Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail (9 page)

The high desert proved very different from my
pre-conceived image of the desert.

After several miles I descended again to the more familiar low desert. About the only thing they had in common, as far as I could tell, was their overwhelming aridity. Fortunately, there was a well. But the water looked grotesque.

“What the hell,” I said peering down into it.

Big John came over and examined it. “Yeah, all the muck has risen to the top.”

“But look at the bottom,” I said. “There’s crap everywhere down there too.”

“I guess you just have to get it out of the middle,” he said good-naturedly. I pulled out my filter, carefully placing the tip of the funnel right in the middle, and started pumping.

Despite its relative simplicity, the low desert wears its own veil of mystery.

“Life is not crowded upon life as in other places,” wrote Edward Abbey, in his classic tome,
Desert Solitaire,
“but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree. Abbey staunchly maintained that, in fact,
there is no shortage of water in the desert.
There was just the right amount of water to insure open, generous spacing between plants and animals, and even homes, towns, and cities. The problem came, according to Abbey, when you built giant cities where they shouldn’t be (sorry Las Vegas and Phoenix!). This growth for the sake of growth was a cancerous, obsessive, madness.

Abbey, himself, had been a park ranger and probably knew of water sources in the desert that no other human did. But he also said that there were magical springs that only animals knew. At night the mammals came—first deer, next bobcats, followed by cougars, and finally coyotes—to drink, not to kill.

Later in the day, I dropped to the
desert floor
for the first time. There stood the most well-known symbol of the desert—the cactus bush. It’s the toughest, most well-fortified plant imaginable, and I could only guess how long each one has been standing. Perhaps centuries; perhaps millennia.

I had been alone the last few hours, but as the sun fell I ran into an attractive Canadian girl setting up her tent just off the trail.
What is it about these trails that all the girls are so attractive?
Maybe it was because the PCT had only one girl for every four guys (The AT was probably 2.5 to 1). I honestly don’t know. In any event, this was the same girl whose tent I had accidentally poked my head into last night at the Pioneer Mail Trailhead, thinking it was St. Rick’s tent. So she must have been wondering just who the hell this
peeping hiker
was who always turned up, wherever she happened to be, at bedtime.

“Kinda’ cool the way you can just pull off to the side of the trail here in the desert and set up camp,” I said.

“Yeah well, I seem to remember some ridges,” she laughed. There was a spot right next to hers to set up my tent. Having already hiked twenty miles, I thought about it. But I decided otherwise.
Hike your own hike
was the fundamental paradigm amongst hikers. So I headed on.

The most pleasant hour in the desert is at sundown, after the awful heat of the afternoon. The sinking desert sun resembles a flaming globe and leaves behind fanciful
lipstick sunsets.
It was very pleasant following the trail as it serpentined through countless cactus bushes. A few minutes before dark, I simply pulled five yards off the trail to set up camp. I did have one concern, however.

There were holes everywhere.
Rattlesnakes.
So I wandered around grabbing big rocks to put over all the nearby holes, marveling at my improvisation. However, somebody later told me this wouldn’t thwart a determined snake from surfacing.

“How do rattlers get water in the desert?” I had asked.

“They burrow down in the holes and drink the blood of the rodents they find down there.” This was the time of day they liked to emerge.

Sleeping near snake holes is simply a fact of life in the low desert though, and I occupied myself in my tent pulling scores of burrs out of my socks.

Chapter 9

Caches, Ledges, and Trail Repartee

T
en by ten
was the thru-hiker’s motto in the desert. The idea was to try to hike ten miles by ten o’ clock in the morning, then maybe eke out a few more miles before noon. At that point a hiker should spend several hours under any possible shade he or she can find. The reasoning was that you used up so much water during the middle of the day, that the miles you gained from it aren’t worth it. Then, at 4:00 or so, you should resurrect yourself and hike until dark. It made sense. But would I really want to just lie under some bush for several hours in the middle of the day?

World’s most important resource. The average hiker like me might not even atempt the PCT without dedicated trail angels stashing water caches.

I was in the middle of a 24 mile waterless stretch, followed by another 25 mile waterless run. The only water re-supply in that 49 miles was at Scissor Crossing. And it was not a natural water source. Rather, it was a
cache.
At the Kickoff, the speakers had repeatedly reinforced the point that we should carry enough water to get by in case the cache is not stocked.

Nonetheless, like most hikers I arrived at Scissor’s Crossing low on water, and high on expectations. Some trail angel, or maybe an entire trail club, had built a sturdy construction of wooden cabinets. Inside, were scores of gallon containers of water. The rule of thumb is to take only what you need. But there was so much water here, I was able to chug all I wanted and lug several liters with me into the rugged San Felipe Hills. Being so well hydrated, I decided to go ahead and tackle the mid-day desert sun.

