Zero Days

by Barbara Egbert

  Kennedy Meadows had particular significance for us: We had arranged to get off the trail there for a few weeks. The main reason was to visit the East Coast. Gary refused to miss “Mensa Walks Across Maryland,” an annual event in early June, in which he had participated for every one of its 18 years. I had joined his friends on their three-day hike on the Maryland section of the Appalachian Trail several times since we married, and Mary had completed it every year of her life, whether carried by her parents or walking on her own. How could we possibly miss that?

  A second reason to get off the trail temporarily was to complete our resupply boxes. Despite all our planning, we had managed to pack only enough boxes for those first seven weeks. On our break, we would pack about 20 more, after shopping trips to Costco, Trader Joe’s, and Albertsons.

  Just knowing my brother, George, would meet us in Kennedy Meadows turned the little town and its general store into our Big Rock Candy Mountain. When we got there, we discovered that the showers were outdoors—not an ideal situation with an electrical storm approaching—and the towels were thin, and getting a restaurant meal that night was very iffy. But hey, we didn’t care. We got to Kennedy Meadows!

  We received a generous portion of trail magic at the general store. As we were more or less trapped on the big porch by an afternoon rainstorm, we were fortunate to share it with people we very much enjoyed being with, such as Steve and Sara, the Canadian father-daughter team, and Pineneedle. We gorged ourselves on junk food and got to know the local cats and dogs.

  Eventually, the rain stopped and everyone else started walking toward a restaurant about a mile and a half away called Irelan’s (not Ireland’s, there’s no “d”), in hopes that it might be open. The store manager had phoned down there for us, but repeated calls had failed to elicit any certainty about the arrangements. Gary, unwilling to commit to what might be a fool’s errand, decided we should stick around the store a little while longer. Luckily, a woman who had been using the pay phone while Mary made friends with her dog offered us a ride, so we drove down there in style. Even better, she came back an hour later, figuring we would have finished, and gave us a ride to our campsite.

  The restaurant would have fit right into a television sitcom, maybe Fawlty Towers meets The Outer Limits. The owners were out of town, and the cook and waitresses apparently had to be called in at the last minute from the surrounding neighborhood. Although they worked within a couple miles of the PCT, the waitresses didn’t seem to know anything about it. Most of the menu items weren’t available. If you didn’t want beef, you were out of luck. And the collection of kitchen gadgets adorning the walls looked like they hadn’t been dusted since the Reagan administration—governor, not president. Halfway through the meal, Leatherfeet arrived, and we told him about the menu situation. He didn’t mind. He just ordered two of everything they did have. So there we sat, eating fresh food, with congenial companions and the knowledge that the next morning George would drive up in a real automobile and take us to Carson City. Life was good.

  Most thru-hikers plan to stay on the trail, with occasional zero days, until they finish or drop out, but longer breaks aren’t unheard of. Some are planned, such as weddings that must be attended. Others are unplanned—funerals, say, of relatives close enough to require attendance but not so close that the loss means the end of the thru-hike attempt. Our hiatus was somewhat of a glorified town stop. We first flew to the East Coast for the Walk Across Maryland, where we added crab cakes, fried chicken, and other Maryland specialties to our menu. (The South Beach Diet was popular that year, so Mary gleefully referred to our eating plan as the South Beached Whale Diet.)

  Back in California, we still had to pack all those resupply boxes and take them to my sister’s house for her to ship. Mary saw her friends and visited the local swimming pool. I made lots of phone calls. And the entire time, we felt that familiar town stop pressure to attend to every detail, so we wouldn’t get back on the trail and discover we were missing something important.

  Our three-week sabbatical from the trail ended June 21, when Gary’s rock climbing friend, Janice, drove us back to Kennedy Meadows. We were well-rested, with healthier feet and fuller waistlines, and eager to resume trail life. We had enjoyed our Maryland visit, and being home was pleasant, especially for Mary, who had missed her friends, the cats, and her usual summertime activities. But for Gary and me, the PCT, in some ways, felt more like home than home itself did. So we were glad to get back.

