Out There Read online

  Chris Townsend is possibly the world’s most experienced long distance walker who also writes. He is the author of many books including Grizzly Bears and Razor Clams, his account of the Pacific Northwest Trail, and Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles, his account of the Pacific Crest Trail, both published by Sandstone Press. He is gear correspondent for The Great Outdoors Magazine and has a website as Chris Townsend Outdoors where his popular blog receives many thousands of visitors.

  Also published by Sandstone Press

  Grizzly Bears and Razor Clams: walking America’s Pacific Northwest Trail

  Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles: hiking the Pacific Crest Trail

  First published in Great Britain

  and the United States of America

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  Dochcarty Road

  Dingwall

  Ross-shire

  IV15 9UG

  Scotland.

  www.sandstonepress.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored or transmitted in any form without the express

  written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright (c) Chris Townsend

  Editor: Robert Davidson

  The moral right of Chris Townsend to be recognised as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the

  Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

  The publisher acknowledges support from

  Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

  ISBN: 978-1-910124-72-7

  ISBNe: 978-1-910124-73-4

  Cover design by Raspberry Creative Type, Edinburgh

  Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.

  To Denise

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword by Cameron McNeish

  Introduction

  1. Ideas & Inspiration

  2. Nights in the Wild

  3. Backpacking Tales

  4. The big walks

  5. Visionaries of the wild

  6. Perceptions of wildness

  7. The joy of winter

  8. Adventures with skis and igloos

  9. Nature, weather & seasons

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Far too many people have shared, assisted and supported my journeys over the years for me to mention them all here. Indeed, some of their names I can no longer recol­lect. My thanks to them all.

  Many of the pieces here first appeared in various maga­zines over the years, especially The Great Outdoors aka TGO. I have edited them to make a more unified book so they’re not exactly as they first appeared.

  My thanks to these editors for publishing my writing – Emily Rodway, Daniel Neilson and Cameron McNeish at The Great Outdoors, Alun Davies at AT Adventure Travel, Geoff Birtles at High Mountain Sports, Tom Prentice at Climber, and Mike Merchant at the John Muir Trust Journal. Also thanks to Roger Smith and Sandy Allan for their assistance.

  Robert Davidson of Sandstone Press for his help and encouragement. Temperature units have been left as in the original publication.

  My partner Denise Thorn who, as always, listened patiently to me talking about the book time and time again and who read through the text making many corrections and useful suggestions.

  FOREWORD

  Man’s relationship with the wild places of the world has been well documented in recent years and one of the fascinating issues that presents itself time and time again is our increasing yearning for simplicity.

  I don’t think many folk would dispute the notion that we are living in increasingly complex times. We have more riches than our parents and grandparents could ever have dreamed of - books by the zillion, great music from various digital appliances, fabulous films and television programmes and the opportunity to move around the world virtually as we please.

  But for increasing numbers of us that richness can occasionally appear tarnished and lose its appeal, and we begin to ache for an element of simplicity in our lives. The Welsh/American outdoor writer Colin Fletcher defined it well: an opportunity to take respite from our eternal wrestling with the abstract, and instead, grapple with the tangible.

  On a personal level I periodically leap off the twenty-first century treadmill and embrace what I’ve realised is another world; a parallel ecosphere that exists alongside the busy, frenetic, technological world that most of us inhabit, a world where there is a natural order of things that allows us to slow down and become an integral part of something older, wiser and infinitely more beautiful, a world where wildness reigns supreme.

  The Harvard socio-biologist EO Wilson once wrote; ‘Wilderness settles peace on the soul because it needs no help. It is beyond human contrivance.’

  Beyond human contrivance! I find that a comforting thought.

  Walking through a pristine and unspoiled landscape – a wild landscape - offers us an opportunity to find space. No interference to our thoughts. Nothing to distract us in an environment that is essentially peaceful. We can find renewal in the stillness of a forest, or on a wind scoured mountain top - the drift of cloud against the sky, the movement of sun and shadow, the warbling, liquid call of a curlew. In our chaotic, fast-paced and continuously changing world these things speak to us of eternal values, things that have always been, as ancient as the duration of days. All of them are completely and utterly unplanned, and most important of all, none of them have been arranged or rehearsed or manufactured by man.

  That, I believe, is the real issue. And that is predominantly the issue that Chris Townsend explores in this book. Some may call it mountaineering. Others may call it hillwalking or long distance hiking or backpacking, but the real issue goes deeper than that. The issue in question is more fundamental than an outdoor activity, or a sport or a recreation, and Chris Townsend is one of a very tiny band of outdoor writers who has grasped that notion and has explored it in detail so that others may understand.

  Part of that modern world I referred to has produced a crop of personality/television adventurers who treat the great outdoors as a racetrack, a place to prove themselves to others, or even more tragic, as a natural arena to be ‘conquered’. In their strive for limelight, for sponsorship deals and for personal glory they completely fail to understand the natural world for what it is – the major part of the web of creation of which we, mankind, are also part and parcel.

