Zero Days

by Barbara Egbert

  Part of the problem is that many people see a PCT hike as inaccessible because of time commitment, physical conditioning requirements, or financial cost. The idea that a thru-hike isn’t something that normal people should seriously consider, that it’s too extreme and too dangerous, is one that I run across occasionally in the outdoor recreation community. Ready to repudiate that idea are Ken and Marcia Powers, who got into backpacking as a couple in their 50s, hiked the Triple Crown (the PCT, the Appalachian Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail), and eventually became the first people to complete the American Discovery Trail—a 4,900-mile trek from coast to coast—within one calendar year.

  Other than these accomplishments, Ken and Marcia are perfectly normal people. Ken was a database analyst for an oil company, Marcia taught flute, and they raised two sons before retiring. They both are in good physical shape, of course, but they are by no means extraordinary athletes. Marcia modestly describes her fitness routine as walking with a friend, while Ken admits, “I mostly play with computers.” The Powers agree that beyond a physical fitness level that many people can attain, a strong mental outlook is important for a successful thru-hike. If enough people can deal with the mental stress of watching a lightning storm approach while they’re trying to get over a mountain pass, and can embrace uncertainty as a positive experience, Ken and Marcia are certain that thru-hikers will continue to push the limits and maintain the popularity of long-distance backpacking.

  Yo-yo hiker Scott Williamson is concerned, as I am, that the current generation of Americans in their 20s—traditionally the prime thru-hiker group—isn’t producing as many serious backpacking enthusiasts as earlier generations did. “Within the general population, the younger generation definitely is not hitting the trail as much,” he says. And he’s concerned that today’s children—who would ideally be hiking and supporting long trails 10 or 15 years from now—have less contact with the outdoors than any generation in history. When we hiked the trail in 2004, books and magazine articles had begun to focus on the need for modern American children to rediscover strenuous exercise and to re-connect with nature. And the federal government was moving in the direction of a major initiative to get more children involved in outdoor recreation.

  There is no end to the things PCT advocates worry about down the road. Will the U.S. Forest Service be able to devote adequate money and staff time toward maintaining and improving the trail? Will enough volunteers resist the lure of Second Life and SimCity to dig real trails and saw up real trees for the pleasure of getting real blisters on their hands?

  The future of the Pacific Crest Trail does indeed have many question marks. But one thing is beyond question: Everyone who has had any involvement with the nation’s major scenic trails becomes deeply interested in their welfare. If that passionate belief in the value of the long-trail experience that I see at backpackers’ gatherings continues in the hearts and minds of enough Americans, then when Mary is ready to take her children on the PCT, it will be there waiting.

  GLOSSARY

  ADZPCTKO: Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kick Off.

  bear box: A large, sturdy, metal container, bolted to the ground or chained to trees, in which backpackers store any scented supplies (such as food, sunscreen, and toothpaste) to protect them from bears.

  bear canister: A hard, smooth container for food and toiletries that bears cannot open, but which they have been known to try to roll away.

  crampons: Spikes arranged to fit over boots, to provide traction on ice and snow.

  flip flop: A thru-hike punctuated by brief periods on the road, where the hiker travels from one section of the trail to another in an effort to avoid impassable snow, forest fires, and other impediments. Flip-flop thru-hikers walk every section, but out of order.

  gaiters: Protective sleeves that go over ankles and boots to keep snow and dirt out of boots, and burrs and thorns out of socks.

  giardia: The bane of backpackers. A microscopic intestinal parasite that brings on abdominal pain, diarrhea, weakness, and very large motel bills. Filtering water and washing hands seem to offer the best prevention.

  guidebook: The three-volume set of guidebooks from Wilderness Press, describing the entire route of the PCT, is read, revered, relied upon, and occasionally reviled by every serious thru-hiker.

  hiker box: The boxes in which thru-hikers abandon the food they’ve grown tired of, and hope to pick up something that never gets old, like Pop-Tarts, Pringles, and Snickers bars. Unfortunately, these boxes are usually filled with the corn pasta and dried beans that backpackers tend to buy in fits of healthy aspirations, and ditch upon completing their first section.

  ice ax: A mountaineering tool with a blunt edge for cutting steps in snow and a very sharp, pointed end for digging into the snow in order to stop you from a fatal fall on steep slopes (this technique is called self-arrest).

  resupply box: A box (or sometimes a bucket) mailed to post offices or other stops along the way, containing everything the backpacker needs for the next section of trail, from food to boots.

  section hiker: A backpacker who hikes one or more sections of trail at a time, usually with the goal of eventually completing an entire long trail.

  slack-packing: Hiking with just enough food and gear for the day, while leaving tent, sleeping bag, stove, and so on at whichever point the hiker plans to spend the night.

