Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail (4 page)

The big difference between the history of the Appalachian Trail and the PCT is very simple. The PCT took a lot longer to complete. The two trails were begun at roughly the same time. Work crews of Boy Scouts played a key early role in carving out PCT sections. Nonetheless, while the Appalachian Trail was fully completed by 1937, the much more isolated PCT didn’t fully connect all its parts until 1993.

The PCT has seen explosive growth over the last decade. The number of Appalachian trail thru-hikers had begun skyrocketing in the late 1990’s. Many were finding it practically impossible to adjust back to “the real world”, after their journey of a lifetime. These same people began to hear about the wonders of this new trail in the West.

Specifically, what they heard was how very
different
it was from the Appalachian Trail. For starters,
there aren’t blazes to follow or shelters to sleep in
like the ones that dot the Appalachian Trail. This adds an element of uncertainty to each day. The PCT is considerably more isolated and runs through much wilder terrain. It requires more planning. These hiking pilgrims weren’t put off, however. They had gained rock-solid confidence on the Appalachian Trail and lusted after an equivalent or great challenge. Better yet, the PCT is renowned in the tight-knit hiking community for its
stunning scenery.

It has now become a virtual rite of passage, once having completed the Appalachian Trail, to immediately begin thinking about attempting the PCT. Some hikers talked about then doing the Continental Divide Trail to achieve the so-called Triple Crown. Others even mentioned getting into mountain climbing. Not me. The PCT was my lone objective. I honestly felt that if I could just thru-hike this trail, then I would have reached my maximum potential as an outdoorsman. I could then rest in peace.

As I was soon to learn, however, success on one trail is by no means a guarantee of success on another.

Chapter 4

The Mexican Border

The only certain freedom is in departure

Robert Frost

“L
ooks like you’re headed the same place as me?” I inquired. Sounds like a pickup line, huh? Well, in a way it was. But what I was looking for was a hiking partner, not a paramour.

It was April 24th, 2009, and I was on a packed bus that was chugging south from San Diego towards the Mexican border. Specifically, I was trying to get to the border town of Campo. But I kept getting conflicting information. Nobody seemed to speak much english. I tried chatting with a couple of these
obreros
(day workers). But none of them had any idea what the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) was, or exactly where it began.

Fortunately, an Anglican-looking man in his late thirties had come striding to the back of the bus in desert-attire and a new pair of trail running shoes. My mood had lifted, and that’s when I had popped the question.

“Yes, mate,” he answered pleasantly in a British accent. “There’s another fella’ up front with a
rucksack
(backpack), as well.

“I’m Skywalker,” I said, using my old trail name from the Appalachian Trail.

“St. Rick, here,” he offered. As we chatted it became clear that St. Rick was quite a worldly man, having hiked on trails all over the world. He had a polished style, and exuded confidence.

Soon, the other Anglo-American joined us in the back. He was just the opposite from St. Rick—wide-eyed and unsure of himself. He was a marathon runner, but had never hiked. His name was Ralph, and he appeared to be about my age. Before the sun abruptly set on us in the desert that night, it would seem like I knew his entire story.

“My wife just left me for another woman,” he lamented.

“Nice-looking?” I wondered. I know that’s not the most helpful thing I could have asked. But whoever said empathy is the strong point of us males?

“You should have heard my father when he found out I was gonna’ do this,” Ralph recounted incredulously. “The minute my wife picked up the phone, he started screaming, ‘What’s he doing. We’ve got to stop him. He’s gone crazy.”

But at the end of the day, Ralph was like any other mortal. Once the idea of hiking the PCT gets lodged in a person’s head, sooner or later that person will find himself or herself at the Mexican border.

The bus dropped Ralph and me off in the dusty border town of Campo, California. (St. Rick got off early at Lake Morena County State Park to attend the annual PCT
Kickoff Party
). Again, surprisingly few people knew much of anything about the trail.

“What’s with this damn place?” I wondered.

“Maybe we’re the problem,” Ralph offered. “Not them.” Once we started hoofing up a large dirt road to the border fence, we learned more about just who we and they are.

