Foreword

 With a succession of mouse clicks, the web site of Peter Haskell, OnTheCrest.com, and his journal entries for his trekking odyssey, appeared before me.  For what seemed like years, this dear friend had talked of an “impossible” dream to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Reading the journal entries about his preparation, I realized that he had actually left Houston that very day for this grand adventure. This little leprechaun of a man, with white hair, dancing blue eyes and a wry smile always at the ready, the man with whom I enjoyed long Sunday morning walks and talks, was actually “doing it”.  Reality was shifting.  What had been dreams, a topic for conversation, planning preparations and philosophical longings  (so familiar to the dreamer in us all) was now a reality.  In the days that followed, new journal entries appeared from the trail. Peter’s writing resonated with my own youthful experiences of hiking in the Tetons.  His walk became a shared walk involving those who had supported him in preparations, those whom he met on the trail, and those who read his journal and responded in e-mails which he received periodically.

When a peer dreams a great dream and then leaves the comfort of complacency and actually walks into that dream, transforming it into reality, the world of all those who know him is changed, is stirred.  It is as if certain underlying assumptions of one’s life are challenged and a call is heard from within to awake and respond to one’s own inner longings.  It is all the more remarkable and poignant when the dreamer has to overcome significant limitations that would appear to make that dream mere whimsy.

Years ago, Peter was invited to address a group of fellow “Parkinsonians.”  He began his talk with this challenging query, “How is Parkinson’s a gift for you?”  As Joseph Campbell put it, “everything in your life that seems to be obstructive can be transformed by your recognizing that it is the means for your transition.”  To answer the question is to step out of any sense of victimhood into the full responsibility of simply being a man, to see our perceived limitations and obstacles as keys for the treasurers of our deepest longings.

As his accounts from the “front” continued, I entertained thoughts of finally having the corrective knee surgery that would allow me to join him on the trail.  The journal entries, which were made from a few days to more than a week apart, were awaited with the same anticipation, hunger and impatience as that next Harry Potter publication. The honesty and humor of these pages created an unanticipated intimacy with their author and his experience.  Dormant dreams and aspirations were reawakened and I felt the green of spring returning to browned branches of my own life.

Peter’s encompassing journey is an eloquent example of Joseph Campbell’s invitation:

Follow your bliss.

The heroic life is living the individual adventure.

There is no security in following the call to adventure.

Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.

To refuse the call means stagnation.

What you don’t experience positively you will experience negatively.

In another man’s story, I recognized my own call to action and the opportunity to shed limiting concepts of who I am and how I can play in the world.  With the surgery and rehabilitation behind me, there is renewed energy to pursue new and challenging dreams and to more fully engage life.  May the reader find in Windmills By the Pink Motel his or her own dreams and quests and the enthusiasm with which to join them in action.

June 2000                                                     Michael A. Cole

Houston      

 

In 2001, I decided to move to an ashram in India for one year, offering my skills and services to a group of charitable trusts.  I was resolute about the decision, but how it was to happen responsibly, with a daughter in college, a small law practice that seemed dependent upon my presence, a large mortgage and the unknown reaction of colleagues, clients, friends and family, whose blessings or reactions would determine how this would occur, remained unclear.  After announcing my plans and explaining the importance of this undertaking for my own heart’s sake, there was a discomfiting period of several weeks, when “how this was going to play out” was not in my hands, could not be controlled, planned around or known.  The only place in which there was any relief was the present and the acceptance that I would not “know” until it was time.

Three months later I walked into my “impossible dream” for what was one of the most memorable and important years of my life.  In the adventure, I experienced a profound freedom that had been missing all of my adult life.  The experience continues to inform me, even as I return to my law practice, proudly witness my daughter’s graduation with honors and find myself at home once again.

As I can bear witness, Peter’s “following the call to adventure,” does “change the world” . . . beginning with the adventurer and rippling out to those touched by the adventure.  In some unquantifiable measure Peter’s resolve played into my own undertaking.  Should the call to adventure resonate in your being, you have a good read ahead.

April 2005                                                Michael A. Cole

Houston

Preface to the Updated Edition

This updated edition of the journal adds some background commentary, corrects minor errors and includes entries from weeks in Oregon, Washington, and Southern California.

At least from the point of view of the householder I have become since I first set foot on the Pacific Crest Trail five years ago, I was in an altered state when I wrote this journal. The journal consists mostly of fragments—partly, no doubt, because I wrote it on an eight-ounce palmtop using my thumbs.  Nevertheless, I find it entrancing, perhaps in the same way my great grandson JJ is intrigued with “The Baby” he sees on videos of himself that we replay. Just as JJ laughs and commiserates with that past being on the television screen, so do I shake my head in disbelief when I read of my experiences on the PCT.

I like to think that the trek is a work in progress, that before I die, I will have completed the entire 2650-mile PCT.  2317 miles to go before I sleep.  Now, aside from the sheer length of the trail, forces make that goal unlikely.  Since I began this adventure, the stock market and my count-on-able income have dramatically declined and only partially sprung back, parts of the PCT have burned, our house needs major reairs, and my Parkinson’s seems more intrusive by the month. Perhaps the biggest obstacle, however, is the temptation to embrace the notion that long distance hiking is really hard work and the self-doubt that makes me wonder if I am willing to work this hard at hiking, why am I not transforming an organization or getting our roof repaired or arranging for the living room to be painted or contributing more love and attention to JJ.

When I first arrived home after completing 205 miles of the trail, I went out on the hustings to see if I could recapture and share my experience, raise some funds for the local Parkinson’s foundation, and perhaps stoke up some consulting business. I addressed 14 Rotary clubs, delivered two presentations at the well-known outdoor store REI, and gave the keynote address to a group of young recently-matriculated psychology Ph.D. graduates. With the exception of the REI presentations (all of the attendees seemed to be as crazy as I was), this was scary stuff!  Much scarier, in fact, than anything I’d faced on the trail. Particularly memorable was one moment when, adressing 100 impeccably-dressed professionals at a country club in one of the newer comunities near Houston, I told a joke and forgot the punchline. I did sell a lot of journals, but I often had the impression that the buyers were shelling out their dollars from the same dutifulness that makes us buy Girl Scout Cookies.

One morning in April 2000, not long after leaving my departure point at Campo, I awoke feeling that the months-long long-distance hike I had sentenced myself to was comparable to the kind of hard labor that characterizes a prison sentence.  Fortunately for my well-being, such thoughts never again intruded.  But, five years later,  it remains to be seen whether I return to the trail, to face the long climbs, the heavy backpack, the lousy food and uncomfortable sleep, and the dangers of fording ice-cold rivers and walking snow ledges, not to mention the concerns of my wife and, again, the incompletion of major household repairs.  A friend and hiking mentor of mine, Dave Stockton, told me that it was only after he had walked 600 miles of the PCT that he felt comfortable on the trail and that his mind settled down and got creative.  By any reasonable measure, the 333 miles I have completed so far look paltry. Still, I like to think of it as a double-digit (13 %) piece of the 2650 miles of the PCT and part of a life-long pursuit.

April 2005                                   Peter C. Haskell

Acknowledgments

The following individuals contributed robust support for my original trek in the form of enthusiasm, labor, money, or technical assistance:  Bill Barron, Marian Bell, Paula Belleggie, Sue Brightman, Michael Cole, David Daniel, Libby Danziger, Ginan, Saad, Lina, and Omar Dimachkieh, John Everett, Hal Espo, Brian Feldman, Kelly M., Sydney, and Fernando Flores-New, Ben Haskell, Hank and Pat Haskell, Sidney W.W. Haskell, Barbara Karkabi, Susanne and Jim Koenig, Bob Lewis, Shelly Moore, Marlin and Martin Murdock, Dr. Glenda Owen, Edie Premazon, Craig Reynolds, Dr. Victor Rivera, Sabina and John Sten, David Stockton, and Davis Tucker.  I also appreciated the 50 some people who pledged a contribution for each mile I walked.

I would like to thank Gemini Graphics, Kelty, Liquid Development, and Novartis Pharmaceuticals for their

contributions.  For their generosity on the trail, I salute Meadow Ed  Faubert, Mark the Samaritan, Paul Miller and Pat Ziegler, Bob Riess, and Helen and Don Middleton.  To fellow hikers Valerie Neck and Michael Gay, I am indebted to you for your courage,  generosity, and good company.  I was also deeply moved—and often riotously entertained—by dozens of other hikers who expressed appreciation for my endeavor.  For this Updated Edition, Emily Wheeler generously, skillfully, and relentlessly edited the journal.  Thanks to the San Bernardino Search And Rescue people for their readiness and dedication.  And finally, I thank my wife Edit for her willingness to accept and assist me with what must often seem to be an odd and quixotic pursuit.