Here, the trail took on a different character as it inexorably wound its way up a barren mountain. Soon, I found myself out on a narrow ledge along a steep canyon.
Ledge walking
takes some getting used to; it was easy to become anxious and hurry. But patience was the real virtue because these ledges often went on for miles. Finally, the trail did a sharp u-turn and next thing I knew I was out on another ledge walking in the opposite direction, not that far from the ledge I had just been on.

A break would have been nice, but there was absolutely no shade at all in the middle of the day. So I just kept hiking nakedly exposed to the full wrath of the sun. The only thing I could do now was continually drink a lot of water, hoping to ward off that
silent visitor—
dehydration. My goal was to make it to another water cache by this evening.

Finally, I saw the lonely figure of Jerry, a member of the threesome from Detroit. To the naked eye, it was apparent his bulging gut had already deflated, due to monsoon-like perspiration. He was once again digging deep to try to keep up with his two friends.

“Man, I
really
don’t like this,” he said in as friendly of a way that a complaint can be registered.

All I could offer was a dry-throated cliché: “Hang in there.”

A mile further up I came upon his two partners, Tom and Paul, sitting in a crouch on the ledge. I immediately dropped to as supine of a position as my almost 7 feet could manage on the narrow ledge —head up against granite backstop, butt on the hot trail surface, and feet dangling off the cliff.

“How long have ya’ll been waiting?” I asked.

“About a half-hour,” Tom said. I was impressed while chatting with them that they didn’t use the occasion to gripe at Jerry for his tardiness.

“You know, these things usually work themselves out,” I said, broaching the subject that was surely on their minds. “The
trail
actually decides who you eventually end up hiking with.”

“Well, there is another issue involved,” Tom said diplomatically. “Jerry is a manager at the outfitter where we all work in Detroit. He decides if we get hired back.”

They stayed together.

Some hikers swear that their fellow hikers get to know more about them than their boyfriends and girlfriends. Whether or not that is an exaggeration, one thing is undeniable. You bond deeply, and often instantaneously, out there.

I finally got to the campsite I had hoped for and my mood immediately lifted. Another trail angel had driven dozens more gallons of water up a jeep road. The person had tied a thin rope through each jug and around a tree to keep it all tidy.

Better yet, Trout Lily was one of those on hand. The topics of shoe brands, backpack weight, food, water, snow levels, blisters, etc. get saturated during the daytime hours. As has been known to happen at campsites, the conversation turned to the opposite sex. I had been living in Florida for two years before coming out for the PCT, and treated them to some fare of Florida-style dating.

“I was dating a woman almost twenty years older than me down there,” I said.

“Nuh, uh,” Trout Lily said in disbelief.

“What else are you gonna’ get in South Florida,” I said. “At least she didn’t live in a damn nursing home.”

“But then one day I’m strolling along the beach and run into this girl (Liz) half my age—24 years old to be exact. She had trained all her life to make the Olympic swimming team, but missed it. That was it. Next thing you know she’s gone from an ascetic lifestyle to drinking and dating older men. She really didn’t know how to handle either.

“After several months of going out with Liz, I’m walking on the beach with the older lady who had morphed into my friend. All of a sudden, this older guy walks up with an alarmed look on his face, and says, ‘Bill Walker?’. ‘Yeah’, I answered. He grabbed me by my elbows and says, ‘come with me’. ‘Can I bring this lady with me?’ I asked. ‘No’, he said. ‘I want to talk with you’. I’m thinking,
what the hell is happening here.

“‘I’m Liz’s father’, he proceeds to tell me. ‘She died in her sleep last night with her ex-boyfriend’. Liz had just told me the week before that this same ex-boyfriend—who was 62 years old—had stalking tendencies. So that’s Florida-style dating for you.”

“Sounds like swapping out Florida for the PCT was a good trade,” Too Obtuse incisively observed.

Trout Lily didn’t blanch one bit.

“I date this big, old surfer. I swear he’s got the most unbelievable body. I can’t quit thinking about it.”

After listening to her rhapsodically describing his many bona-fides as a modern-day Romeo, she said, “But he keeps having sex with his ex-girlfriend.”

Nobody said anything, so she added, “I don’t care, though. I just wish I didn’t have to pay his rent.”

Poor fella’. Life sure is a bitch. Unfortunately, however, this same guy was to play a seminal role in derailing Trout Lily from the PCT.

Chapter 10

Seeds of Disaster

There are three things in life you don’t want to do:

            1. Play poker with somebody named ‘Slim’.

            2. Buy a Rolex from somebody who is out of breath.

            3. Go hiking in the desert with a pair of shoes that are too small.

A
PCT hiker, who wasn’t even a nerd, could write an entire book on shoes. The treadway is very different from the Appalachian Trail, especially in the desert. For that reason, most people wear trail running shoes. They were breathable for starters (if you have the right damn size!). And they were lighter, so you could go further. But Yogi and others repeatedly stressed that your shoes had to be
at least one size bigger than you normally wear.