  Because we are part of that web of creation we are reliant on it. We endlessly discuss ideas about ‘protecting the natural world’ but in essence it is the natural world that protects us! If we choose to wage war on it then we will ultimately be the loser. This spinning globe we call Earth has the ability to simply slough us off and heal itself – it doesn’t need us, but we need it! Boy, do we need the natural world. If you don’t understand this concept of reliance then try and hold your breath for a minute or two…

  Many more years ago than I care to remember - I think it might be in the region of almost four decades - as I first wrestled with these notions, I met another young man who was similarly absorbed by the complexities of the natural world and our relationship with it.

  Over the years our friendship has grown and I have come to hugely respect Chris Townsend’s sane and logical thinking processes, his respectful and passionate pleas for conservation of our planet and his bold and ambitious expeditions across the continents. A handful of Americans may have walked longer or further but they have not endured the tough walking conditions that we have here in Scotland, where sign posts are mostly non-existent, where the weather ranges from Alpine to Arctic inside moments, and where the voracious highland midge can make life so difficult that suicide appears as a welcome option!

  Chris’ walking achievements ar
e legendary. He is widely acknowledged as the UK’s outdoor gear guru. He has performed various roles with conservation and outdoor NGO’s but above all Chris Townsend is an evangelist, spreading the good news about the natural world, and an advocate for the importance of that other world. It’s in these roles that his wisdom truly shines through.

  Throughout this book, whether Chris is writing about camping, hiking, skiing, the changing seasons or those heroes who have inspired him, a vital element becomes brightly apparent – his passion for wild places and his joy in communicating that passion to others. I commend that passion to you.

  Cameron McNeish

  Newtonmore

  October 2015

  INTRODUCTION

  When I was growing up I wanted to be a writer and an explorer. Somehow, to my surprise, I have achieved both, after a fashion. As a boy my passions were reading and exploring the countryside around my home on the Lancashire coast. I climbed trees, fell in ditches, got lost in thickets, built dens, and imagined myself as the children in the books I read, especially those in the Arthur Ransome Swallows and Amazons stories and the Richmal Crompton Just William stories.

  I also read true stories of exploration and discovery from classics like John Hunt’s The Ascent of Everest to the Zoo Quest tales of a young David Attenborough. Imagining myself on Everest or in the jungles of South America was beyond me at ten years old but I could imagine being in Ransome’s Lake District while the imaginary countryside of William Brown was very similar to the real one all around me.

  I never lost my dreams, though in my teens and early twenties they were pushed aside a little by the pressing concerns of adolescence, and I never stopped wandering in the countryside or scribbling in notebooks. I never thought either of them could be a way of making a living though and no-one ever suggested they could. My life as a long distance walker and outdoor writer came about gradually, unplanned and with many fortuitous twists and turns.

  I wrote a few articles about long walks I’d done in the late 1970s and discovered that magazine editors quite liked them so I wrote some more and then expanded them to cover my thoughts and feelings about the outdoors and outdoor activities. I’m still writing many decades later and a selection of these essays make up this book, revised and with some changes to bring them up to date.

  My previous books have been stories of long walks such as Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles, ‘how-to’ books like The Backpacker’s Handbook and guidebooks such as World Mountain Ranges: Scotland. The essays in this book cover a greater range of topics and many of the ideas that appear in my earlier books are expanded and considered in more depth.

  My interests are in wild land and the outdoors in all its aspects so you’ll find my thoughts on rewilding, forests, mountains, wilderness writers, outdoor gear and more, plus accounts of ski tours in places like Spitsbergen and Greenland, and trekking in the Himalayas as well as walks long and short.

  My passion for wild places and for communicating my joy in them hasn’t dimmed over the years. If anything it has grown. Along with it has come a growing desire to help defend these places and work for their conservation and restoration. Out There tells the story of my outdoor life and shows the importance of wild places to me. My hope is that it will enhance your own experience of ‘out there’ or, if you haven’t been yet, inspire you to think and feel about it with something of my own affection, enthusiasm and concern.

  1

  IDEAS & INSPIRATION

  Thinking of the mistakes I made as a novice backpacker makes me shudder. Did I really suffer that much? With no instruction or mentors I learnt initially by trial and error, mostly the latter. Sleeping out in the rain in a feather and down sleeping bag in a plastic survival bag showed me the joys of condensation and a wet bag; trying to sleep on frozen ground with no insulating mat taught me why these pieces of expensive foam are needed; buying a piece of open cell foam from a market because it was cheaper than a real camping mat taught me just how much water it absorbed when sleeping in a single-skin tent with no vents to let condensation escape. Result: another sodden sleeping bag. Then there was humping an external frame pack round the English Lake District with no hipbelt (these were ‘optional extras’ in Britain in the early 1970s). A shocked American hiker had me try on his pack with hipbelt, and I’ve been in loved with hipbelts ever since.