Prologue

 The Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail (PCT) runs from the Mexican border at Campo, California, to the Canadian border, at Manning, British Columbia—a distance of 2650 miles.  In 1998, I declared that I would hike the 1700-mile California section of the Trail.  Having been diagnosed as having Parkinson’s Disease in 1985, I realized the magnitude of the task.  Trying to be realistic, I set a “minimal goal” of 200 miles, which would take me through a sort of microcosm of the whole trail, since it included desert, meadow, and alpine areas.  In the Spring of 2000, I accomplished this more modest goal, discovering in the process not only the magnificence of the desert and mountains of Southern California, but also the particular challenges faced by a Parkinsonian in leaving the comforts of civilization.  In the fall of 2000, I walked another 60 miles of the trail, in 2001 another 40, and in 2004 33. What follows is my journal of what turned out to be a month-long trek, as well as three additional week-long hikes, on the PCT.

                                                                                 

• ·  ·  ·

It seems to have come out of the blue, this notion of walking a long trail. In my twenties, thirties, and forties, I had been an enthusiastic backpacker, hiking parts of the Appalachian Trail and, in 1976, as a faculty member at Colgate University, co-leading a winter wilderness expedition in the Adirondack Mountains with a group of students. Then, I married a cosmopolitan woman who had no interest whatsoever in hiking.  With Edit, I focused all of my energies on founding and running a consulting business—in Houston, a city so flat that a suburb called “Mount Houston” evokes laughter. Occasionally, when Edit was out of town on business, I would drive an hour north and car camp, and once or twice I flew to Seattle to backpack with my son Ben, who himself had become a rabid mountaineer.

In 1996, I had cruised on a sloop with Ben, my brother Hank, and friends along the coast of British Columbia to Princess Louisa Inlet. Adjacent to the inlet is a steep mountain, which a group of us decided to climb the day after arriving.  While the others sat for a while next to the spectacular waterfall at the top of the mountain, I set off down the mountain first, knowing that I would be the slowest.  Within 10 minutes, I had lost the trail. After a fruitless search for landmarks, I made the mistake of setting off straight down the mountain rather than either staying put or seeking the trail laterally. A trek that should have taken me 45 minutes turned into a harrowing two or three hours of lowering myself by branches among fallen old-growth trees, getting stung by yellow jackets, and encountering countless dead ends.  When I finally reached the bottom of the mountain, it had been dark for an hour and the Royal Canadian Police were preparing to launch a search and rescue mission.

In retrospect, my very failure to do the right things on that brief, but hair-raising, trek whet my appetite to do it right.  By 1998, my inner hiking demon was ready to leave his cage, and, in quick succession, I read a spate of trekking books, from Krakauer’s Into the Wild to Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods to that quintessence of all hikers’ books, Rawicz’s A Long Walk.

I announced to my friends and relatives that I was going to walk the length of the Pacific Crest Trail.  Particularly because of the Parkinson’s disease, my announcement was met with incredulity. An old friend wrote, “Come to your senses!” Others asked, “What have you got to prove?” And my wife was not amused.

By the autumn or 1999, having decided to aim for the length of California—1750 miles—I was virtually consumed with preparations for the trek. With a thirty-pound pack on my back, I walked the parks of Houston. Parkinson’s medication had nearly, albeit temporarily, restored my motor functions, and I felt fit. I let a modest annuity I had been fortunate enough to build over the years kick into gear, so our basic household expenses were covered. An Internet chat room devoted to the Pacific Crest Trail provided fodder for debate: the virtues of gas versus gasoline stoves, tents versus tarpaulins, and a host of other useful tidbits. After decades of concentrating on the world of work, I found this focus on gear and the lore of the trail a refreshing change. The Houston Chronicle interviewed me and published a full-page article with the subheading “undaunted by disease, hiker prepares for 1,700-mile hike.”  Pretty heady stuff!

A week later, I departed for California.

P.C.H.

____________________________________

Preparations and Departure

____________________________________

Houston, TX, January 27, 2000______________________

Less than three months to plan my itinerary, stock food, create the $5000 I’ll need for equipment and expenses, and get in shape. Pretty daunting. On the other hand, I never thought it’d be easy. At least I’ve begun a regimen of reasonably hefty walks—six miles, every other day, wearing a pack.

Houston, January 29, 2000__________________________

My friend Bob Lewis and I struggle to determine whether or not a full-blown web site, documenting the trek, is feasible (and affordable).  Tomorrow, Dave Stockton and I will take my first long day hike on the Lone Star Trail since Thanksgiving.  (This morning, I jogged the Museum of Fine Arts five-kilometer run in 46 minutes.  Does this count as trail preparation??)

 

Houston, February 15, 2000_________________________

Ever so slowly getting into shape.  On Saturday, I ran (actually, jogged and walked) the Conoco 10K race in 72 minutes.  My walks—now with 20 pounds on my back—seem a tad easier, although after 90 minutes I start feeling fatigued.  I’m buoyed by the interest people are showing in the venture.

 

Houston, April 12, 2000_____________________________

Departing in three days.

Squeezing in a bit of journal writing: the trek, and its associated tasks, has all but overwhelmed the journal as a place of respite. I buy a state-of-the-art Kelty backpack and find it too big (I sell it on the Net in 15 minutes!).  I order a Mountainsmith replacement pack, and the store sends me the wrong size. (I get the right pack directly from Mountainsmith.)  I wait for word from the California store that might support me, and, when it doesn’t, I’m late ordering stove fuel (Esbit fuel tablets—they’re due to arrive on the day before I depart!).  I buy a digital camera and find it uses batteries so fast that it would probably be untenable on the trail. (What shall I use instead?)  I order an ice ax, and the wrong (heavier) model arrives.  Food planning, (and buying, bagging, boxing, and sending) feels like an overwhelming task.

Fortunately, a friend and her family, my wife Edit, and my nephew jump into the breach.  On Saturday, our dining room looks like a staging area for a battle.  Edit mixes and bakes a huge batch of Logan Bread, a dense energy-packed food.  (I’m determined to have this stuff: it’s more nutritious than energy bars, and a nostalgic nod to a January 1976 trek that Joe Jastrab, nine Colgate University students, and I took in the Adirondacks.)  We weigh, measure, label, combine, etc., ingredients, to create 8 x 15 dinners, plus lunches and breakfasts.  How blessed I am by these people assisting me.

Me?  I increasingly feel like a bit player in a huge enterprise.  An article on the trek appears in the Houston Chronicle, and I hear from people who say they are inspired by what I, as a person with Parkinson’s, am setting out to do.  A woman calls and says she feels that “the voice of God is working through you.”  A man e-mails me from Oregon.  In the meantime, my back and feet are sore, I’m doing too little training, and I constantly wonder what I’ve forgotten.  I send out five boxes, to trail stops.  Today, I arrange to turn my car over to my grandson, decide about a camera, order the right ice ax, and do a dozen other errands. I expect to be doing my next writing on the trail.

Houston, April 13, 2000_____________________________

Selling the unworkable digital camera on eBay, buying a conventional camera, and otherwise tying together a dozen loose ends.  People ask me if I’m “getting excited;” mostly I feel a tremendous focus on the task at hand.

San Diego, CA, April 15, 2000_______________________

At 5:00, this morning, I feel the full effect of my Parkinson’s as I struggle to pack my gear into a duffel bag.  The clock ticks away, and the packing seems to take forever.   The doorbell rings just as I step into the shower: My friends Marlin and Martin Murdock arriving to wish me well.  Once the Parkinson’s medication has kicked in, I am able to hurry, to shave, eat a banana, and finished packing.  I suspect I’ve packed way too much stuff.

Edit planned to take me to the airport, but it now seems Marlin and Martin might, if willing, do so.  Done.  The Murdocks were among the first to learn about this crazy hike, two years ago, and they have consistently hit just the right sardonic note as I prepared for the venture.

____________________________________

Southern California: Campo

to Snow Creek Village

___________________________________________

In mid-April, 2000, with five months of food packed into boxes and ready to be sent to towns along the trail by my now cautiously-supportive wife, I fly to California and, with the assistance of a trail enthusiast Bob Riess, I make my way to Campo, a tiny border town on the Mexican border and the southern terminus of the trail.  Although the first 200 miles of the trail is my rock-bottom goal, as I set out on the trail my aim is the High Sierras, and, beyond that, the Oregon border.

Boulder Oaks Campground, CA, April 18, 20000_______

I forget: Are they blind or deaf or neither?  In any case, this big ol’ rattler seemed pretty damned alert to my presence. Several miles north of Campo, I am lost in my thoughts, feeling sorry for myself because my elegantly-designed pack has turned into something resembling a sack of potatoes after one of its struts has inexplicably popped out of its track and

broken through the fabric of the pack.  I overloaded the small pack and when I roughly hoisted it onto my shoulders, there was the distinctive CRACK! of the strut breaking through.  Since the viability of the pack depends on its two struts, I am left with more of an unwieldy duffle bag than a pack.  And then, suddenly there is that ZZZZZ of the rattler—a yard away, on a stone ledge commanding the trail at about the level of my shoulders.  It is a bit of a standoff.  I speak to the snake and pound the ground with my trekking poles, but the snake is in no hurry to leave.  That is, until I dig my camera out of the pack, at which point it disappears into the mazanita bushes.

I eft the PCT monument, south of the village of Campo, at about 7:15 a.m., Sunday, April 16.  Bob Riess, the generous fellow I had met on the PCT Listserv, not only picked me up at the airport and hosted me with good conversation, food, and wine, but also delivered me to the trailhead.