  Before, we had been ahead of the pack. Now, at least 175 backpackers had steamed through in our absence. All the better, we thought. The snow has had time to melt, and what’s left will have a well-marked trail running through it, pointing straight to our next stop: Vermilion Valley Resort. We had allowed 13 days for the 173 miles and six major passes between us and the resort that marketed itself as the place “where the pavement ends, and the wilderness begins.” According to the resort’s website, “Vermilion Valley Resort at Edison Lake is the type of rustic paradise that John Muir would have truly treasured!” That’s only if Muir could have afforded a stay. Previous thru-hikers had written glowing praises of the hiker-friendly attributes of Vermilion Valley—and one Fresno Bee reporter referred to it as “a backpacker’s best friend”—but our 42-hour experience matched the trail chatter warning that it’s all too easy to “spend a million at Vermilion.”

  Just getting to Vermilion Valley was quite the accomplishment. We had made fairly good time the first few days after rejoining the trail at Kennedy Meadows, heading into the mountains with our bodies strengthened by those three weeks of home cooking, hot showers, and adequate sleep. On our third day out, we camped a couple miles from Horseshoe Meadow, at an intersection of trails for New Army Pass, Mt. Langley, and other Sierra destinations. Gary ran down to the parking lot where, a few days earlier, we had stashed a nine-day supply of food in a bear box. We thought we had plenty of supplies. But the heavy loads, the difficult treks over passes, and our side trip up 14,495-foot Mt. Whitney slowed us to the point that we had to ration our supplies. By the time we got to Vermilion Valley on Day 64 (counting days on the trail and zero days, but not our three-week vacation), we were getting pretty desperate.

  Our entire Vermilion Valley experience could have been an episode from The Three Stooges. If a movie were made of just our VVR visit, the TV listing might read something like Mary’s journal entry for the day we arrived:

  Day 64: We’re finally at Vermilion Valley Resort! We had a hard time getting there because of an enormous hill and overshooting the ferry. Then the fuel line on the ferry malfunctioned and Dad had to hold it in place. Mom christened the ferry ‘the Henry.’ Good supper. Good night!

  The VVR ferry picks up backpackers, and anyone else who wants a ride to the resort, twice a day at the east end of Edison Lake, near PCT Mile 877. We were determined to make the afternoon’s 4:45 ferry, so we pushed ourselves very hard, wading Bear Creek in our boots, suffering through battalions of mosquitoes, pushing up a steep ridge, and then hurrying down dozens of switchbacks on the other side. We reached the lake in plenty of time but somehow managed to walk right past the sign directing us to the ferry’s landing. Our friends Paul and Alice, John Muir Trail thru-hikers, were already there, and we all got on the ferry together with a couple picnickers. We also greeted three thru-hikers, including Chacoman, who were disembarking from their VVR stay and hoping to get in a few trail miles before dark. The other two hikers were the intriguingly named Rot ‘n’ Skirt. Skirt was one of the few women whom we met who wore a skirt for serious backpacking (it’s becoming more common every year), thus her trail name. (We met no men wearing skirts that year, although we have since.) Rot, we gathered, earned his name because Skirt told him he smelled like something dead that had been lying in the hot sun too long. Strong hikers, they stayed ahead of us all the way north, and we never met them again.

  The ferry started to leave about five minutes early, without the customary horn-blowing, but just as the captain pushe
d off from shore, a hiker came bounding down the side trail, waving his arms and shouting, “Wait! Wait for me!” He barely made it. I’m guessing if he’d known what was coming, he might not have been so keen.

  As it turned out, the captain may have been anxious to get going, but the ferry was in no hurry. The motor coughed. It sputtered. It stopped. As I settled back on the boat’s bench, ready for a relaxing, no-stress trip across the lake, certain that I was about to be transported to a hikers’ paradise of hot, delicious food and hot, running water, the ferry slowly drifted away from the shore. When we were about 40 feet out, it dawned on me that floating out onto the lake in a powerless boat was a whole lot less pleasant than staying on shore. I gazed longingly at the solid ground we had left behind so gleefully just minutes before.