  Tahoe Rim Trail (TRT): A 165-mile trail that circles Lake Tahoe, which lies on the California-Nevada state line, generally following the crests of the mountains. A great practice hike for the PCT. About one third of the TRT shares tread with the PCT on the California side of the lake.

  thru-hiker: A backpacker who intends to complete an entire long trail during one calendar year.

  town stop: A town, resort, motel, or trail angel’s home at which a backpacker gets off the trail and usually resupplies.

  trail angel: A person who helps thru-hikers in a multitude of ways—providing sleeping accommodations, showers, laundry facilities, meals, movies, internet connections, rides, and more—usually as a hobby, but sometimes inadvertently.

  trail magic: Unanticipated good fortune, generally involving offers of food, lodging, transportation, and other goodies, but also applied to any really nice experience or coincidence that goes beyond what a thru-hiker could reasonably hope for.

  trail name: A nickname that a thru-hiker assumes (or is assigned) for the duration of the long-trail experience, and often beyond.

  trail register: A notebook or binder kept at sites where thru-hikers congregate, in which they sign in to let others know how they’re doing, and to express their thoughts about the trail.

  trail section: A length of trail, ranging from about 38 miles to 176 miles, usually beginning and ending with a road and a resupply destination. PCT trail sections run alphabetically from south to north. All of California is divided into sections A through R. The alphabet starts over a little north of the Oregon state line with Section A, and ends at the Canadian border with Section L.

  trekking poles: Frequently mistaken for ski poles, trekking poles are crucial for some, a nuisance for others, and one of the most frequently lost items on the trail (right after sunglasses). They take the place of a walking stick, easing stress on the knees and providing balance for stream crossings.

  Triple Crown: The Pacific Crest Trail (2,650 miles), Appalachian Trail (2,160 miles), and Continental Divide Trail (less than 3,000 miles at the time of this book’s publication, but when complete, the CDT will be 3,100 miles). Someone who completes all three is a Triple Crowner and achieves major bragging rights at any backpacker gathering. Oddly enough, Triple Crowners are usually very modest about their achievements.

  vitamin I: Ibuprofen. The only essential supplement for backpackers.

  water cache: A place where trail angels maintain a supply of water, usually in plastic gallon jugs, for backpackers’ use.

  water filter: A lightweight, portable device that uses mechanical or chemical
methods to remove contaminants from drinking water.

  water report: A list of water sources along the trail, with information on location, flow rate, cleanliness, and other essentials.

  Yogi: The process of inspiring trail magic from unsuspecting strangers. Also the trail name used by Jackie McDonnell, a Triple Crowner from Kansas who has written guides to the PCT and CDT and is one of Mary’s personal heroes.

  OFF-TRAIL ANGELS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Day 52: The Lucky Shekel, A True Story by Mary

  One day, Mary was walking up the PCT. Suddenly, she pointed out a cairn/post-type marker to her mom and dad, next to a faint trail. They discussed, after her dad had seen an H2O in sticks, and concluded that they were at Corral Spring. Mary and her dad walked down and filtered water. Mary stood up to look around. Luckily, her dad noticed her shekel on the ground. She put it back in her pocket. Then, they went back to her mom. But Mary’s shekel, to her great dismay, had fallen out of a hole in her pocket. Though she searched, she couldn’t find it. Finally, after sadly walking up the PCT, she felt something in her shoe. It was the shekel! She named it Lucky.

  The End

  —from Scrambler’s journal

  OFF-TRAIL ANGELS

  BESIDES THE TRAIL ANGELS who help many thru-hikers every year by providing water caches, overnight lodging, resupply opportunities, and many other essentials—including, quite often, a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on—there are the people I think of as off-trail angels. These are the friends and relations who help each individual thru-hiker by mailing boxes, caring for plants and pets, and providing transportation and much other assistance. We had several of these invaluable, behind-the-scenes helpers, and most prospective thru-hikers need to line up a similar list of off-trail angels. My sister Liz, neighbor Nancy, and friend Lipa, in particular, went far beyond what anyone should expect an angel to do. They truly deserve a big pair of feathered wings apiece, about 5 feet long, with gold tips—and shiny halos to match.