Four hours into the trail, and already I’ve learned three lessons: be more deliberate in hoisting my pack onto my back, lest I render the pack unusable; get my attention out of my head and on the trail; and keep my camera close at hand.  With my attention back on the trail, I labor onward with forty lumpy pounds, aiming for Hauser Creek.  Evening ap-proaches, and clearly the creek is going to elude me on this first day, so I find a stretch of sand just off the trail and roll out my sleeping bag under a clear sky.  This is a virtual superhighway for illegal aliens, so, as darkness falls, I wonder if any of them will appear, and worse, accost me and run off with my gear.  At about 11:00, I hear a shuffling nearby.  I freeze.  But whoever it is passes me by, and I sleep relatively soundly for the rest of this first night on the trail.

The next day, with its descent to Hauser Creek and endlessly-long and hot ascent of Hauser Mountain, is tough work, mainly because of the unwieldiness of the

damaged pack.  I figure that if I succeed in getting to Lake Morena County Park, I’ll throw myself at the mercy of Mountainsmith and order a replacement pack.  It will no doubt take two or three days, but a carry-able pack will be well worth the wait.

Just as I walk into the park, a pickup driven by a rugged-looking guy pulls up beside me.  He introduces himself as Mark and says he is a volunteer park “Samaritan.”  I ask him if he knows anyone with a sewing machine who might repair my pack.  “I may be able to do that myself,” he says, and we drive to his house, where he ushers me into his extensive workshop.  He very quickly finds the source of the pack problem (I hadn’t properly seated the offending strut in a reinforced pocket) and repairs it.

It has become cold and drizzly, and with the exertion of two days, I am probably not a very reassuring-looking thru-hiker.  In any case, after asking if I am going to be OK, Mark disappears into his kitchen and emerges to hand me a paper bag full of nuts, a ripe avocado, a large orange, and pretzels.  We drive back to the park, where, with a good deal of Parkinsonian effort, I pitch my tent on a grassy spot adjacent to the trail.  A tall young hiker, who introduce himself as John, pauses near my tent, and we speak.  It turns out that he was the person who had shuffled by, the preceding evening.  I eat the orange, craw into my tent, and sleep soundly.

The generosity of this trail angel, Mark, rivals that of Bob Riess.  Left to my own devices, I’d have been baffled as to how to repair the pack.  And, later, at Boulder Oaks campground, when I take time to prepare a decent meal for myself, I especially delight in eating that perfect avocado.

Mt. Laguna, CA, April 21, 2000______________________

Slowness

You’d think it wasn’t all relative, judging by how loudly I lament that it takes me F O R E V E R  to get up and get going, an eternity to put up or take down my tent, a lifetime to stuff my gear back into my pack.  Not to mention how excruciatingly slowly I walk.  Two miles per hour?  Forget it.  Try less than one mile per hour (at this rate, I’ll make it to the High Sierras in January!).  Write on this computer?  Sorry: it’ll take too long to get it out of my pack.  Eat?  Grab whatever I can munch on.  Plan?  Naw, that’d mean my removing my map from my pocket, and I can tell you how very long THAT takes.

And combine this Parkinsonian slowness with Parkinsonian clunkiness, and some scenes are played out that only God seems to enjoy.  Like my shabby version of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” when, upon discovering that I lack the manual dexterity to light my Bic lighter, I go through two boxes of matches before, instead of dying, I ask the guy at the next campsite (fortunately, I am at Lake Morena County Park) to assist me in lighting my stove. (Come to think of it, it does feel like sort of a deadly blow to my ego to explain to this young guy why a heroic Pacific Crest Trail thru-hiker needs someone to light his stove for him.  Note: lest readers be alarmed that I can’t light a stove, I’ve learned a technique that involves a candle and is so effective that I’ve been able to use it to light the stove many times, using the last matches—a matchbook from the Cadillac Bar—that I have left, before re-supplying here at Mt. Laguna.)

If This is Such a Lark, Why am I Alone?

It occurred to me that one reason (any of my friends could have told me this—and often did) that I’ve found so few other people on the PCT is that long-distance hiking is what Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods) calls drudgery.  Anke Nowicki, a spiritual advisor to this OnTheCrest expedition, pointed out to me that the warrior needs a certain amount of innocence or ingenuousness just to get out on the quest.  For instance, anyone could have predicted the elements of what happened yesterday, and chosen to stay home instead.

Yesterday, after my first decent night’s sleep in four days (Cibbets Flats Campground—it helped that I had taken the time to find a level place for my foam sleeping pad and that I was tired after hiking until 11:00 p.m.), I got it into my head that the Trail continued from a spot I’d noticed the night before, a beautiful clear path that wound its way through colorful sage bushes.  Call it The Primrose Path; in any case, when the trail disappeared, it gradually dawned on me that I’d headed in the wrong direction.  By the time I found the PCT, I’d lost (“Lost?’ Who’s keeping score??) three hours and I had, ahead of me, four hours of walking an ascending mountain trail in the hot sun.  I’d eaten a hot breakfast at 6:30, and it was noon.  But, being two days slower than scheduled, I’d eaten all of the munchable food except a handful of nuts, and I wasn’t about to cook a meal. Suffice it to say that, by mid-trail, I seriously doubted that I would make it (and this is the temperate part of the trail, not to be compared with the upcoming Mojave Desert).  To cap off this…one might call it drudgery…I slept only fitfully in the patch of meadow just short of what the Guidebook describes as “pretty Lower Morris Meadow…the best camp so far.”  So, at 3:30 a.m., cold, my feet burning, unable to sleep, etc., I heartily salute those of my friends who have no plans whatsoever to join me on this magnificent trek.  (More about the magnificence, later.)

Julian, CA, April 25, 2000___________________________

After a precious hour of journaling time, I press the wrong button on this primitive little palm-top computer, and, whoosh!, the whole entry disappears!  Onward!

To my 122-pound frame, it feels like I’m hauling 100 pounds in the scorching sun up and down steep mountains.  Actually, it’s about 40 pounds (including what I’m wearing), it’s about 85 degrees (balmy, by Houston standards), and the ascents and descents are pretty gentle.  Still, after a day like yesterday, when I hiked for 11 hours and hitch-hiked for two, it feels like tough work. (Work?  A thru-hiker joke goes: Question—What’s the difference between a thru-hiker and a homeless person? Answer—Gore-Tex.)  My nay-saying mind has a field-day at 1:00 a.m. when, with the cold and wind and hard ground, I can’t sleep.  Or when it’s so cold and windy, as it was two days ago at Pioneer Mail Park, that my Parkinson’s kicks in, and getting packed up and ready to go takes three hours, rather than 30 minutes.

Still, there’s the kind of joy that comes to me, upon turning a corner and suddenly gazing across the spectacular Vallecito Valley.  I briefly weep, in gratitude and appreciation—specifically, for the courage of my grandson, JK, in his reshaping his life.

If I had abandonment issues, they would be sorely tested on this trek.  I’ve met some great people on the trail (opening question: “Campo?”—short for “Are you a thru-hiker who began the trek at the Mexican border, in Campo?”).  Like Jim and Ginnie Owen, who thru-hiked the Continental Divide Trail, last summer.  Inevitably, they’re moving faster than I am, so I get to know a little about them, and they’re gone.

[Later]

It’s against my nature to stay here in Julian for another night, but I need to work with Kelty, one of my sponsors, to get me a pack and sleeping bag that will work (the small internal-frame pack I have is too difficult to deal with when my Parkinson’s kicks up, as is the lightweight quilt I’m carrying), and that requires me to be near a phone for a while.  Oh yeah: I do also take some time to sample Julian’s famous apple pie; it’s as good as apple pie can get.  Tomorrow, I face the toughest section of the trail so far, a bone-jangling, waterless stretch of the Anza-Borrego Desert.  I wonder if I’m up to it.  It’s more than 30 miles long.

Warner Springs, CA, April 27, 2000__________________

The section of the Pacific Crest Trail from Campo to Warner Springs is considered by some people to be the most difficcult.  Water is scarce and paths constantly expose one to harsh sun.  One of my so-far-unrealized notions of this trek has been that I’ll arrive at my chosen campsite late in the afternoon, set up camp, write in my journal for an hour, cook and eat a handsome meal, and go to sleep.  As you can see from the following chronicle, little of that is happening.

Wednesday, 4-27, 9:00 a.m.

Leave Julian, after arranging for new equipment to be sent by Kelty to Warner Springs.  Walk and hitchhike on Route 78.

11:15 a.m.

After I’ve walked about eight miles, a young Jose picks me up (“You’re doing what?”  “Are you carrying a gun?”  “A knife?” “Are you afraid?”).  He drops me in the desert, near Scissors Crossing.  With Parkinson’s clunkiness, it takes me about an hour to get my act together (eat something, arrange my hydration system so that it’s accessible)—frustrating.

All Afternoon.

