Blistered Kind Of Love (4 page)

To perform self-arrest, you use your body weight to plunge the serrated blade of the axe into the icy mountainside (that you're in the process of whizzing down). Afterward, you ideally find yourself halted midslope, clinging to your axe and eyeing the bone-crunching rocks below—relieved that you're no longer hurtling toward them. During a brief mountaineering lesson at a nearby outdoor retailer, our instructor, Dave, remarked that while performing self-arrest, one should be careful to throw body weight
behind
the axe, not
onto
it. The greatest danger when learning self-arrest, he explained, is accidentally landing on the axe and gouging a hole in your face.

“When done correctly, nearly fifty percent of self-arrests are successful!” Dave exclaimed with a Grizzly Adams grin. One out of two didn't sound so fantastic to me, especially if success depended upon correct technique. Preferring to avoid any similarly unfriendly statistics, I changed the subject.

We needed a camp stove, the smaller and lighter the better. Dave recommended an MSR Whisperlite Internationale and fired it up for me. The resulting roar reminded me of a jet engine and caused many of my fellow fleece-clad shoppers to turn and stare. “I'll take it!” I yelled, expecting uproarious applause but getting only more stares.

Later that afternoon I tested our new toy. Sitting cross-legged on the driveway at Duffy's parents' house, I alternated between peering at the contraption
in front of me and the instructions in my lap. When I was sure I'd read everything five times, I turned the dial on the stove and watched white gas trickle into its circular trough. My hand shook as I lit a match and tentatively inched it towards the hissing spout. The smell of gas grew stronger. My mind flashed to my sophomore year in college, when my roommate singed off her eyebrows lighting our oven. I leaned my head as far away from the stove as I could while still extending the match toward it. After several seconds of fearful stretching I finally applied the flame to the stove's pilot. Nothing.

Shaking my head, I turned to watch Duffy trying to pitch our tent on the lawn. If we couldn't light a silly stove in the backyard, how were we going to light it in a driving rainstorm? I loved Duffy like no one before, but at that moment, doubt stole in. I knew that he'd been on a couple backpacking trips and even learned a repertoire of knots during an outdoor leadership course, but it wasn't like he could write
The Definitive Guide to Surviving in the Wilderness
.

“Duffy, help, please,” I whined. After fifteen minutes of tinkering, we finally got the stove lit and placed our titanium pot over the tumultuous blue fire. We whipped up some chewy wagon-wheel pasta, and as I choked it down it occurred to me that we were out of our minds.

Ahead lay 2,655 miles of wilderness ranging from parched desert to muddy rain forest. And behind? I could count on my two hands the number of miles I'd hiked in my life. Nine. Including two miles up and two miles down Turkey Mountain in my New York hometown. Not a very impressive feat, considering that a turkey can do it. I'm fairly confident, though, that your average Thanksgiving turkey cannot hike the Pacific Crest Trail.

Zigzagging its way from Mexico to Canada, the PCT crosses three states (California, Oregon, and Washington), three national monuments, seven national parks, twenty-four national forests, and forty-seven federally mandated wildernesses. Along the way it ascends more than fifty-seven major mountain passes—lowish points in otherwise impermeable mountain ranges—and skirts the shores of innumerable bodies of water—lakes, tarns, ponds, creeks,
streams, and rivers. Temperatures on the route range from over 100 degrees F in the deserts to below freezing in the High Sierra and North Cascades. The trail's lowest point is 140 feet above sea level, at the Columbia River Gorge between Oregon and Washington. Its highest is 13,200 feet, at Forester Pass in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains. All told, the PCT boasts the greatest elevation changes of any of America's eight National Scenic Trails as it passes through six out of seven of North America's ecozones as well as sixteen different plant communities in California alone. These include creosote bush scrub, valley grassland, chaparral, Joshua tree woodland, ponderosa pine forest, and mountain meadow. Wild animals known to inhabit the regions surrounding the trail include coyote, marmot, pika, black bear, elk, mountain goat, bobcat, and cougar.

Our northbound hike would begin about forty miles east of San Diego, amidst chaparral-covered hills and just yards from the U.S.–Mexico international border. Once home to Digueno Indians (who survived by eating cacti and yucca root), the border region of California is now populated mostly by border patrol, ranchers, illegal aliens (passing through), and, in late spring, approximately three hundred Canada-bound hiking hopefuls, many of whom—I assumed—were subsisting on that infamous and elusive corn pasta.

After feeding the rest of our chewy, driveway-cooked, non-corn pasta to the dog, I moved inside to our re-supply headquarters–Duffy's old bedroom. “Re-supply” is the term used by distance hikers to describe detours into towns to pick up supplies–often in the form of food-laden re-supply packages. For months, working in our re-supply HQ, I alternated between staring at Duffy's tattered stuffed animals, dusty high school basketball trophies, and the backpacker's mess hall that was oozing out of boxes, creeping over chairs, and covering every inch of carpet before me. Military Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs), energy bars, Snickers bars, cereal bars, instant potatoes, mac 'n' cheese, cheesy crackers, dried fruits, dried peppers and other vegetables, dried spaghetti sauce, turkey jerky, freeze-dried meals–stuff that had been dried and
then dried again, because it just wasn't dried enough. Even our drinks were dry. There were bags of instant coffee, hot chocolate mix, powdered milk, and Tang, lots of delicious Tang. Sealing everything up into what I hoped were airtight Ziplocs, I spent four days carefully distributing delightfully dry camping meals into sixteen re-supply boxes.

