Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail (39 page)

“If it hadn’t been for Rocket Man,” Lil’ Buddha recounted with a tone of amusement, “CanaDoug and I might have died out there. He made us turn around and go back to Snoqualmie.” But then Rocket Man had called it a year. He had driven CanDoug and Lil’ Buddha north to catch this ferry.

We finally arrived in the tiny seasonal hamlet of Stehekin, where everybody sat down for a big dinner in the only restaurant. At trail towns along the way, we had been eating on a shoestring in places that ranged from good to bad to awful. This meal, though, was special.

“What’s your real name?” Whiskey Jet asked.

“Bill Walker,” I responded, which drew silly laughs.

“Yours?” I asked.

“Pete Schlerb,” he responded to more strange giggles, including my own.

Everybody went around saying their real names and we all cracked up like schoolkids. Perhaps it showed just what a bubble long-distance hikers live in.

Part of that bubble was an antipathy to resume talk.

“Where have you worked in the past?” I asked Lil’ Buddha.

“I worked for a couple of giant corporations,” he plaintively said.

“What did you do for ‘em?”

“I was a salesman,” he said. “In other words I was a liar,” he joked.

Attitudes toward careers ranged from indifference to just not giving a damn at all. We judged each other by the way we were on the trail, and in no other way. In this sense, you could even say hiking trails exemplify the concept of community.

“Nobody should be alone at this point,” Meaghan said at breakfast the next morning.

That was music to my ears. The 90-mile section ahead was almost completely isolated, running through the snowy northern Cascades. Serendipitously, the weather had cleared and the next five days looked good. The extended forecast, however, showed bitter arctic-cold swooping down. But if things went according to plan, five days should be enough to make it safely to Canada, and wrap myself in the warm comforts of civilization for the winter.

What great fun this should be finishing with so many of the same people I had bounced amongst almost the whole way. But then CanaDoug walked in.

“Hey, Minnesota is playing Green Bay on Monday Night Football,” he announced jovially. “It’s Brett Favre’s first game back against the Packers. Let’s stay and watch it.”

“Yeah, but there’s that cold front coming this weekend,” I countered. “We’ll get caught in it if we don’t hike out today.” To my dismay, however, one person after another began voicing enthusiasm for CanaDoug’s idea.

“Skywalker,” Lil’Buddha reasoned (picking up on the bear-related humor of the previous evening’s dinner), “if you hike out alone, you’ll get eaten by a grizzly.” Indeed, for the very first time in my life, I would be hiking in grizzly country. The possibility of an encounter concerned me, to be sure. Heck, even the most seasoned outdoorsmen strive to avoid these creatures of virtually mythical strength and appetites. But I wasn’t obsessed by it.

“Rare as a Sasquatch spotting,” our waitress had told me the previous evening.

No, my biggest concern far and away was cold weather. From my first days on the Appalachian Trail, cold, wet weather had been my Achilles heel. Now I had a five day window to make a break for the Canadian border before possibly getting blasted again. My thoughts went back to the Kickoff last April. “Be finished before October 1,” everyone stated with unanimity. “Anything after that is borrowed time up there.”

No way I was staying back even if I had to hike out alone. But I did try to lobby a few of my colleagues to re-consider.

“I may hike out,” Not a Chance said ambivalently.

“Hey, we go about the same speed,” I said hopefully. Even she was reluctant, though.

Finally though, she unenthusiastically hoisted her backpack and headed back to the trailhead.

Twenty-one year old Not a Chance had a style all her own. For starters, she night-hiked more often than not—usually alone. One night recently, she had been walking along when she saw a pair of
shiny eyes
no more than twenty feet off the trail peering intently at her.

“First I thought it was a bear,” she recounted. “But then I practically shit in my pants. It was a cougar.”

“How big was it?”

“That thing was huge,” she said. “Much bigger than a dog.”

“Do you still night hike?” I wondered.

“I don’t plan it,” she shrugged. “It just kinda’ happens.”

“How far are you looking to take it today?” I asked Not a Chance, when we arrived at the trailhead.

She hesitated and then said, “I’m supposed to meet a guy I’ve been dating at Rainy Pass.” This seemed a little odd. She had just decided to hike out today. Shouldn’t it be clear or not, if she was meeting a guy at Rainy Pass?

We headed off and predictably hiked late. It seemed to elude us that darkness would quickly swoop down on us in northern Washington in October. But then again, I was hiking with the night-hiker non-pareil, Not A Chance.
These next several days could be interesting.

It was dark when we came to a turn in the trail. No sign. “What do ya’ think?” I asked. “Let’s try this way,” she said. But after a few feet the trail turned scraggly.

“This is what the trail has usually looked like when I’m lost,” I said.

“Well, let’s go back and give the other a try,” she said in a calm, work-womanlike way. We gave it a try. A cold, incessant drizzle—the hallmark of the Pacific Northwest—began to sock in.
Nature was, if anything, patient.
These next few days, I needed to demonstrate the same.

When we emerged from the woods onto the highway at Rainy Pass, there was no sign of the PCT going forward.

“Maybe that left we headed down at first was the right trail after all,” I ventured.