I trudge up the San Felipe Hills, through temperatures in excess of 105 degrees.  Feeling water on my trouser leg, I discover that the valve of my hydration system has departed and that I’ve lost a fourth of my water.  Bummer.  I’m suddenly joined by Tom, a 25-year-old engineer from Santa Barbara, doing the trail to “clear my head” about what’s next for him.  After a while, I let him pass.

Evening.

Needing to get to the next water supply, which could be as far as 23 miles from Scissors Crossing, I press on into the night.  But the stars, as spectacular as they are, provide scant light by which to see the trail (and, not having anticipated night travel, I have buried my flashlight deep in my pack).

Thursday, 1:00 a.m.

I spot the light of Tom’s flashlight and join him on a patch of sand.  Too shaky to untie my sleeping pad, I scoot under my quilt, after putting on a fleece hat and a jacket and try, pretty fruitlessly, to sleep.

5:00 a.m.

Tom is long gone. It takes me FOREVER to get my gear back into my pack.  I depart at 7:00.  The trail is nowhere to be found.  Sure that, if I head up the mountain, I’ll hit a switchback, I start climbing.  Killer vegetables block my path—thorns, spines, hooks, brambles.  It’s getting hot, and I’m running out of energy.  I can’t make it.  I’ll die in the desert.

But, invoking the courage of Joe Simpson, who, in Touching the Void, describes how he’d crawled some incredible distance after he’d broken his leg in a fall from an ice cliff, I decide to redouble my efforts, and I find the trail.  (Yes, I realize I’m not in Peru and that my legs are fine, but, hey, you take your inspiration where you find it.)  At about noon, I come upon  a magnificent sight: Some Sierra Club volunteers have left a cache of jugs of fresh water next to the trail.  I cook some macs ‘n cheese, replenish my water supply, and life is good.  Onward to Barrel Springs, which the guidebook describes in near-lyrical terms.

Late Afternoon.

Gauging my location by landmarks, the guidebook, my wrist altimeter and, occasionally, by compass, I calculate that I’ll be among the live oaks of Barrel Springs by 7:00 p.m.  The deep valleys among the San Felipes are a feast for the eyes, especially so the vista of Montezuma Valley to San Ysidro.  Now, the switchbacks are feeling endless and my pack very heavy and uncomfortable, so I whip out my tiny radio and anesthetize the pain with Carly Simon, “You’re So Vain” and other oldies from a San Diego station that has somehow made its way into the mountains.  (Usually available to hikers in obscure areas: Country & Western, Hispanic music, and the ever-inspiring Christian Radio.)  But after a while, I notice that twilight is descending faster than I am, and it’s time to turn off the radio and concentrate.

It’s happening again: I’m going to be making camp in the dark.  But surely those stately live oaks will make their presence known in the starlight.  Forgetaboutit; all these trees are doing is making the trail disappear in their shadow, and, as if I’m in the kind of exercise NASA might devise for its astronauts, I’m forced to make camp where I am—and, since I can’t see a thing (and again haven’t thought to make my flashlight available), to do it all by feel.  Naturally, my hands are trembling so much that…well, it’s just another little trick of God, to test my attitude.  I manage to get the sleeping pad and quilt out, sort of wrap the quilt around myself, and I’m asleep for a record four hours.  Until 2:00 a.m.  Then, I sleep only fitfully, arising at 5:00.  Hiking 12 hours per day, surviving on nuts and energy bars, and sleeping two to four hours per day—clearly some rethinking is in order, because this regimen is just not viable. (Adding to this danger: my sleeping place turns out to be a meter away from a cliff.)

Friday, 4-28-00

The idyllic Barrel Springs campground is just around the next corner.  I join Rick, a Vietnam veteran who works at a paper mill and is polishing off sections of the trail during his annual vacations.  Yesterday, we met on the trail, and he’d introduced himself by his trail name “Thankyou-Thankyou.”  I cook a meal based on cous-cous and warm myself by a fire he’s made.

Warner Springs lies 8.7 miles away; in terms of how fast I’ve been walking (eight miles per day, in 12 hours—an ironic twist on my more optimistic plan of 12 miles in eight hours!), I figure I can make it to the post office.  Rick has taken off, and I tell him, “I’m right behind you.”  But, once again, my body has other plans, and, in the cool wind, refuses to allow me to repack my pack.  I do my usual “karate yell,” lunging at the pack; while that often works when a decisive motion is in order, it’s not up to the kinds of multiple packing motions needed, and I curse and cry a cry-baby cry.  Eventually, I’m on my way, but a 4:00 p.m. post office deadline looks beyond me.

Fortunately, the trail involves little climbing, instead mercifully and refreshingly wending its way across a series of meadows and paralleling a creek.  I reach the road to Warner Springs at 3:30.  The post office, and its bounty of a new pack, a change of shoes, a sleeping bag to replace the unworkable quilt, and a box of food I’ve sent, lies 1.1 miles away.  Quickening my pace, I get to the post office by 3:57, not only to receive these packages, but also to be pleasantly surprised by Jenny and Ken Martin, whom I’ve encountered often enough for me to consider them friends.

•  •  •

I get a room in the posh Warner Springs Ranch; these motel expenses are a major, and unanticipated, hit on my credit card, but I’m beginning to think that I need to stop about every three days, to heal a blister, get some fresh food, remove a layer of grime, and, of course, write and post this journal.

As far as the grime is concerned, crawling under a barbed-wire fence to get back onto the trail, attempting to sleep on a sand dune, dozens of times each day kneeling on the ground to adjust my pack, and resting on the ground—well, I must be a specter to this impeccably-dressed and scrubbed bunch of golfers.  (Golf.  Now there’s a concept to rival thru-hiking, in terms of how-come?ness.)

On Saturday, Craig Reynolds, a friend of a friend, picks me up and drives me back to Lake Moreno, to attend a kickoff gathering for thru-hikers.  It’s a riotous, weather-beaten, gear-loving bunch, some of whom I’ve met on the Internet.  I arrange to get back to the trail at Warner Springs by driving Tracy and Aaron to Cibbets Flats and then on to Warner Springs.  Between completing this way-too-long journal entry and arranging stuff to be sent home, the day is fast disappearing. I’ve completed 110.6 miles of the trail.  I begin the next leg with a heavier—but hopefully more accessible and comfortable—pack (a Kelty Trekker) and a warmer sleeping bag (a Kelty Serrano).  Avanti!

Anza, CA, May 5, 2000_____________________________

With thanks to Ray “UK Ray” Richies, a hiker and teacher of creative writing, who read the draft of this journal entry and suggested changes.  Where on the trail are you, Ray?

Packing the Parkinsonian Way

Parkinsonians will recognize this scene—if not the circumstances, then at least the absurdity of it.  (I’m not sure what mere mortals will make of it.)  I’ll call it Packing a Pack the Parkinsonian Way.  Bear in mind that I’ve just replaced a small backpack with a larger one.

The rules and limitations of the game are that: 1) the items must fit into the pack; 2) they have to be secured; 3) the acts of folding, rolling, and stuffing are seriously handicapped; and 4) the player must be eager to be on his way.  Remember that it takes 15 minutes to get out of the sleeping bag and put on one’s shoes, 25 if it’s cold and windy.  Oh, and that the whole thing be done with alacrity.  So, here goes…Ready, set, er…Damn!  I got up at  5:00—how did it get to be 9:30!?

Getting Off the Trail for a Rest

144 miles along the PCT.  Hikers Oasis, an island created by Trail Angels Paul Miller and Pat Ziegler, is only four miles off the trail.  I leave Tule Canyon Creek, my campsite, at 7:15 a.m., and it’s now 5:00 p.m. At Kamp Anza, an RV park, the Oasis offers free respite to PCT hikers.  The dirt roads to Anza are a piece of cake, compared to the rocky ups and downs of the trail, and I’m movin’ and groovin’ down the road, their haven a beacon in my imagination.

But the roads don’t quite match the guidebook.  At the top of a hill, a hiker waves down to me; perhaps he can give me directions.  But he turns out to be a “No Hunting” sign with a rag tied to it.  It’s getting dark.  There are no longer any boulders along the way, to rest my pack on, and, after hiking nine hours (plus a two-hour lunch break), I’m feeling sufficiently enervated that I don’t dare doff my pack, lest I not be able to hoist it back up to my shoulders.  The miles seem endless. I detour half a mile to a store, to call the Oasis (their hospitality is said to extend to picking up hikers), but the store is closed, my change is deep in my pack, and             1-800-COLLECT       can’t make head or tail out of my request for directory assistance, so I schlep my pack back up onto my back—its absence during the time it took me to not complete the call allows me to regroup my energies—and I’m back on the road.

Trucks scream down on me, and I close one eye, to keep my night vision.  The guidebook promises that the campground is 1.6 miles ahead.  And it’s right: the glow of lights is the RV park.  Paul, five hikers who have preceded me, and the famous Meadow Ed (who himself devotes much of his time to being a sort of itinerant trail angel) cheer my arrival.  Ed puts a hotdog and potato salad in front of me, then a bowl of spaghetti and a glass of Tang, and life, as they say, is good.

