Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles Read online

  RATTLESNAKES AND BALD EAGLES

  Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail

  Chris Townsend

  First published in Great Britain and the United States of America by

  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.

  EDITOR: Robert Davidson

  MAPS: David Langworth, Melrose

  TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE: David Ritchie

  © Chris Townsend 2014

  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 Patents Act 1988.

  The publisher acknowledges support from Creative Scotland toward publication of this volume.

  ISBN: 978-1-908737-73-1

  ISBNe: 978-1-910124-58-1

  Original book design by Heather MacPherson of Raspberryhmac Creative Type, Edinburgh

  Ebook created by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore

  Acknowledgements

  Many people helped to make my walk a success and deserve thanks. Some of their names I no longer remember after all these years (or perhaps never knew). I apologise to anyone I’ve omitted.

  The late Warren Rogers’ assistance was greatly appreciated. Without him planning the walk would have been much harder. Warren is also to be thanked for the decades of work he put in promoting the PCT. Without his efforts the trail as we know it might well not exist. Thanks to his son Don Rogers for the photos of Warren Rogers.

  My companions on the trail all added to the walk, especially my companions in the High Sierra, Scott Steiner, Dave Rehbehn and Larry Lake, without whom I probably would not have made it through the snow. I certainly wouldn’t have survived the river crossings in Yosemite National Park without Larry. Elsewhere on the trail I enjoyed the company of Wayne Fuiten, Ron Ellis, Ron DiBaccio, Jay J.Johnson, Greg Poirier, Susie and Robert.

  Throughout the walk everyone I met was supportive and friendly (with one exception as described in the book) and many local people went out of their way to provide assistance. These trail angels included Richard in Big Bear City, Phil and Bing Le Feuvre in Wrightwood, Delree Todd in Acton, Mrs Davison in the Mohave Desert, Ralph and Betty Morgan at the Fairmont Inn, Bob Frost in Sierra City, Rene Forman in Ashland.

  Outdoor clothing company Rohan provided me with most of the clothing for the walk – and with work afterwards (I took part in a series of road shows talking to people about my PCT walk and how the clothing had performed).

  Thanks to Barney Mann of the Pacific Crest Trail Association for all his help. The Pacific Crest Trail Association didn’t exist in 1982 but it is now an essential organisation for anything to do with the PCT and a wonderful resource which I used for much of the information on the history of the trail and the trail today.

  I also discussed the PCT today with recent thru-hikers John Manning, Colin Ibbotson and Keith Foskett and learnt much about the current trail experience.

  Robert Davidson of Sandstone Press suggested the book to me and encouraged and cajoled me during the writing. Heather Macpherson of Raspberry Creative Design did the design, Dave Ritchie scanned the slides, David Langworth did the maps. Thanks to them all.

  My partner Denise Thorn read the manuscript and made many useful suggestions and corrections that have improved the book.

  To Denise

  A Note on Photography

  My walk taking place long before the advent of digital photography I used Kodachrome 64 transparency film. The images in the book are scans from the transparencies.

  CONTENTS

  Map

  The Pacific Crest Trail: Beginnings

  Chapter 1. Desert & Snow: Southern California

  Chapter 2. Through Snow & High Water: The High Sierra

  Chapter 3. Out of the Sierra, Into the Cascades: Northern California

  Chapter 4. Forests, Lakes & Volcanoes: Oregon

  Chapter 5. The North Cascades: Washington

  The Pacific Crest Trail Present and Future

  Bibliography

  Books

  DVD

  Websites

  THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL: BEGINNINGS

  Walking, camping, being in wild places. I am passionate about all three, a passion expressed in full in long distance wilderness walks, walks that take many weeks or months to complete, walks in which I can immerse myself in nature and the simple act of walking. These passions have deep roots. My love of the outdoors has been part of me as long as I can remember. Brought up in the countryside I spent my childhood exploring fields and woods. As I grew older I discovered camping and hills and wilder places. Days out became weekends, then weeks, then months. Staying out longer made trips more intense, more committing, more exciting.

  No trip was totally fulfilling though, none was perfect. I didn’t know what was lacking but there was always something. I suspect it was real wildness, wildness on an epic scale. Then I discovered the Pacific Crest Trail. I can still remember the thrill of excitement on first reading about it. The idea of hiking some 2,600 miles from Mexico to Canada through deserts, forests and mountains seemed both preposterous and inviting. I remember feeling a sense of both excitement and determination. I would hike this trail.

  Now, over thirty years later, I look back on the PCT with affection and gratitude. It was the defining walk of my life, the walk that set the pattern for all those that followed. Successive long walks, in the USA, Canada, Scandinavia, Scotland, have sometimes been more challenging, more demanding and more remote. All have been worthwhile. None though has been like the PCT. The walks I did before the PCT became an apprenticeship, a preparation for the real thing, though at the time I didn’t know what it was or even that it existed. The walks after the PCT were a continuation of the joy I had found on that trail. On the PCT I learnt how much I value trail life, wild camping, moving on every day, staying out for months at a time. I thought I knew this before the PCT but I didn’t know just how deep it could go, just how much it could be an essential part of my being. After the PCT I knew it would never leave me and that I would always want to return to the trails and the wilderness.