  I also learned that one of those compass things might be a good idea after getting lost on the featureless moorland of Kinder Scout in a November storm and descending in the dark, cold and wet. A torch would have been useful too, as I stumbled into bogs and fell over rocks. Just a week later I realised that carrying spare batteries was also a good idea when my new torch failed. It had accidentally switched on in the pack and again I found myself slipping and sliding downwards in the darkness. When my cheap thin nylon cagoule leaked through the seams I went to the other extreme with a bulky, heavy neoprene coated cagoule with taped seams. The condensation was horrendous (this was long before any fabrics that let moisture out) but it never let in a drop of rain.

  Those episodes and more taught me a great deal, as they would anyone who survived them. I don’t recommend following my example though. Far better to learn from those with more experience, whether in the wilds or from books, blogs and articles. Back in my early days the Internet didn’t exist so I couldn’t just pull up advice and gear reviews in an instant. Instead, when I realised that I would like to be safer and more comfortable, I read backpacking manuals and joined The Backpacker’s Club, a new organisation in Britain at the time. Those books – Peter Lumley’s Teach Yourself Backpacking and Derrick Booth’s The Backpacker’s Handbook (whose title I pinched for my own how-to book a few decades later) – were invaluable. I still have them and when I glance through them now, although the gear seems old-fashioned the advice is sound. I also went on Backpacker’s Club meets and learnt much by talking to experienced backpackers as well as hiking with them and observing their techniques.

  Along with instructional books I read books about long-distance hikes and soon aspired to undertake similar walks. My first really long walk was inspired by John Hillaby’s Journey Through Britain, the story of a backpacking trip from the farthest apart points on the British mainland, Land’s End and John O’Groats. Hiking 1250 miles (2000km) that spring was a revelation. Two weeks and 270 miles (430km) was my previous longest walk. This one was long enough to become ‘what I did’, my way of life for the 3 months it took. This, I realised, was really living, this was what I wanted to do. I also discovered my love for real wildness as I crossed the Scottish Highlands and revelled in the remoteness and vastness compared with the English countryside. I still didn’t know what real wilderness was though. And I didn’t know I didn’t know either.

  After Hillaby came Hamish Brown and his wonderful Hamish’s Mountain Walk, the story of the first ever walk over all the Munros (mountains over 3,000 feet/914m high) in Scotland in a single trip, and still one of the best long distance hiking books I’ve ever read. Inspired by Hamish I set out to climb all the Munros on backpacking trips. It took me four years, during which I undertook two 500 mile (800km) hikes and several shorter ones, and I learnt much in the stormy Highlands where camps are often exposed and subject to high winds and heavy rain. I think that if you learn backpacking skills there, you can easily adapt them to anywhere else. (Many years later I spent four and a half months on a continuous walk over all the Munros plus the subsidiary Tops during a wet summer that really tested my skills and my perseverance).

  Whilst bagging the Munros I was lent a book an acquaintance had picked up in the USA, a book that would change my life even more than Hillaby’s and Brown’s had done. It was The Thousand-Mile Summer by Colin Fletcher. Reading Fletcher’s wonderful prose about backpacking in big wilderness in California inspired me to think about hiking overseas. A little research (again, without the Internet, I can’t imagine how I did it!) turned up the Pacific Crest Trail. I knew the moment I read about it that I wanted to hike it, and the ye
ar after completing the Munros I took my first very nervous steps north from the Mexican border.

  Although still early April it was hot. The desert landscape was completely alien to me and I had much to learn. My first lesson was that a half litre water bottle is nowhere near adequate in dry places. In Scotland I barely ever carried water – there were always plenty of streams and pools. Once I’d added some soda bottles to my load all was well though and I began to enjoy and appreciate the strange landscape.

  The next challenge came as I approached the High Sierra. Late snow meant it was completely snowbound. I bought snowshoes and crampons and teamed up with three other hikers and, together, we made it through, taking three weeks on the longest section. My pack was so heavy at the start that I couldn’t actually lift it. I had to sit down, put it on, and gingerly stand up. Every hour or so I had to rest as my shoulders and hips were going numb. At least that’s what my journal says. I can’t now remember the weight or the pain but I can remember the joy of spending so many days without leaving the wilderness. The weight was ridiculous and I’ve never carried such a stupid load since but the rewards made the effort worthwhile.

  For much of the PCT the beauty and wildness of the landscape had me floating on a high. I was astounded and overjoyed to discover such wilderness. The whole trail was an inspiration. It remains the one walk that stands out in my memory; the one where I discovered real wilderness and the great pleasure of hiking and living in it. Since the PCT I’ve done many other long walks, most recently the Pacific Northwest Trail and the Scottish Watershed, and all have been great experiences. None has quite the magic or power of the PCT though. That was my first wilderness walk and as such remains special.