Civilized Life vs. Trail Life

Back on the trail, after a couple of decades of not backpacking, I have a startling insight: hiking is crude.  Greg Child, a mountaineer-writer, has amusingly nailed down that fact (see his book Postcards From the Ledge), but I have to rediscover it.  From hiking and sleeping in the same clothes for a week (or two, and without a shower) to eating supper directly out of the cooking pot to gettin’ in the dirt in order to adjust one’s pack…it all adds up to a certain coarseness.

Parkinsonians particularly notice this coarseness difference and its effect on how one functions.  To an amazing extent, civilization shields one from the disadvantages of Parkinson’s.  Just the controlled temperature of the typical house makes it easier to function.  My slowest morning departures have been on account of cold and wind—medication can hardly compete with these elements.  Or try building a fire or getting an alcohol stove going or pulling on damp shoes made rigid by the cold, not to mention reassembling one’s “house” (pack) every morning.

•  •  •

On the trail to Idyllwild, tomorrow.  I expect to find patches of snow on Mt. San Jacinto.  My feet seem to be holding up.  And my stamina.  Not knowing what’s around the next corner, I think, is one of the things that keep me in this game.  In spite of my physical limitations, it’s definitely a game worth playing.

Idyllwild, CA, May 10, 2000_________________________

At 180 miles, I’ve nearly completed my minimal goal, which is to cross over Mt. San Jacinto.  At over 8,000 feet in altitude, it has felt like quite a trudge at times.  It is also spectacularly beautiful—deep valleys, clouds among the peaks, fierce winds along the divide leading up to the mountain.  My thought is that I may not be able to do it alone.  Which is where Madame Butterfly (Valerie Neck) and her husband Improv (Michael Gay) enter the scene.

But first a word about trail names.  Apparently the taking of a trail name originated on the Appalachian Trail and spilled over to folks thru-hiking its newer cousin, the PCT.  That’s all I know, but it’s beginning to make some sense to me.  Each of us has uprooted ourselves and put ourselves on this island called the PCT.  I’ve met Amigo, Weathercarrot, Skid, Mule, Rockfish, H, Llama, Silver…and I myself have taken my New Warrior* animal name, Powerful Tiger, as my trail name.  For me, it’s a touchstone of sorts: I like it, and it represents my warrior core—seldom all that evident but worth striving to be.

At Hikers Oasis, which I briefly referred to in my last journal entry, I meet a diminutive young sparkplug of a woman who, for no reason other than its sounding good, calls herself “Madame Butterfly.”  With her is her husband, a terrific looking guy who, with his dark glasses and Foreign Legion hat, looks like a movie star playing a Nazi desert colonel.  He’s deaf, and, because of his improvisational mime skills, he calls himself “Improv.”

On Monday, one of the Trail Angels of the Oasis drops a group of us at the intersection of the PCT and the Pines-to-Palms Highway (Route 74).  Among the group are Madame and Improv.  Ever the exhibitionist, I printed out this journal at the Oasis.  Madame and Improv read it, and we chatted about the journey I’m on.  Later, on the trail, the two of them ask me to sit with them a spell.  They offer to slow their pace—in my mind, a tremendously generous act in the culture of the PCT, where each of us seems to be striving to reach a goal.  Further, they offer to carry my heaviest gear.  We agree to try the arrangement to Cabazon.

I am moved, literally, to tears by their offer.  Not so  much because I need their help as because of their generosity.  And it turns out that Powerful Tiger pretty much needs someone’s help, once we hit our campsite, at Cedar Spring, with howling winds and temperatures in the 30′s.  On my own, I would no doubt have figured a way not to die of hypothermia, but, with my numb hands and PD clunkiness it would have been harrowing.

Some amazing folks have showed up on this trail, not the least of whom are Madam and Improv (from whom, by the way, I’m starting to learn American Sign Language).  I could talk about the two young guys I thought of as “Amishmen in tights” (who looked all the world like Amish striplings) or the “Orthodox priest” (a young fellow with his own fierce beard), or recite a panoply of trail names, but the trail beckons.

Whitewater, CA, May 16, 2000______________________

I remember writing Cindy Ross, the author of an excellent account of her hike of the PCT (Journey On the Crest), essentially that the book had brought me to my senses and that I wouldn’t attempt a thru-hike of the Trail.  (The book, by the way, is a marvelous mix of her thoughts, experiences, and relationships along the trail.)

Today, I have little doubt that I’ll abandon my thru-hike of California before I complete it, though I may well return to the trail, section-hiking parts of it.  I can’t recall what considerations I shared with Ross, but it matters little.  What makes me consider leaving the trail consists of a series of circumstances.

It may have begun four days ago, when, in a long descent of Fuller Ridge, I get into the rhythm of the fast gait of the bunch of enthusiastic 25-year olds I am hiking with (a lot of those out here), and, in good Parkinsonian fashion, trip and fall flat on my face—fortunately in forgiving gravel.  They help me up, and I am on my way, but a bit more cautiously.

Or yesterday, in descending 8,000 feet from the side of Mount San Jacinto, my legs are so stiff that, when I get to the road, and it continues to descend, I hike the mile to Snow Creek Village backwards.

Or last night, when, after 14 days of sleeping in a sleeping bag, I get to the luxury of a motel in Banning, and I feel slower and clunkier than I’ve ever felt in my life.  Which raises my concern that the very arduousness of the hike could be accelerating the effects of the Parkinson’s.

Perhaps most to the point is the fact that sleeping in the cold desert air and repacking my pack have become major challenges for me.  Even with a warmer sleeping bag and a more accessible pack than I started out with, I’m lucky if I get four hours of sleep per night and it’s a triumph if unassisted I can manage to repack my backpack in an hour and a half.

So, I ain’t leaving yet—or maybe not for a long time.  But on this next—55-mile—leg of the trek, to Big Bear City, I’ll be doing as dispassionate an assessment as I can as to if, or how far, I’ll travel on this trail, this time.

The great thing about the PCT is the terrific tales I’ve stumbled into.  205 miles as an investment in memories has been well worth the effort.  Now, with doubt as a new variable…well, stay tuned.

Whitewater, May 16, 2000__________________________

When my grandson Adam returned from a trip to Spain with my wife last year, he brought me a small figurine of Don Quixote.  What reminds me of Adam’s insightfulness into one facet of my character, the would-be knight errant, is that, at the end of this quest, I’m surrounded by windmills—dozens and dozens of them.  In this windiest of places, where the wind from the Pacific roars through the mountain pass flanking the great San Jacinto peak, someone has erected dozens of gangly million-dollar mills.  Their white propellers turn languidly in the nonstop wind.  Quite an amazing sight, as amazing to the boy from Moosup, Connecticut, who became the man I am…as amazing as so many other things I have had the privilege to experience in the month I have spent on this trail.

Despite my sunset intentions of walking to Big Bear City, expressed in my last journal entry, wisdom kicked in at 2:00 a.m., this morning.  Comfortable in an old abandoned RV, part of what hikers have dubbed The Pink Motel—a complex of abandoned cabin and trailers provided to windswept PCT hikers by Don and Helen Middleton—with the wind and sleet howling outside, there I am, a lot cozier than I’d have been in my tent, poised over my sleeping bag, my Parkinsonian brain trying to figure out how to get into the bag.  Fifteen or twenty minutes later, having finally maneuvered my way into the bag, I think: while I’m still strong and healthy, it’s time to leave the trail.  Now.  Before the rigors of the trail overwhelm me.  And the 55-mile stint to Big Bear City that, yesterday, I vowed to tackle, certainly has the potential to do that.

I feel very alive and alert, after my month and the more than 200 miles on the PCT.  Above all, l appreciate those who have applauded my invention and pursuit of an impossible game: Edit, who has voiced all of my concerns and thus made them easier to resolve; those who have read this trail journal and urged me to stay with the game; and some amazing trail angels, who have probably saved my butt big time—especially Madame Butterfly and Improv, who, by their assisting me, put at risk their own goal of Improv’s being the first deaf person to complete the PCT.  Wow!  What a game this has been.  I’m thrilled with my experience, and I’ve got to say I’m pleased to be returning to my warrior-woman wife and home.

And I look forward to inventing the next game worth reporting on www.OnTheCrest.com.

Houston May 23, 2000______________________________

In the face of Parkinson’s, my pushing myself to hike eight-to-15 miles to the next campground or next source of water or next town, day after day, seems to have been a matter of sheer will power, requiring that I ignore the protestations of my body.  Further, although used to sleeping eight hours per day at home, on the trail I have typically slept four or five hours per day.  And, despite intricate planning and the best of intentions, my diet has been spotty and I have inevitably experienced some dehydration in the hot, dry desert air.  After a month of this relentless regimen, it has all finally caught up with me: My body, having essentially been ignored for a month, simply and suddenly refuses to function.  It is as if my body is OK with honoring my minimal 200-mile commitment and then is revolting, refusing to cooperate.

The uprising is swift in coming and startling in its intensity.  Parkinsonian symptoms that have, for years, been minor sources of irritation, suddenly rule.  Arising at 6:00 a.m. in my motel room in Banning, I find that I can barely get out of bed or put on my clothes.  The slowness that has obstructed my packing my pack on the trail suddenly takes over every movement of my body, and I need to summon up the last ounce of my will power to arrange my things for the bus ride to San Diego.  At the bus station, my hands shake so much that I can scarcely fish out my credit card and pay the fare.  Getting on the bus is a minor ordeal.