  When I first read about the PCT I already knew I wanted to visit the wildernesses of the Western USA, having been inspired by first a slide show and then a book. The slide show was given in 1976 by a ranger from Yosemite National Park who was on an exchange with a ranger from the Peak District National Park in England. I marvelled at his images of vast pristine forests and huge granite mountains, all shining in brilliant sunshine, and felt overwhelmed at his stories - black bears, coyotes, real wilderness, summer-long sunshine, vast distances. How could I not want to go there? Not that I could imagine really doing so at the time. However two years later I did undertake my first really long walk, 1250 miles the length of mainland Britain from Land’s End to John O’Groats on trails and cross-country, and learnt that I loved multi-week walks, especially in wild country, the Scottish Highlands being my favourite part of that walk.

  At the time I was working in an outdoor store. A customer, knowing of my long walk, lent me a book he’d picked up in the USA. It was Colin Fletchers’ The Thousand-Mile Summer, which told the story of a wilderness walk the length of California (and which I think is still one of the best long-distance walking books). I read it and was hooked. I had to do something like this. How I didn’t know. I couldn’t imagine trying to plan a walk in the USA from scratch (remember this was before the Internet - I’d
never hiked outside Britain either). Then, browsing the outdoor section of a bookshop, I came across guidebooks to the Pacific Crest Trail. Suddenly the knowledge there was a trail with guidebooks made a long walk seem feasible, seemed a way into a very faraway wild land, a land that seemed almost mythical to me at the time. Not that the guidebooks were encouraging as they basically said doing the whole trail in one hike was a bad idea and probably not possible. That however didn’t put me off. The idea of a trail stretching all the way from Mexico to Canada through the wilderness – the deserts, forests and mountains - of the western USA was just too exciting. It was a visionary idea that I felt cried out for a continuous walk.

  Exactly how the bold and imaginative idea for the trail arose is somewhat clouded. It first came, it seems, from outdoorswoman and teacher Catherine Montgomery who in 1926 suggested it to Joseph Hazard, a well-known member of The Mountaineers outdoor club. He put it forward to The Mountaineers and the idea was adopted. Then, somehow, one Clinton C. Clarke became involved in the early 1930s. Often referred to as the father of the PCT it was Clarke who actually began promoting the trail, setting up the Pacific Crest Trail System Conference in 1932. This federation of hiking clubs and youth groups had the task of devising a route for the PCT. The first meeting of the Conference was held in 1935 and in 1939 the PCT first appeared on a federal government map. * Clarke also compiled the first books on the PCT. The third version of these, The Pacific Crest Trailway, was published in 1945 and is available online, courtesy of Daniel Craig Giffen (pcttrailway.pctplanner.com). In this book Clarke makes clear that one of the purposes of the PCT in his eyes was the preservation of the wilderness, describing it as ‘the cord that binds this necklace; each gem encased in a permanent wilderness protected from all mechanization and commercialization’. He also saw the trail as character building and educational, writing ‘the Pacific Crest Trailway is not a recreational project for the casual camper and hiker; it is a serious educational project for building sturdy bodies, sound minds and active, patriotic citizenship’. The words, perhaps, sound dated now but the intent is I think still true.

  Although some sections of trail that would become part of the PCT were in place in the early 1930s, such as the Cascade Crest Trail in Washington, the Skyline Trail in Oregon and the John Muir Trail in California there was no route much of the way so Clarke organised a series of relays during the summers from 1935 to 1938. These consisted of groups of young outdoorsmen from the YMCA under the leadership of one Warren Rogers. By walking from Mexico to Canada the YMCA teams showed that a continuous trail was possible. A log book was kept throughout and passed on from group to group - a book I would see when I visited Warren before my hike. The 2,300 mile route described in those logs, a route devised and explored in the 1930s, is the basis for the PCT today. After the relays Rogers followed Clarke in promoting the trail, keeping the idea going for the next thirty and more years. Indeed, Rogers work and passion for the trail kept the idea alive at a time when interest in backpacking and long-distance trails was low. This changed in the 1960s and the federal government set up a committee to look at a trails system. This led to official acknowledgement 1968 when the PCT was designated one of the first two National Scenic Trails (the other being the Appalachian Trail). Despite this designation the PCT was nowhere near complete in 1968. In fact it was to be another 25 years before the trail was officially finished (though due to its length and nature there have been and will be further changes), which meant it was far from completion for my 1982 hike.

  At the same time as officialdom was working on the trail more information and support was appearing for hikers. In 1971, three years after the trail became official, Rogers had founded the Pacific Crest Trail Club to provide information and help for long distance hikers, not that many were around back then. Two years later in 1973 the first guidebooks were published by Wilderness Press, and this is where I come in as these were the guidebooks I was to find in a bookshop five years later. I wrote to the Pacific Crest Club in 1981 about my proposed hike and received a very helpful and encouraging reply from Warren Rogers.

