Blistered Kind Of Love (11 page)

Don't get me wrong; Meadow Ed's hospitality was incredible. He made yummy hot cocoa, and watching him cruise around Kamp Anza in an old golf cart was a welcome diversion. But the fact that he never called me by name and always asked Duffy all the questions rubbed me the wrong way. For the rest of the hike, would I be looked at as Duffy's albatross? Hadn't I walked the 144 miles to get here? Wasn't that hulking purple pack in the corner my burden to carry—and hadn't I carried it?

I thoroughly enjoyed the hot showers, laundry facilities, and trailer-cooked meals (courtesy of chef Ed) at Hiker's Oasis, but when it came time to leave, I was more than ready. Now I had even more to prove—to Meadow Ed and to myself.

Farewells were brief, and we told Meadow Ed that we'd see him soon—in Kennedy Meadows, approximately 550 miles away. After a night of sleeping on the grass at the Oasis, the dusty trail seemed especially harsh, but there
were mountains to look forward to: The jagged saurian ridges of the San Jacintos lay on the near horizon.

Like many backpackers, I spent a lot of my hiking time looking down—at the ground and at my feet. And with good reason: There were rocks, roots, and snakes to watch for. Some might say I could have stayed home to stare at rocks and my dirty shoes, but I saw the scenery and a whole lot more—I just had to stop walking to look at it.

After just a few days of downward-facing, I could identify coyote droppings, the heart-shaped tracks of whitetail deer, slither marks and shed skins of snakes, horny toads, lizards doing pushups (I never did figure out why they do this), and the squiggly bottomed footprints left by a rare, 180-pound, big-eared, bipedal creature named Duffy. Even when I couldn't see Duffy, all I had to do was look down and there were his size eleven and a half prints. I found the tracks from his hiking shoes comforting whenever we were separated, which so far seemed to be most of the time.

Scanning the ground during our trek toward the San Jacintos, I noticed something curious. It looked as if someone was pulling a little red wagon. Or maybe it was a wheelchair? If Bill Irwin, a blind man, could hike the Appalachian Trail (with his Seeing Eye dog, Orient, in 1990), I figured it was possible that someone might attempt the PCT in a wheelchair. The tracks, thin lines dug in the sand, continued for mile after mile and caused me increasing consternation. I was curious to know what was creating them and whiled away eight miles coming up with possible explanations. A new type of pack with wheels? A ranger measuring distances on the trail with a wheeled meter? Two very long, very straight rattlesnakes? The guessing game kept me somewhat distracted until the afternoon started getting hot—real hot. Sweat poured down my forehead and temples and out from under my khaki hat. I could feel it making paths through the dirt on my face.

While trying to wipe gritty perspiration off my forehead before it dripped
down my nose, I turned a corner and saw Duffy talking to two round, middle-aged women. One stood with an enormous white pack that looked like a giant marshmallow strapped to her back. I recognized it as the ultralight Kelty Cloud, packed to such capacity that only its color could be considered light. The other woman was collapsed on a rock nearby, staring into space. I recognized her exhausted stance as much like my own.

Ms. Marshmallow was from Anaheim and hiking the PCT in sections. She'd hiked over a thousand miles the previous summer and this season was tackling Sections A and B, from the Mexican border to San Gorgonio Pass, a total of 212 miles. Her friend was visiting for a couple of days. Marshmallow's pack was filled to the brim because she was carrying enough food for her entire month-long journey. At first I didn't believe it was possible for one to carry a month's rations, but then I looked back at her gleaming pack. It was big, all right, and appeared to be exceedingly weighty.

Just then, she reached inside the puffy whiteness. She was up to her bicep in it and seemed to be searching for something until, with a dramatic
swoosh
of her arm, she pulled out two red, shiny apples and handed them to us.

Fresh fruit on the trail. How decadent. How heavy. How delicious. We gaped at her and immediately sat down to eat the ruby treasures. Marshmallow grinned and waved good-bye, and then she and her friend trundled off. As they left I noticed the exhausted sidekick dragging her trekking poles along behind her, one in each hand, creating perfectly parallel trenches in the sand.