And bathroom breaks on the long milk-route to San Diego are straight out of Laurel & Hardy—Not-So-Powerful Tiger managing (once again, with sheer will power) to get his pants down but not able to get them completely up again. Ah, the look on the face of the woman on the bus who notices!  Does she think I am demented or a semi-flasher or what?  (I don’t ask.)

•   •   •

I feel my body healing once more, but it is conceivable that it will never quite be the same as it was when I began the trek.  Has it been worth it?  I will address that matter in a future journal entry.

______________________________

Q&A’s About the Trek:

An Interview With

Powerful Tiger

______________________________

 

OnTheCrest interviewed Powerful Tiger (AKA Peter Haskell)  about his just-completed experience of hiking 205 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail.  In the interview, Tiger discusses the value of his experience on the trail, what made the trek problematical, and his future plans.

OnTheCrest:  How does it feel to be back in Houston after your adventure of one month?

Powerful Tiger:  Jarring.  And incomplete.  I’m used to accomplishing what I set out to do—in this case, walking the entire 1700-mile California section of the Trail.  I did complete my minimal goal of hiking over the flank of Mount San Jacinto—205 miles—but that ain’t 1700 miles.

OTC:  Why did you select the San Jacinto section as your minimal goal?

PT:  It provided a sort of microcosm or preview of the whole trail, combining desert and alpine areas.  I even encountered some snow, although not enough to call for an ice ax.

OTC:  So, what prompted you to leave the Trail?

PT:  I’ve explored that in my Journal, but basically, my body, with its Parkinson’s, wasn’t quite up to the task.  Things were also exacerbated both by my having equipment not designed for persons with disabilities and the nature of the trail itself.

Regarding equipment, the first pack I used had no outside pockets, and, given my difficulties in packing and re-packing gear, that meant that almost every time I thought I needed some item from my pack, I chose to do without it.  The second pack solved the pocket problem, but nearly all of the pockets had semi-circular zippers, making them difficult to open and close. The very-lightweight tent I was carrying used my trekking poles as tent poles, and that required that I twist and extend the poles together—a difficult maneuver for a Parkinsonian.

As far as the trail itself is concerned, water sources and towns are typically 25-35 miles apart, making it difficult to walk at a slow pace and still put in reasonable mileage.  Based on my training experience in Houston, I predicted that I was capable of walking two miles per hour; on the trail, it was more like .8 miles per hour, and that meant long days and the extra weight of the food and water needed for a slow trek.

OTC:  Are you back in the shape you were when you began the trek?

PT:  My standard for determining that is what I’m physically capable of without medication.  By that gauge, I’m not quite as fluid in my movements, but I do seem to be healing fast.

OTC:  Will you return to the trail, this summer?

PT:  No, although I’m tempted.  Somehow, the trail, once experienced, exerts a powerful attraction.  But I promised my wife I wouldn’t return to the trail this summer.  For purposes of completeness, in September I may do a piece of the trail in Oregon, before attending a meeting out there.  Compared to the desert area that characterized most of my trek, the area in Oregon that I would be walking is relatively flat.

OTC:  Say more about this attraction that the trail exerts.

PT:  Fabulous vistas aside, I think it has something to do with the culture of the PCT that has emerged.  By its very nature, the trail “selects” people who combine passion, discipline, and a bit of craziness, providing a mix of people I found very appealing to be with.  I’ve never been much of an athlete or team player, but I suspect that the trail experience also has a lot in common with other sports in this regard.

OTC:  Then, you plan to go back to the trail?

PT:  Probably.  But to section hike it, rather than hiking for months at a time.  Hiking a wilderness trail like the PCT can be pretty grueling, and it’s probably not wise for a Parkinsonian to do for long chunks of time.  On the other hand, if a compatible hiker or team of hikers offered to assist me with packing and carrying heavy gear, I’d consider a thru-hike, but that’s a lot to ask of another person or persons.  In the meantime, the Colorado Trail, with its shorter distances among towns, holds some allure for me.  Maybe next summer.

OTC:  What’s next, then?

PT:  My work passion is to assist teams in discovering common ground—in effect, to view their future from the mountaintop and then translate that vision into an action plan.  One of the sources of that work is the Institute of Cultural Affairs, and I plan to deepen my ICA training this summer.  I will then continue to pursue this work as OnTheCrest, no doubt drawing on my trail experience in ways I have yet to define.

OTC:  So, was it worth it?

PT:  Tracy Goss, in The Last Word on Power, talks about a “game worth Playing.”  Such a high-stakes game carries with it the likelihood of losing.  Naturally, I regret leaving the trail and not raising the big bucks for Parkinson’s research that I set out to raise, but the ways in which the whole project heightened, and continues to heighten, my life make it well worth the toll it seems to have taken on my body.  Ask me again when I’m a hundred years old!

Oregon and Washington

_________________________________________________

Oregon and Washington, Autumn, 2000_______________

Hair o’ the Dog  (Houston, September 20, 2000)

On the occasion of the American Long Distance Hikers Association – West meeting, I’m about to get back onto the PCT.  I’ll start out from Cascade Locks, Oregon, on Monday morning, September 25, walk about 50 miles, or 10 miles per day, and hopefully end up at the meeting at Mazama Lodge by Friday afternoon.  Since I averaged about eight miles per day in April-May, I may be kidding myself that I can pull this off.

I’m striving to be so well-honed that I can take off on trips like this with little fanfare, but I’m still wrestling with finding the right pack, one that I not only can easily gain access to despite my Parkinson’s limitations, but also feel comfortable carrying.  Kurt Russell, the designer of my Nomad tent, has kindly made some changes in the tent that may make it easier to erect the tent.    So far the perfect pack and tent have eluded me.

The Gods (Cascade Locks, OR, September 25, 2000)

At least at first blush, everything about this place seems huge. The magnificent Columbia River, the bridge that spans it—the Bridge of the Gods—even the man who picked me up at the airport—Brice Hammack, who, in his mid-seventies, completed the Triple Crown (the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide trails).

It’s very different from the piece of the Pacific Crest Trail I walked in the spring.  Green, lush, cool.  At the Cascade Inn (where, in keeping with the “huge” motif, I eat a monstrously big breakfast), the waitress tells me that Improv and Madame Butterfly passed through here last week.

In deference to the Gear God I seem sometimes to worship, I’m waiting for the post office to open, so that I can pick up the butane canister I couldn’t carry with me on the plane, and that will fire up my new super lightweight Primus Titanium stove.  This new easy-to use stove ought to save me some time and effort.

(An hour later)  A knock on my motel room door: it’s Madame Butterfly and Improv, fresh from six days of a stay in Seattle.  Despite the threat of impassible snows, they figure on making Canada in 25 days.  They look fit and seem to be in high spirits.

Hawkeye  (Columbia Wilderness, OR, September 26, 2000)

He is the most outrageous of the thru-hikers I met in the spring.  I met him at the Pink Motel.  A retired prison guard, he called Maine home (because his mother lived there), but maybe Colorado was his home (because he’d stored his RV there and had occasionally taken a job as a ski lift operator).  Or possibly the Pacific Crest Trail or the Appalachian Trail, which he’d thru-hiked.  In any case, Hawkeye set a new—and my wife would say, lousy—standard of freedom.

The Pink Motel looks all the world like some hermit’s hideaway: strewn around it are old cars, rusting refrigerators, etc.  So, when Hawkeye (who is a pretty fierce-looking guy, with long hair) spotted a group of tired-looking thru-hikers trudging up toward the Pink Motel, he grabbed a broomstick, and, brandishing it like shotgun, ran outside and yelled down at them in his best cracker accent, “Get the H___ off my property!”  The hikers ducked for cover.

When I first met him, I murmured something to him about Natty Bumpo, but he allowed as to how he was in the MASH line of Hawkeyes, not the James Fennimore Cooper line.  I figured I’d never see him again, but, on my two-mile ascent of Indian Springs Trail, four months later, there he is.  His beard is a little shorter and his hair is tucked under his hat.  “I know you,” I say, tentatively.  “Peaceful Tiger!,” he says, invoking what may be a more apt trail name for me than the one I’ve been sporting.  Naturally, he has a couple of terrific tales at the ready.  How, for instance, on the John Muir Trail, his trail companion was kicked in the head by “a reindeer”—a buck that had wandered into their camp, and, tripping over a pot, had kicked the man.  When it got light, Hawkeye had run six miles to a ranger station and arranged for the wounded hiker to be evacuated by helicopter.  There are more Hawkeye tales, but it’s getting cool.  Camp is set up, and, having eaten, it’s time to crawl into my tent.

Living and Hiking   (Mazama, WA, October 12, 2000)

So, will 2000 be the Year of the Long Hike for me or the renewal of a lifelong passion?  I’ve walked 260 miles on or near the PCT this season, 55 in the past two weeks.  The 50-mile hike from Cascade Locks to Mt. Hood was uphill pretty much all the way, so I was pleased to pull off 10 miles per day, including stream crossings, compared to the approximately eight miles per day I did in the spring. With only a daypack, and on a cool 48 degree afternoon, here in northern Washington I hiked five miles up to Cutthroat Pass in a couple of hours, thus completing nearly 10% of the PCT.