  Next, a man and a woman in a small aluminum motorboat with “VVR” stenciled on it rowed up to the hapless ferry. They explained that they had run out of gas and asked for a ride back to the resort, with the ferry towing the boat. “Sure!” the captain replied. So they clambered aboard, trusting the crew—the captain and one other VVR employee—to tie the boat to the ferry. Bad idea. As the ferry floated toward the middle of the lake, the line tying the boat came loose, and the boat promptly slid off in the opposite direction. “The boat!” the woman yelled frantically. “The boat! My purse is on it … my wallet … my driver’s license!” The captain barely acknowledged her. “Who tied up that boat?” he asked rhetorically. (Paul, an experienced sailor, muttered, “No one, obviously.”) Finally, the captain acknowledged the problem, assuring her that “someone will come back for it,” and then he returned his attention to the recalcitrant engine. Sputter. Cough.

  By that point, the ferry was heading straight toward the granite boulders lining the lake. Gary asked the captain if he could help. Motioning to a couple poles used for hauling fish on board, the captain told Gary, “Why don’t you keep us away from those rocks?” Gary and another passenger grabbed the gaffs and started fending the wayward ferry off the boulders. Once the immediate danger passed, Gary walked aft to where the captain was becoming more desperate and more red-faced. “What’s happening with the motor?” Gary asked. “It’s the fuel line,” the captain replied. “Here—hold this.” He handed Gary the broken fuel line and instructed him to hold it together so the gas could pour through the line instead of into the lake. To do this effectively, Gary had to climb over the railing and crouch on the platform extending beyond it, with one arm linked through the rail for security. With Gary precariously positioned holding the fuel line together, the captain finally succeeded in starting the engine, and the ferry kicked like a mule before roaring off across the lake. As we zipped along, I whispered to Mary that this ferry should be called “the Henry,” after the recalcitrant mule we met above Snow Canyon.

  For 15 minutes, Gary clung to the rail and the fuel line, with the spray flying around him and the afternoon breeze getting chillier by the moment. When we reached the dock across Lake Edison, the owner of the resort acted as though this sort of thing happened on every trip. The crew member, on the other hand, was grateful for Gary’s help, and scurried around digging up extra shampoo, soap, and towels for us to show her appreciation. I began to suspect such equipment failures and creative fixes were the rule rather than the exception at VVR. Finally arriving at Vermilion Valley, we were eager for a room with real beds and a shower, not just space in a crowded tent cabin and a turn at the community bathing facility. So we signed up for a room and headed straight for the restaurant’s patio, where Paul and Alice had already established themselves at a picnic table. They didn’t mind that we ate before showering, and neither did we. The food was good and so was the service. The chef and the waitress took great care of us, and we cheerfully tipped them more than adequately. Chef John’s brown sugar-dill sauce for the salmon was so good I wrote down the ingredients in my journal.

  Otherwise, we found ourselves nickel-and-dimed at every opportunity. I understand that isolated resorts have to charge top price for supplies. But it didn’t occur to me that some of these top-dollar supplies would be defective. We purchased a fuel canister at VVR, only to discover a week later when we looked at it more closely that someone had scratched “not for resale” on the bottom with the tip of a knife blade. We guessed that a previous thru-hiker had left the canister in the hiker box out in front for a needy hiker’s use, and that the management had retrieved it, put a price sticker on it, and charged money for something that was meant to be free. And on top of that, the canister was defective, which we discovered, too late, months later. Up until Vermilion Valley, our town stops had cost us maybe $100, roughly half for a room and half for food. Because we took a zero day at VVR, the bill was bound to be higher, but I was still surprised when I saw the total for a room for two nights, four meals, two ferry rides, and a few incidentals: a whopping $556. Spend a million, indeed! With friends like that, who needs collection agencies?

  Our next several town stops were relatively uneventful, but notable in part because during two of them we got the chance to visit with loved ones: Lipa, a friend and retired park ranger, and my sister Carol and her family, including her first grandchild, whom we were meeting for the first time. Those stops in Bridgeport, California, and Carson City, Nevada, were among our more relaxed town stops, with people like Lipa and Carol looking after us. And then came Belden, at Mile 1,289.