  The Pacific Crest Trail Club eventually merged with the Pacific Crest Trail System Conference in 1987 to become the Pacific Crest Trail Conference, which Rogers ran until the early 1990s. In 1992 the name was changed to the Pacific Crest Trail Association, as it still is today. In 1993 the PCTA became the federal government’s official partner in managing the PCT. In the same year the trail was officially completed and a ceremony was held to mark this in Soledad Canyon in Southern California. Since then the PCTA has worked to maintain and protect the trail, describing itself as ‘the voice of the PCT, its steward and its guardian’.

  The trail was becoming better known, in large part due to the success of Eric Ryback’s 1973 book The High Adventure of Eric Ryback, which told the story of his 1970 hike. This book hadn’t made it across the Atlantic at the time so I didn’t even know it existed. It was to be many years after my walk before I read it. At the time of Ryback’s hike only three end-to-end trips had been done, according to the list maintained by the Pacific Crest Trail Association (the successor to both the Pacific Crest Trail Conference and the Pacific Crest Club) and published on their website, and those were the first on foot by Martin Papendick in 1952 and the first on horseback by Don and June Muford in 1959. Six others are listed as hiking the trail the same year as Ryback. The year after his book was published the numbers of end-to-end hikers, known as thru-hikers, reached double figures for the first time. Other noteworthy early thru-hikes were the first by a woman in 1972 – Mary Carstens, hiking with Jeff Smukler – and thee first solo one by a woman in 1976, Teddi Boston. Boston’s achievement is all the greater because she also started at the Canadian border, which makes the hike much harder.

  By 1982, the year of my hike, 241 hikers are listed as having completed the trail. That year eleven more, including myself, were added to the list. The trail was steadily growing in popularity with numbers rising rapidly through the 1990s and 2000s. By the end of 2013 2953 hikers had completed the trail (still fewer than the number of people who have climbed Mount Everest!). With hundreds of hikers (the PCTA estimates 700-900 a year, of whom roughly 50% finish) setting off every spring the trail experience is very different now from what it was back when I hiked it, as I’ll discuss later.

  Warren Rogers didn’t play down the difficulties but didn’t say hiking the whole trail was impossible either. I also came across two books that greatly encouraged me as they were by thru-hikers. David Green’s A Pacific Crest Odyssey, which told the story of his 1977 thru-hike, and Chuck Long’s Pacific Crest Trail Hike Planning Guide, which included information from 15 hikers, including Long himself, who had hiked all or most of the trail, were devoured many times in the months and years before my walk as I tried to absorb something of the reality of what would be involved.

  Overall four years elapsed from finding out about the trail - and knowing immediately I wanted to hike it - and setting out from the Mexican border. During those years there were periods of intense planning and periods of suspense and waiting. There was also the question of money. I didn’t know how much such a walk would cost but I knew I’d need to have money put aside for it and this would take time. Planning such a long walk through such wild country was not easy even with the existence of a trail, guidebooks and the Pacific Crest Club. This was my first big backpacking trip outside Britain - my only other one was a two-week trip in the Pyrenees, undertaken as part of my preparation for the PCT as I wanted to experience higher altitudes than those found in Britain before I set out (I climbed the highest mountain, 11,168 foot Pico d’Aneto). The PCT was also over twice as long as my Land’s End to John O’Groats walk and in much remoter and wilder country. For making the planning much easier than it would have been without his help I have to thank Warren Rogers. He advised me, checked my plans and sent me information. As well as reading all I could about the trail I made and revised lists of gear and compiled lists of supplies and t
he post offices to which they would be sent. I also ripped up the Wilderness Press guidebooks into sections to go in my supply packages. Warren produced basic strip maps for the Pacific Crest Club and offered to send me these in batches every few hundred miles. I also planned on buying topographic maps when I reached the USA. Warren said I wouldn’t need these but being used to Britain’s detailed Ordnance Survey maps I knew I’d feel ill-equipped without what I thought of as proper maps.

  So what is special about the Pacific Crest Trail, other than the distance? What called me across the ocean and across a continent to walk for nearly six months carrying everything on my back? The simple answer is nature and a wild landscape on a monumental scale, a scale hard to imagine for a walker from Britain. The PCT follows the westernmost chains of mountains in the USA and is in wilderness or near-wilderness for virtually the whole of its 2650 miles. Despite the name it’s not that close to the Pacific Ocean and there is no sense of the sea as a wide plain lies west of the mountains. What the PCT does have, which seemed strange and exotic to me, is a taste of the desert. More than a taste in the first 500 miles in fact. This desert feel fades as the trail progresses north until the climate is more akin to that of Britain, as I was to find out.

  For roughly the first 500 miles from the Mexican border the PCT changes character frequently as it climbs from desert and chaparral to forested mountains and back again time after time. The mountain ranges here are fairly small in area but still rise to over 11,000 feet. They’re known as the transverse ranges as they tend to run east-west rather than north-south. This means a great deal of ascent and descent as the PCT crosses each one. Real desert is encountered at the end of this section when the Mohave Desert is crossed before the PCT reaches the southern end of the Sierra Nevada mountains, which it follows for around 1000 miles.