Long-distance hiking is so outside of the way I’ve spent most of my life: rationally, logically, in frameworks, fulfilling obligations, earning a living.  On the other hand, it mirrors many of those facets of living, in that it demands rational planning, clear-headedness, and perhaps as much sustained discipline as anything I’ve done.

 

A Cautionary Postscript: The Changing Moods of Mother Nature  (Houston, TX, October 15, 2000)

Lest I settle in with my cozy memories of the benign trails I’ve walked in the past two weeks, today I receive an e-mail from Ronald Smith, a hiker I met near the Timberline Lodge.

Shortly after our encounter, it began to rain.  Relentlessly.    By the time Ron reached the rivers I had crossed without any fuss, they had swollen to torrential proportions.  Fording was out of the question, but when he took a long detour to cross a substantial highway bridge, he found that it had been washed away.  Another detour led him to a bridge that he described as still there, but just barely.  It was tipped almost sideways and holding on for dear life at each end.  Ron made it across the bridge and eventually to a town, where he wife picked him up.  So much for the perpetually-serene trails of my imagination.

Washington, Autumn, 2001_________________________

 

Back on the Trail, After Another Year (The Cascades, WA, September 24, 2001)

My son Ben and I drive what seems like deep into the woods, to the junction of the PCT and Milk Creek Trail. It’s 4:30, which always feels too early to set up camp. But any later and we risk not finding a decent site. It seems like a moment of truth—do we hold of fold? Naturally, we press on, and we end up with me pitching my Nomad and Ben his Dart in a relatively flat streambed (No rain in sight.).

(By Glacier Creek) In the afternoon of this perfectly sunny day, the mist of clouds begins to fill the valleys and then to rise up, filling everything.  At noon, Ben left, to return to the car and put in a day of work as a firefighter, before rejoining me.  I snooze in the sun, by Fire Creek.  Back on the trail, the clouds turn into a light drizzle.

I make camp It’s 6:45 p.m. Too early to go to bed, but it’s cool and damp and thus it’s awkward thumbing this palmtop.  The rain comes down harder, a tenor counterpart to the steady roar of Glacier Creek. I have a nifty new lightweight headlamp, so I plough on with the palmtop. But it’s getting uncomfortable to prop myself up on one elbow, so I’ll doff a layer or two and crawl into my sleeping bag.

Handicaps (September 26) This time around, I’m more adept at handling my handicaps: I simply make time for them. Now, I expect it to take time to turn over in my sleeping bag, to put on my frozen shoes, to do the myriad tasks, that, years ago I did quickly. It must be about 25 degrees. At Red Pass, a striking mixture of red huckleberry leaves amid a frosting of snow.

September 28. Ben, hiking from the southern terminus of the trail, meets me at 5:00 p.m. at White Pass. We pitch our tents by an idyllic Reflection Pond and talk until it gets dark.

A Heavy Pack (September 29, 2001). With a lot of generous help from Ben, I hike the 40 miles of the PCT from Milk Creek Trail south. Ben not only carries some of my heavier gear when we were together, but also, on the last day of this trek, with 11 miles to go to the trailhead, he straps my pack to his and walks more than a mile with 70 pounds on his back, until his knees threaten to give him problems. For that mile, I’m fleet—which reminds me of my attachment to heavy, comfortable, luxurious backpacks.

•  •  •

 

It is a joy to have Ben with me. On the other hand, I am aware of how the very unknown and risky aspects of solo hiking—living in such questions as “Can I do this?” and “Will I get out of this alive?”—enliven one’s experience, creating an edge to the hike.

Houston, October 31, 2004____________________________

My first “shakedown” hike, two weeks before I depart for California. With pack on my back, I walk Hermann Park, always climbing the only hill in the city—the one that forms the Miller Outdoor Theater.  I invariably walk it only once per visit, despite knowing full well that, once I’m on The Trail, I may curse myself for not walking the hill 50 times per day!  It has been more than three years since I was on the Pacific Crest Trail.  My younger son Ben, finding himself in Palm Springs, has generously offered to accompany me on the trail, starting at the point where I first left the trail in May 2000.

Houston, November 11, 2004__________________________

At times, now, the Parkinson’s essentially freezes me in place. What will that be like on the trail? Before departing Houston, I attend a weekend retreat for elder men, where I am helped to identify perseverance as one of my gifts.

Southern California, November 12, 2004________________

We begin our hike a few miles north of I-10, at Cottonwood Canyon.
After an hour or two, we begin to wonder if there will be enough water to sustain us for 30-40 miles. There is none at our first potential water source, Whitewater River—except for one miraculous dribble that Ben notices.  It comes out of nowhere, providing us with a few quarts of silty water. Enough to sustain us today and tomorrow. (The freeze-dried lasagna is a little gritty.)  Will there be water at Fork Spring?
My pace is excruciatingly slow.  Ben walks fast and ahead of me.  Leaving his heavy Kelty Tioga  frame pack on the trail, he comes back down the trail, hefts my pack and carries it north. With that effort, we squeeze more miles out of each day.

Mission Creek, November 17, 2004_____________________  
I sleep soundly. We are in the Mission Creek area, and here and there we find plenty of water.  I want to call my wife, Edit, but we’re surrounded by mountains, and my mobile phone doesn’t work, even at 8,400 feet and above adjacent mountains.  With many short stops, we hike from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Angelus Oaks (a village on Route 38)__________________  

Puzzling and alarming. 1:30 p.m., on our way to our final destination, Coon Creek.  After a short rest stop, we agree to walk another 30 minutes before meeting again. Ben disappears down the trail. I put my pack in order and set out at a pretty good pace. 30 minutes come and go, with no sign of Ben.  An hour goes by. Is Ben testing my stamina?  If so, I feel up to it, pretty fit after three days of feeling creaky. But two hours go by, and, although my pace is fine, I am alarmed.  Ben’s footsteps continue on down the trail. My mind conjures outlandish scenarios: Could those be another set of footprints? A third person force-marching Ben on down the trail, perhaps with a 45 in hand.. No, that is too bizarre.

I begin thinking in terms of bivouacking for the night.  Three hours pass.  It’s 4:30, past the time to make camp, and no sign of Ben.  Have I somehow headed off on another trail?  No, there are ample PCT stakes along the trail.  But wait!  Why have I been walking South, with the sun setting to my right??  Why, indeed!  Are those my own tracks coming up the trail? I can’t tell for sure. In any case, I am on the trail, and I need, above all, to make camp, while it is still light.

The unfathomable finally hits me; by whatever trick of the brain, instead of following Ben, I have retraced our steps of that morning. When I look closely at our footsteps, heel marks show that we have trod these steps earlier.  If I’d been here earlier today, surely I’d recognize it, but, seen from a different direction and at a different time of day, none of the landscape looks familiar to me.

Just before darkness descends, I lay out my ¾-length air mattress, extending it with plastic bags. Then, I put on nearly every article of clothing I have in my pack. It is a brilliantly clear night, with a bright crescent moon and all the stars in the sky.  I know I am safe enough. My thermometer shows it to be 28 degrees.  I have neither map nor matches with which to cook nor a meal or pot to cook it in. Ben has all of these with him.  But I do have plenty of snack food.  What about the morning? What then?

I blow on my ear-splittingly-loud whistle, but hills between where I find myself and where Ben probably is likely muffle the noise, and I realize that there is little chance that he’ll hear me. I start retracing my steps up to higher ground, but I am loath to depend on my headlamp to find my sleeping bag, so I return to it.  Before crawling into my sleeping bag, I leave my trekking sticks criss-crossed across the trail. Having walked about ten miles, I fall asleep quickly.

Ben, by his own telling, is pretty frantic. Three hours, and I haven’t appeared. Since it is getting dark, he sets up camp. He has retraced my steps away from the spot where I have turned 180 degrees and plunged south, but he quickly loses them and begins to think that, for whatever reason, I have not only retraced our steps, but also left the trail.  For two or three hours, he yells himself hoarse. He returns to Coon Creek, where the temperature edges below 20 degrees—particularly dangerous, he thinks, if I have somehow been separated from my pack.  Puzzled and alarmed by what could have happened to me, he dials 911 on his mobile phone, describes the situation and his location–our day’s destination, Coon Creek.  With the light of his headlamp, he make camp and cooks supper, not sure what to do next, but knowing it is likely to be a long night and that he’d better be fortified.

At about 1:30 a.m., I am awakened from a sound sleep by the lights and voices of men. “Are you okay, Mr. Haskell,” asks Bill, the leader, an older man with a well-practiced bedside manner. I assure him that I’m fine.  We stuff everything into my pack, which Ben carries. The other men all seem to be cut from the same cloth as Ben, rugged young men wearing outdoor gear and talking of Alpine incidents. We walk along the trail about 20 minutes to Mission Creek campground, where Ben and I had spent the previous night.  There are eight or nine men in two or three vehicles.  On the bumpy ride to Coon Creek to pick up Ben’s pack, much of the talk is about the average of two incidents per month.  The 16-year-old boy who recently disappeared, leaving his pack behind; the young Boy Scout who strayed from his group and died, leaving as his last snapshot a photograph of himself.