The next day, after a night at a trash-ridden campsite, we were bound for the town of Idyllwild, more than twenty-five miles away. By lunch we'd covered the ten miles to Apache Spring, our next water source. Duffy hiked half a mile downhill to the spring while I conked out by the trail.

Pretty soon, a tall, sinewy, older gentleman with a single trekking pole, a minuscule pack, and a hint of a limp came cruising by, looking slightly off balance but moving quickly. He introduced himself as Dave, a carpenter from Washington. “Folks are calling me ‘Fast Dave,' ” he said with a chuckle. We exchanged pleasantries and then he followed Duffy down the side trail toward the spring.

A few minutes later, three young men came charging up. In the lead was
a muscular guy with a shaved head, wearing gear from a running shoe company, complete with a skimpy pair of shorts, the kind those Kenyan marathoners wear. Behind him, the other two looked more like what you might expect from college kids out for a hike. But, man, were they moving fast and in a regimented fashion, sort of like an army troop. They called themselves the “JourneyFilm Crew,” and all three were carrying packs manufactured by GoLite, the ultralight gear company that utilizes Ray Jardine's designs.

By deconstructing traditional backpacking items down to their essence and finding excellence in structural rationality, simplicity, and ultimate utility, Ray Jardine has revolutionized the way people look at long-distance hiking and its accompanying gear. With a degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, Jardine designed space-flight mechanics before retiring early to pursue outdoor endeavors. Along the way he put his expertise to use designing methods and tools to make his mountaineering, rock climbing, hang gliding, sea hiking, and long-distance hiking hobbies more enjoyable. In the case of rock climbing, while conquering some of the most challenging climbs on the planet, he invented a nifty little tool, the “friend,” that has since helped many climbers scale rock faces once thought impossible. That was in 1978. Nearly ten years later, desiring to continuously “expand his horizons” and “live in a realm far beyond the norm,” he turned his attention to long-distance hiking, a new challenge to which he could apply his unstinting logic.

When Jardine says “ultralight,” he means it. He calculates his pack weight down to the last ounce and has no patience for the extraneous. Don't bother with bringing a tent, asserts Jardine; a tarp provides more than enough shelter. What brand of backpack is the best? None—Jardine suggests that you make your own (or buy the GoLite model). If, however, you're foolish enough to risk purchasing a pack from a mainstream retailer, be sure to cut off all those fancy straps and clips or they'll conspire to weigh you down. Boots are much too heavy and cumbersome; sneakers will do the trick. And even these, it seems, can be made lighter. Jardine recommends shaving the brand logos off sneakers to reduce their weight and to cut down on backwoods marketing. (Jardine is staunchly against backwoods marketing.) Surely I will need to bring along items of basic hygiene—a toothbrush, perhaps? Jardine will
grudgingly grant you the luxury of a toothbrush—but not toothpaste (too heavy, too loaded with chemicals). All in all, when it comes to gear and personal items like the toothbrush, Jardine's philosophy is “cut and whack.”

“Cut off anything you will not use,” writes Jardine in
Beyond Backpacking
. “Be assertive, and remember that if you whack too much you can always sew it back together. Do the same with all your gear, cut and whack to your heart's content: the toothbrush handle, the maps (cut away whatever portions you will not need, not just the borders), cut the bandana in half, chop a small wedge from a bar of soap.”

Jardine is extreme, but he also gets results. On the last of Jardine's three Pacific Crest hikes, his base pack weight (without food and water) was a paltry nine pounds, and he and his wife Jenny flew up the country averaging better than thirty miles a day.

The three JourneyFilm Crew youngsters looked like sincere members of the cult Jardine and paused for only a second to bark a question at me—“Seen Fast Dave?” I yipped back in the affirmative and said that he'd gone down to get water from the spring. The boys grinned at each other and began to haul ass down the trail once again. But before they were out of sight, one of them turned back and yelled to me, “Tell Dave that the JourneyFilm Crew was here.”