“We’ll figure it out,” she said, lolling around looking for a path.

“What’s the name of that guy you’re meeting?” I asked.

“Why?”

“I’ll yell his name.”

“Ricardo,” she answered hesitantly. Soon the shouts of “Ricardo, Ricardo,” in a southern accent reverberated through Rainy Pass in northern Washington on a cold, wet October evening. But to no avail. We started walking straight up Highway 20 in a steady drizzle. Finally, we found the PCT, but not Ricardo, and quickly set up camp near the road.

I awoke early after sleeping in fits and starts. Today, I had my game face on.

“It’s gonna’ be tough to make big miles with it getting dark so soon,” I said into Not a Chance’s tent.

“Guess so.”

“I’m gonna’ get out early,” I said. “What are your plans?”

“Oh, we’ll just have to see,” she said non-chalantly.

My confusion was clearing up. Ricardo—if he did exist—wasn’t to be found anywhere around here. Not a Chance simply didn’t want to hike with me. Fair enough. Needless to say, anybody has the right to choose their own hiking partner. But it was a bit disappointing that she felt she needed to use subterfuge to rid herself of me. She had the look of someone who had been on the short end of all kinds of horrible relations with all kinds of males, ranging from her elders to peers. I had actually gone out of my way lecturing Five-Dollar to treat her more civilly, after their torrid trail romance had crashed and burned. Most importantly, I had absolutely no designs on her as anything beyond a hiking partner. But I sure as heck didn’t want to make myself a nuisance.

“See ya’ up the road,” I said quietly after getting everything packed up.

“Enjoy your hike,” came her voice out of her tent.

Other than a brief encounter with a southbound hiker a couple days from now, it would be the only human voice I would hear the next four days.

Chapter 42

Splendid Isolation

All nature is your congratulations.

Henry David Thoreau

O
ver a journey this long you could fairly say that one becomes a student of beauty. The stucco beauty of the desert had evoked a certain timelessness. The majestic beauty of the High Sierra has blown away mortals throughout the ages. Now, the rolling evergreen forest and white snow-capped peaks of the Northern Cascades connoted a beauty of rugged bleakness. I had never been this alone in my 49 years. Feeling ran high.

At any given time on the PCT, a thru-hiker is bound to have his or head down in a hangdog position, and the brain in neutral. But not now. My overwhelming mission was to not get lost. Every time I saw the trail veering towards snow and ice—which was more times than I could possibly count—a certain dread set in. A fleet-footed hiker named Blue Eyes was traveling a day ahead of me, and I was to strain to follow his footprints every step of the way.

On the third day, I arrived at Hart’s Pass running low on water. Because this was a popular campground, I even held out the faint hope of some kind of trail magic. Heck, even talking to somebody would be nice. But the season was over with, and I didn’t see any people or cars when the trail entered the campground. Worse yet, I wandered all over the parking lot and down a hill, but came up empty searching for water.

I stood there taking in the gigantic hush. The lonely wind blowing through the mountain passes was the only sound besides the crunch of my slow footsteps (I may not have been as alone as I had thought, however. A few days later in Canada, a former U.S. Army Ranger, traveling a day ahead of me and carrying a sidearm, informed me he had spotted the footprints of a grizzly bear right here in this parking lot—awful glad I didn’t see them!).

I meekly munched on some bagels and cold tuna. But I held back on the peanut butter in order to not exacerbate my thirst. Then, with great uncertainty, I hefted my backpack. I had gone 12 miles for the day, and hoped to make at least 10 more. But I needed water, and the data book didn’t show any water for those 10 miles. If nothing else, I would have to start filling my bottles with packed snow off the ground and hope for the best with my stomach.

After a half-mile, I heard the welcome sound of tumbling water. Snowmelt was tumbling over rocks and I was able to stick my water bottles in and get a perfect fill-up. I drank almost two liters of cold water right there on the spot and filled up with three more liters. This was a relief. If absolutely necessary, this water should be able to carry me all the way to Canada.

Normally, hikers look for streams to camp near. But not in grizzly country. Here, you find less attractive places. As the sun fell over the hills, I was starting over an area called Devil’s backbone. I spontaneously decided to pitch my tent right there a few feet off the PCT. Per hiker convention, I urinated all around it to mark my territory from other animals and got in for the evening. Like a metronome, mother nature called in the middle of the night. Using a urine jar in order to preserve warmth in the tent was a no-brainer in this type of situation. I had long since gotten over my self-consciousness in executing this. But I damn sure wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

Per custom, I unzipped my tent and emptied the contents outside of the vestibule. This always made me feel safer as the night wore on and the urine around my tent built up. After all, what animal wants to get near urine. I was about to find out.

Immediately, I heard the breaking of branches and heavy steps coming in my direction up a steep hill. All my efforts the last few days at maintaining a positive equilibrium were suddenly in shambles. Instead, I lay there in white-knuckled terror banging my hiking pole against a water bottle. In the fall of 1978, I had read an article in
Sports Illustrated
about a grizzly attack on a man in Colorado. When the bear had entered the man’s tent, he had weighed 180 pounds. By the time the bear left the tent, his remains weighed 75 pounds.