  My little sister, Liz, was in charge of our resupply boxes. She made certain they would arrive at each town stop about a week before we did, shipping them USPS or UPS as necessary. The timing of resupply boxes is very important. If a box is sent too early, so that it sits in a post office more than two weeks, it may be returned to the sender. And if it’s sent too late, by even a day, the thru-hiker will have to buy food, medications, and other gear at exorbitant prices in resort stores—assuming they can even find the things they need to buy. Every one of our boxes arrived within that two-week window. And before sealing them, Liz would add color comics, funny photos off the internet, and birthday cards as appropriate. She also accepted all our mail, which we had arranged to be forwarded to her, paid the bills we couldn’t either pay in advance or set up for automatic payment, and made sure there was enough money in the bank to cover everything. When personal letters arrived, she’d open them and then respond, telling the letter writers we were on the trail and would get back to them in the fall. When we wrote to her or called, Liz would phone the rest of the family with a progress report. And when a jury summons showed up for me, she wrote to the court and arranged for a six-month extension. It’s no exaggeration to say she took better care of our affairs than we do ourselves. Liz’s husband, Marq, also qualifies as an off-trail angel, and not just for carrying all those heavy boxes to the post office. He was the source of the shekel that Mary mentions in her journal entry, thus contributing to one of Mary’s most memorable episodes.

  My older sister, Carol, my brother, George, and my Dad, Grandpa (his name is George, too, but everyone calls him Grandpa), really got into the hike, as well. They helped us with everything from rides and car storage to food and shelter. But my younger sister was the one we utterly relied on. Every thru-hiker should have a sister like Liz.

  Nancy was the neighbor who watched our home, kept the house plants happy, and took care of the cats. Every several days, she walked up to our house, cleaned the cat box, refilled the automatic food and water dispensers, and watered the Christmas cactus and the creeping Charlies. The cats, Hank and Henrietta, ungrateful little things, never did warm up to Nancy, even though she was keeping them alive. I wouldn’t have blamed her if we’d come back to find the house plants had withered and the cats had gone feral. But instead, they thrived. The plants were the healthiest and bushiest they’d ever been, and the cats were starved only for affection. Nancy also kept Mary’s classmates aware of her progress, and even met us at Ebbetts Pass and treated us to a night in a motel at Bear Valley. I always looked forward to calling her from the trail and hearing her calm, competent voice assuring me everything was fine on the home front.

  Lipa grew up in a poor family in a small town in Texas. Her father died when she was 8 years old, leaving her mother to raise four children. Lipa married at 23, leaving Texas for the first time in her life when her soldier husband was transferred to Germany. When we met her, she had recently buried her husband after caring for him for years as he slowly succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. Her children were grown, and she was on the verge of retirement as a park ranger for the East Bay Regional Park District. Of our entire personal trail angel network, she was the only one with extensive experience backpacking and getting around in the wilderness—in fact, she and her husband had once considered hiking the PCT. So when she met us at Sonora Pass or took us to Bend, Oregon, or when she made a quick trip to REI to buy socks and underwear for us, or when she sorted our supplies, she knew better than anyone what we needed.

  Her most angelic moment came when I called her from Crater Lake. It was August 31, just a week away from our planned rendezvous with her at a trailhead near Elk Lake Resort in southern Oregon. She would bring us our resupply box, and drive us to Bend. We had planned to meet her on Saturday or Sunday of Labor Day weekend, which meant she had to make motel reservations for one of the busiest weekends of the year. Gary became very ill the day before we got to Mazama Village in Crater Lake National Park, and when we got there, the pay phone in front of the store didn’t work, the motel rooms had no phones, and our cell phone had no coverage. When I finally got through to Lipa, I had to explain that we were running late, having taken a zero day while Gary recovered, and wouldn’t be able to meet her until the day after Labor Day at the earliest. I expected Lipa to point out the difficulties of getting reservations on a busy weekend and then having to change them, not to mention altering her travel plans, and what a pain in the neck this was getting to be. That’s probably what I would have done. But she didn’t. She commiserated with our problems, agreed to change the reservations, wrote down the new information on when to meet us, and promised to run over to REI to buy socks. What a gem! And when she met us, she ferried us around town, combed out Mary’s tangled hair, sewed a new camera pouch for Gary, and generally made us wonder how we’d ever gotten through life without her. She did, however, acknowledge that helping us on the PCT had cured her of any desire to hike it herself.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  EXTRA-SPECIAL THANKS go to my husband, Gary, for providing his wonderful photographs and for his crucial editing of my manuscript; my daughter, Mary, for sharing her journal entries and illustrations and for her invaluable suggestions to improve this book; my volunteer readers, Liz Lipton and Marshall Hamilton; my volunteer proofreaders, Michele Jurich and Stewart Applin; Eva Dienel, Roslyn Bullas, Larry Van Dyke, Laura Keresty, and Emily White at Wilderness Press; and literary attorney Robert Pimm for negotiating my book contract and providing advice about the publishing process.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BARBARA EGBERT, a.k.a. Nellie Bly, is an experienced hiker, backpacker, and travel writer. An English major (and proud of it!), she has worked in print journalism for more than 30 years. She lives with her husband, Gary Chambers (Captain Bligh), and daughter, Mary (the famous Scrambler), in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit their website at www.PCTFamily.com.