  Belden Town Resort is a small community along California State Highway 70. It straddles a narrow piece of land, with the highway and the Feather River on one side, and the railroad on the other. The PCT drops down a steep hill, cuts across the railroad tracks, and finally meanders into the little resort. We had phoned ahead to reserve a cabin, but when we got there, we couldn’t find anyone who knew anything about it. Here, my small-town background came in handy: I knew to hang out near the bar, and the person in charge would show up eventually. “In charge” may be an exaggeration. The two young people running the place seemed overwhelmed with it all. Restaurant hours were apparently decided at the whim of the cook. The small store’s supplies were stacked on the floor in the same bags and boxes in which they had left the nearest discount food warehouse. Our resupply box? “Well, gee, I don’t know, dude, it’s gotta be around here somewhere … Why don’t you try the office?”

  Back in the main room, we leaned against the bar to wait, admiring the bills of various monetary denominations tacked to the ceiling and dodging the locals who approached us. One such denizen was a potbellied fellow with a hairy chest, who swaggered up and shoved a shaky hand in Gary’s direction. “Hello, there!” he bellowed, while ogling Mary. “I’m John.” About the time he wandered out of sight, another guy walked up and launched into a long story about how he and his fellow band members had run an extension cord through the bedroom window of the cabin we were renting for the night so that he could operate an open-air tattoo parlor out of the back of the band’s old school bus. Eventually, we did track down the acting manager and got the key to our cabin.

  At our cabin, we weren’t terribly surprised to discover the meager sanitation and maintenance standards of the resort. Whoever cleaned the cabin apparently never looked above eye level. Doing laundry later on, I found that one of the resort’s washing machines was capable of delivering a nasty electrical shock. On the other hand, we did get some cooked food at the bar, augmented by canned goods that we could heat up in our kitchen. There were plenty of clean towels for our showers, and plenty of hot water. By the time we got to bed, we were feeling pretty good (and possibly a little high, as well, what with the sweet, skunky smell that intermingled with the already strong tobacco and barbecue smoke wafting through town).

  By 10 p.m., Belden Town was delightfully quiet, and the three of us fell into a deep, profound sleep. At 2 a.m., I awoke, startled by the sensation that the entire cabin was trembling. I heard a rumbling. Having lived in California for 20 years, my first thought was that we were experiencing an earthquake. But this didn’t feel like any earthquak
e I remembered. Rumble, rumble, shake, shake, RUMBLE, RUMBLE. My mind turned instead to the distinct possibility that this was The End of the World. The noise was deafening, and the vibrations in the pitch-black bedroom were downright disorienting. For a second, I was truly frightened. Gary with his earplugs and Mary with her 10-year-old’s ability to sleep through practically anything left me alone to deal with this bizarre situation. Finally (maybe 20 seconds later), it dawned on me that a train was running through town, on the tracks above Belden. That was reassuring—until it occurred to me that if the train were to derail, not just we but the entire town of Belden would be history. Judgment Day is a one-time event, but trains derail every day. I eventually fell asleep again—until the next train rolled through. I know people can get used to this sort of thing, but our night in Belden wasn’t the kind that would make me want to return. I had to wonder how the families with children I had seen earlier coped with the train noise at night. Maybe they were from large cities and a freight train booming and banging down the tracks during the wee hours wasn’t any more disturbing than a Boeing 747 with its landing gear nearly touching the roof, or an ambulance with lights and sirens blaring, tearing down the street.

  Our last experience in Belden was a very good one. We headed out in mid-morning, leaving what felt like a ghost town. About a mile up the trail, Mary and I took a short detour down to the post office while Gary stayed behind to guard our packs from bears. Dorothy, the postmistress, was friendly and helpful, and when she heard our names, she exclaimed, “You must be the famous family.” We felt so good.

  Our next stop, at Old Station, was like celebrating Christmas in August. It was Day 95, and we were 1,378 miles along. We caught up with Vice and Spreadsheet, and met Dumptruck for the first time, as he had just returned from a break while recovering from injuries. A friendly postmistress helped us retrieve our unusually large and heavy resupply box. Opening the box was like opening Santa’s pack: new boots for Gary, a new water purifier, and for Mary—not one, not two, but three sets of color comics from Sunday newspapers of weeks gone by. A helpful clerk let us store our packs at the store while we dined at the Coyote Cafe. That night we stayed with Georgi and Dennis Heitman, and the next morning had our second breakfast at the Coyote Cafe.