week. I was also coming to the realization that I would need to double this mileage and do it every day for 5-6 months. Yes, I had known this intellectually from the start, but on that day in January I came to understand what it meant physically, which is a much different thing. This was a milestone in my evolution to thru-hiker.

Back on the PCT, the sun had risen and the trail wandered up and down through forest and meadows and alpine views, bringing me closer to the border. Now that the sun was up and the ice was melting, I stopped by a stream to filter some water. I pulled my filter out from under my coat where I carried it to keep it from freezing. Using kidney dialysis micro tubing, these backpacking filters let water through, but keep “big” things like bacteria and protozoa out. However, if the residual water in the tubing freezes and expands, it will break the micro tubing and let everything through. So you have to keep them from freezing.

Which reminded me that early on I decided I needed to evaluate every piece of gear for my PCT trip. Previously, if a piece of gear didn’t work on one of my 6-day trips, I would just make do and replace it for next year’s trip. But on the PCT, I would be out for months and may not be able to replace anything for weeks. So every piece of gear had to be rock solid, but ultralight. I tested camp stoves, water filters, rain gear, clothing, sock combos, hats, everything. And if I couldn’t find an item I needed, I made it. You really get to know what you have and what it can do when you start thinking the long-game like a thru-hiker. My evolution continued.

I finished up filtering my water and resumed my hike to the border. Here it was September 12th and the itinerary I had finalized back in February had predicted that if I started on April 5th, I would finish on September 10th. Well I had started on April 5th so my itinerary was pretty darn close. That schedule had been essential for me to have. Before it, I would go off in all directions at once: working on gear, trying to figure out how many meals I needed, whether I had to send all my meals through the mail or if I could buy them at stores along the way? And if I was sending packages, where would I send them? Where were there post offices? Where were there even towns?

Two resources I found were Craig’s PCT Planner online and The PCT Handbook by Yogi. The first let me put in a start date, miles per day, and how many hours a day I would hike. Then it would spit out a complete itinerary with dates, towns along the way, miles per day adjusted for elevation gain. It was amazing. Yogi’s book listed every town near the trail and what was available in each, along with contact info for all of them. Priceless! But, hey, now it’s time for lunch…

Tune in next week when when I continue with Becoming A Thru-Hiker-2.