“Men,” I thought, “always in competition.” When Dave returned with his water, I didn't mention the JourneyFilm Crew. I didn't want to feed the voracious gossip monster that lurked in the shadows of the PCT community.

This monster rears its head whenever two or three hiking groups come together, whether at a water source or in a town. After a little over a week on the trail, I knew how the first several minutes of every conversation with a fellow thru-hiker would go. It would start with a seemingly innocent question. “When'd ya start?” Based on the response, the inquisitor would do some quick calculations to figure out how many days we (the competition) had been on the trail, how many miles we'd hiked so far, and our average miles per day, all leading to an answer to the all-important question: “Are they going faster or slower than me?”

I'm making a gross generalization here, but this is how our conversations
began about ninety percent of the time. And I must say, we weren't innocent; we played the game, too. I just loved it when a guy, puffed up with machismo, flaunting his Jardine-approved pack and smirking at my bulging one, would ask the inevitable questions, only to find out that—yikes! a girl—a girl with a big fat pack—was going faster than him. This didn't happen all that regularly, but when it did, it was I who puffed up with pride.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't have such satisfaction with the JourneyFilm Crew. Among those into thru-hiker “standings,” they had a right to gloat. They started their trip on May 10 at 10:06 in the morning, approximately fifty-three hours behind us—and there they just went, kicking up dust in their wake. The Crew included Kimmo, a photography student from Finland whose previous adventures included biking across the U.S.; J. B., a film student; and Joe, a biology student. Their initial goals had been to successfully thru-hike the PCT and create a documentary of their trip. This changed slightly when they met Fast Dave, “the toughest guy we've seen yet,” they wrote on their website. “He motivated us to hike faster and faster until we reached a point when JB and Kimmo hallucinated of beating the record for the fastest thru-hike [three months and four days], set by the legendary Ray Jardine and his wife Jenny.” In the interest of their newfound quest, the JourneyFilm Crew ate most of their meals while walking and used a stopwatch to time their breaks. “Kimmo can't stand it when other hikers pass us,” J. B. once said.

The need for speed and the ensuing hunger and exhaustion would lead the JourneyFilm Crew into many adventures—and mishaps. More than once the team ran out of food, resulting in a member of their party collapsing on the trail. Fortunately, in each case another hiker happened to show up in time to supply a Power Bar or two. In Yosemite, at Tuolomne Meadows, Kimmo left his wet sneakers drying by a campfire while he went to search for a room for the night. J. B., who was also drying by the fire, fell asleep, and when Kimmo returned he found his shoes smoldering (and J. B. still sleeping). Without a footwear retailer for more than sixty miles and no time to wait for a new pair to be mailed, Kimmo tried Duct-taping his shoes' insoles to his feet. Not surprisingly, this didn't work. Eventually a sympathetic shopkeeper gave Kimmo an old pair of work boots. They were two sizes too small, but Kimmo wore
them anyway. The hike must go on, especially when there's a record to break.

Back in the seventies, Peter Jenkins wrote the best-seller
A Walk Across America
, in which he detailed his walk from New York to New Orleans. Traveling mostly on roads, Jenkins' route was a unique and often solitary one. Ours, on the other hand, was along a dedicated trail traveled by three hundred others trying to get to the same destination within approximately the same time frame. But despite these differences, Jenkins' trip was in many ways similar to ours—a quest of sorts, although we weren't quite sure what for. On his way to New Orleans, Jenkins, like us, confronted obsessions with speed and mileage. In response he wrote, “I was opposed to becoming ‘mileage crazy.' Mileage craziness is a serious condition that exists in many forms. It can hit unsuspecting travelers while driving cars, motorcycles, riding in planes, crossing the country on bicycles or on foot. The symptoms may lead to obsessively placing more importance on how many miles are traveled than on the real reason for traveling. . . . On foot, in a van, on a fleet motorcycle or on a bicycle, a person must be very careful not to become overly concerned with arriving.”