Obviously bemused, Ben shakes his head, acknowledging his chagrin, anger, and relief that I’m alive.  I’m embarrassed and puzzled. I seek some explanation as to why I set out back on down the trail but none comes.  I take solace in thinking back to a time, several years ago, when my wife and I took a train from Bath to London, changing at Victoria station to take the Underground to Gatwick Airport. My Parkinson’s had begun to slow me down, and Edit, exhibiting a rare case of impatience, charged ahead.  When I got to the Continental gate, she was nowhere to be found. An hour went by, and our departure was alarmingly near.  I spoke to the police and they began to search for her.  I thought to myself, this is it—she’s finally left me to start life anew in this magnificent city.

Then, just as the last few people boarded the plane, Edit appeared.  In her single-minded focus on getting to the airport early and efficiently, she had re-boarded the Underground back to Victoria Station.

…

I liken the San Bernardino Mountains to a somewhat scorched version of how it may have been in the Swiss Alps, centuries ago, before roads and rails.  When people mention this trail, they rarely point to these magnificent mountains, instead applauding the Mojave, Yosemite, the Sierras or the  Cascades.  Not me: it is the mountain’s grand vistas that have fueled my desire to walk as much of the trail as I can.  Putting my son on the spot and imposing on Sheriff Bob and eight volunteers by insisting on “persevering” was unintended. (On the other hand, by their own admission, every one of the Search and Rescue people loves to be out in these mountains.) I suspect that, within a short time, the allure of the trail will draw me back again.  Not counting the extra five miles I walked, Ben and I have walked 33 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail this week.  My completing the remaining 2317 miles will require perseverance in its original sense of the word.

The Sierras, Near Reno, October 3, 2005_______

9.25.05

For a few months, my friend Keith Ritchey and I have planned a five-day hike along the PCT, ending near Echo Lake, where the American Long Distance Hiking Association – West is hosting its annual gathering. Hurricane Rita has postponed our plans for several days. The question is, is it worth it to go all the way to Nevada and California and hike only two or three days? We resolve that question by assuming that simply taking action is the way to go.

9.26.05

At the Reno airport, we are met by trail angels Bill Person and his wife Molly. Both Keith and I have very heavy duffle bags, each containing our packs. Bill has generously agreed to take us to the forest ranger’s office to get hiking permits, to the UPS store to ship duffle bags and clothes to our destination, to REI to buy a gas cylinder, and finally to the trailhead at Barker Pass. When we remember that we also need to get water, Bill gets impatient, asking, “that it?” (Luckily it is.)

Arriving at the pass, where just the sight of the tall trees and the surrounding Sierra mountains make the trip worthwhile. We walk about an hour and a half south along the trail and pitch our tents just as it is starting to rain. A thunder and lightning storm flares up suddenly, and the rain increase. I find out that I bought the wrong gas cylinder for my stove and that it won’t fit. We have brought a crude Esbit stove with lumps of fuel, and that should suffice. Total darkness descends on our encampment and in the distance we continue to hear thunder.

9.27.05

Today has been pretty exhausting. We meet a couple, Switchback and Never Quit. Also a Swiss woman and four day hikers. As with every other PCT trek I’ve taken, the number of miles I have been able to walk is fewer than I expect—it turns out that we will be lucky to make the gathering, on Friday, give our pace, which seems to be about 1.5 miles per hour. At one point today, near Richardson lake, we lost the trail and wandered around a bit to find it. On another occasion, I was walking along the trail slowly and I suddenly fell to one side, just fell over, like a piece of bric-a-brac in the night. We crossed two or three streams—always a challenge for me, with my precarious balance. One nifty aspect of hiking for me is that I do some of my most creative initial work while I’m hiking by myself. At one point, Keith was hiking ahead of me (we switch roles back and forth) and I was essentially a solitary hiker. I thought of a whole course I could offer, as well as an approach to presenting a spiel on hiking in German. I recalled the exhilaration I experienced in 1975, when I was hiking in the Adirondacks in the early spring by myself and how creative that event was for me.

 

9.28.05, a mile south of Richardson Lake.

The wind was fierce last night. In the middle of the night, one of the trekking sticks that doubles as a tent pole fell on me and I felt I was being attacked by a monster; nevertheless, as is characteristic of the second night, it went more smoothly and I got more sleep.

 

Noon

Slogging through a spectacular forest strewn with rocks, we meet with Asabat and a buddy. Asabat (the trail name came from blind-as-a-bat, which he was until undergoing successful cornea surgery) recognized me from a kick-off gathering we’d both attended in 2000. Keith’s mother was British, so he is somewhat of an anglophile; that may account for our finding ourselves eating kippered herring for lunch.

 

I’m experiencing the benefits of not hiking alone. For instance, Keith has keen intuitions about direction and an ability to spot the trail, when I would be lost or confused. This afternoon, we agreed with each other regarding a wrong turn and followed a trail—not the PCT. Tomorrow will tell how bad a mistake that was. There appear to be several stream crossings, and thus as always with these things, alarms me.

 

9.29.05

Keith is like oatmeal. He sustains us.

 

9.30.05, Echo Lake Resort

The Resort has wrapped up its season, but Keith, who’s gone several hours without water, persuades a staff member to sell him a bottle of Gatorade. As beautiful as Echo Lake is, the hike along its rim has been tiring, and we’re glad to be near our destination.

 

We catch a ride to the highway on the tailgate of a truck with its bed full of gear. “I’ll go real slow,”  says the driver—and we’re off like a bat out a Hell, swerving around curves and, when we get to Route 39, just grateful that we’ve survived the ride.

 

The traffic on 39 is heavy, but a man who is attending the gathering spots us as brother hikers and pulls over to pick us up. With our freshly hiked 32 miles we’ve earned our right to get with a bunch of grizzled hikers for a weekend of hiking tales (walking across Australia, hiking the shore from Canada to Mexico etc.). On Saturday morning I present a short seminar on how to self-publish one’s hiking memoirs. As a nice punctuation point to this very satisfying week, I end the presentation by reading a couple of pages from this journal, and I’m gratified by the enthusiastic response of the attendees.

 

The real payoff of our preparations for this hike, the hike itself, and the entertaining gathering has been my new friendship with Keith. In terms of my primary concern about any hiker companion—that they hike at my slow pace—he is a perfect companion. And he’s much more than that: a compassionate and interesting man who brings a clarity to our week together.  Much to my delight, he suggests, that we hike another chunk of the PCT together and attend the gathering next September. All he lack is a trail name, although he tentatively suggest that, given his John-L. Lewsian eyebrows, we call him “Bushy Brows.” A couple of weeks later I receive a digital snapshot of Keith and me on the shore of the weird man-made Lake Aloha, taken by a fellow hiker. In this photograph, Keith towers over me, which surprises me and somehow reminds me of the words of a sage, “When I don’t know who I am, I serve you. When I know who I am, I am you.”

Readings

 

 

 

Bryson, Bill, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (NY, Broadway, 1999)

Child, Greg, Postcards From the Ledge: Collected Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child (Seattle, Mountaineers, 1998)

Goss, Tracy, The Last Word on Power: Executive Re-Invention for Leaders Who Must Make the Impossible Happen ( NY, Currency Doubleday, 1996)

Karkabi, Barbara, “Spotlight on Peter Haskell: undaunted by disease, hiker prepares for 1,700-mile trek,” Houston Chronicle, April 9, 2000, p. 3F

London, Jack, “To Build a Fire,” in London, Jack, The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories (NY, Oxford, 1990)

Osbon, Diane K., ed., Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion (NY, HarperCollins, 1991)

Rawicz, Slavomir, The Long Walk (NY, Lyons, 1956, 1984, 1997)

Ross, Cindy, Journey on the Crest (Seattle, Mountaineers, 1997)

Schaffer, Jeffrey P., et al., The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California (Berkeley, CA, Wilderness, 2000)

Schaffer, Jeffrey T., and Andy Selters, The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 2: Oregon & Washington (Berkeley, CA, Wilderness, 2000)

Simpson, Joe, Touching the Void: The Harrowing First Person Account of One Man’s Miraculous Survival (NY, HarperCollins, 1990)

Whyte, David, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America (NY, Currency Doubleday, 1996)

 

About the Author

 

 

 

 

Peter C. Haskell is an organizational consultant and executive coach in Houston, Texas.  In 1982, he co-founded The NLP Center of Texas, a consulting and training firm dedicated to improving face-to-face communication in the work place.  He holds a Master’s degree in Organization Development from Pepperdine University and a Master’s degree in Information Science from Rutgers University.  Peter worked for several years for the Covey Leadership Center – Houston.  In 2000, he founded OnTheCrest Consulting, the purpose of which is to encourage and empower teams and individuals to get into action on meaningful tasks.  For details, see www.onthecrest.com.

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