But even after each box got its food rations it wasn't nearly complete. There were more piles to be picked through—a thousand ibuprofen tablets, a thousand multivitamins, seventy-six AA and AAA batteries, thirty-six rolls of film, a twenty-four-pack of toilet paper, fourteen rolls of athletic tape, two bottles of povidone-iodine solution for our med kit, and six of the same for purifying water.

While I filled boxes, Duffy weighed every piece of gear, down to the quarter ounce. Then he began generating lists: lists of re-supply points, lists of food and equipment, lists of lists. All of these were subsequently downloaded onto our Palm Pilots—primarily for the purpose of reminding ourselves how good we were at making lists.

Other logistics also needed to be taken care of before we could disappear from normal life. Visa bills had to be paid in full if we wanted our credit ratings to survive our adventure. We needed to acquire air-ambulance and medical insurance (it can cost more than $50,000 to be airlifted out of the wilderness). Apartment subletters had to be found and debriefed. Health and dental check-ups had to be scheduled and attended (we'd heard of one couple whose hiking trip had been interrupted by an urgent need for a root canal). Duffy had to register for fall classes and I had reams of paperwork to complete regarding my leave of absence from work. And on and on.

It was all vastly annoying. The whole point was to get away from this sort of drudgery. I dreamed of savoring majestic vistas with looking-glass lakes, but instead I was explaining to Jennifer at Comcast Cable why I wouldn't be watching much HBO that summer.

Worst of all, planning for a long-distance hike seemed as potentially fruitless as it was frustrating. Historically, only five percent of PCT hikers actually make it the whole way, and out of those who quit, most do so in the first couple weeks. In the past few years, with the increasing popularity of lightweight
backpacking techniques and refined itineraries, success rates have approached twenty-five percent, but one out of four is still pretty discouraging.

The combination of the magnitude of the planning effort and the odds of success was disquieting. Taking care of the logistics would be immensely gratifying if the trip worked out, but if it didn't—well, then the reward wouldn't be a completed trip but a planned one. The result of the uncertainty was a sensation not unlike that which you might feel if you planned a wedding but were forced to accept a caveat from the groom indicating there was only a one in four chance he'd show up.

In an effort to improve our odds, we enrolled in
Hiking 101
at a local community college. I figured that it would be a good practical introduction for me and, at a minimum, a decent review for Duffy. We arrived for the first class notebooks in hand and pencils sharpened, ready to learn the holy commandments of hiking. Our companions in this mission were a group of middle-aged urbanites and an instructor who was still reliving his days in the military. There were eighteen people in all: fifteen women, Duffy, our instructor, and one other guy, who wasn't representing his gender in the most enthusiastic manner. He was a wispy gentleman with pasty skin and a half-hearted pyramid of facial hair hanging from his chin. He looked as though he might buckle to the floor under the weight of a sunscreen-filled fanny pack.

Our instructor was a gruff and weathered former colonel in the Air Force. During his thirty-nine years in the Force, he informed us, he'd taught many raw recruits the skills of outdoor survival and interrogation. To punctuate this point, he pulled a green hat with white lettering from his canvas sack.

“We seized this hat from a Russian soldier. Do you know what it says? ‘Excrement Happens'—and in the woods it does.” The colonel scanned the troops and did not look pleased.

“Let's get something straight from the start.” Dramatic pause. “The outdoors is not Walt Disney World.” Another pause. “When you go out there, it is not like going to the amusement park for the afternoon.” Longer pause. “The animals you see will be real. They
will not
be people in fuzzy costumes.”

Satisfied that he now commanded our attention, the colonel gave us the
details regarding a series of day hikes, which complemented the classroom instruction. On Sunday we were to meet at a Dunkin' Donuts near the trailhead. The colonel wanted to make sure that this reconnaissance would go smoothly.

“We will meet at the Dunkin' Donuts at oh-nine-hundred sharp,” he commanded. “Note I said
at
the Dunkin' Donuts.” Nice long pause. “Not
in
the Dunkin' Donuts. Now, if you want to go and sit
in
the Dunkin' Donuts and have your four-hundred-calorie glazed cruller, you can do that. But I will not, I repeat, will
not
come to look for you there.” The colonel stopped and slowly spread a glare around the room.

Our gruff leader spent the rest of the evening reviewing hiking clothing and equipment. While explaining the usefulness of 1972 L.L. Bean flannel shirts and blue jeans, he pulled these items out of a weathered bag. Pretty soon there was a large pile of tired clothing on the table, including a musty thermal undershirt, several pairs of thinning wool socks, and two industrial-strength leather boots. He continued unloading a first-aid kit and a pair of wool pants that made my legs itch just looking at them. The whole time I half-expected him to pull out a hand grenade or a bazooka. He didn't, but it wasn't long before the subject of artillery was broached. The colonel had gone off on a tangent to explain safety requirements on our weekend hikes and the perils of straying from the group.

“I don't like people falling behind. I carry a .45 and if you fall behind too much . . . well, as a squad commander, you are allowed a ten-percent loss.” The room went deathly quiet. I think that's when we decided not to join our classmates on the weekend excursions; somehow filling re-supply boxes seemed quite a bit safer.

For the next four Monday evenings
Hiking 101
continued to be an excellent source of amusement. Not excellent enough, however, for Duffy to miss
Monday Night Football
, so I endured the rest of the colonel's tirades on my own. Unfortunately, the course didn't really offer a whole lot of practical information for the aspiring long-distance hiker. The colonel seemed to have a fantastic recall of the outdoor survival techniques he'd taught fifteen years
earlier, but he hadn't completely updated his résumé for the new era of Polartec jackets and ultralight travel. To prepare ourselves for our quest, we were going to have to take matters into our own hands.