Scores of heavily-armored vehicles rushed in and out of a huge border patrol building on our left.

“Man, I’d always thought our border patrol just made a token effort,” I said to Ralph. “Kinda’ like ‘You can’t come over, you can’t come,’ while through winks and nods we were practically waving ‘em in.”

“Yeah, same here.” Over the next few days, as we saw trucks filled with hawkish-looking officials speeding by, and illegals running like their lives depended on it, we’d realize just how mistaken we were.

Finally, at the top of the top of the hill we saw the PCT monument which marks the trail’s southern terminus. Just behind it was the double-fenced border.

“About all I can say is let’s remember to walk north, not south,” I said.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ralph replied dryly.

It was an especially bright day with a dazzling blue sky, as we stood there looking through the fence out into the Mexican desert. It was nothing but barren terrain dotted with tough desert bushes as far as the eye could see. Actually, it didn’t look any different than our side of the border. Of course, that shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the exact spot we were standing, as well as several hundred miles to our north, were once part of Mexico.

We didn’t see any Mexicans, however. That shouldn’t have been a surprise, either. Border crashers are like snakes, mountain lions, scorpions, and many other creatures found in the desert—they prefer to travel at night when it’s cooler and stealthier. The number of people illegally crossing each year has been estimated at
over a million.
This is despite an immigration quota of seventy-five thousand.

“How far are you looking to go today?” Ralph asked.

“Well, it’s over twenty miles to the Kickoff Party,” I said. “This late I’ll probably just try to get in 12 or 15 miles before dark.”

“Yeah, that’s kinda’ what I was thinking too,” he said, which was music to my ears.

“I think the trail goes over that mountain there,” I pointed to the left. But
ten minutes after starting we
found ourselves on a dirt road that didn’t appear to lead anywhere except sticky desert bushes.

“Is this right?” I asked.

“Let me go check it out,” Ralph said helpfully. He dropped his backpack and started trotting at a brisk jogger’s pace through the bushes. A few minutes later he came running back, appearing unwinded.

“Yeah, there’s no trail this way,” he said.

“Sorry,” I offered.

“No worries,” he consoled me.

He sure seemed like an agreeable fellow. But we seemed to have two followers and zero leaders in this particular contingent.

Hikers may be the nicest folks I ever met. You actually have to look pretty hard to find an asshole. The deep wilderness, as well as the desert, are bound to attract a share of
misanthropes
to be sure. But even these are not usually inflicted with the urge to grate, dominate, condescend, or calculate, which can make humans so unpleasant at times. So I instinctively got a quick lift almost every time I saw other hikers, especially in the back country.

“Oh cool, humanoids,” I said to Ralph when we spotted three hikers. Better yet, they had found a rare shaded spot to rest.

“Paul”, “Tom”, and “Jerry”, they introduced themselves.

The first two, Paul and Tom, were flawless physical specimens in their mid-twenties. The third member, Jerry, on the other hand, appeared to have shown up on the PCT gloriously unfit. He was about thirty years old with a baby face, but a matching baby elephant bulging out of his stomach.

“Californians?” I asked.

“No, Detroit,” Jerry offered. That was good news. Everybody knows Third World Countries are incubators of nice people. And since Detroit is the closest thing we have in this blessed land to a Third World Country, that was a favorable omen.

“What do ya’ll think of the desert so far?” I asked.

“Pretty good,” Paul answered.

“You weren’t so happy back there when we ran into those two rattlers,” Jerry laughed.

“You’ve already seen two rattlesnakes?” I asked in amazement.

“Yeah,” they laughed.

“Today?”

“Yeah, just back there.”

“The guidebooks must not have been exaggerating,” Ralph said.

Ralph’s stride was, indeed, that of a marathoner—very little wasted motion. I struggled to keep up. I was maintaining a typical hiker distance of about fifteen feet when he suddenly jumped back towards me. “What’s that?”

“Rattler,” I said, uncharacteristically knowledgeable.

“Where?” he demanded to know. We began scouring the light brown desert surface. The problem is that rattlers in the desert are predominantly light brown themselves, which probably is no coincidence. Nothing revealed itself—just a steady, but eerie, trilling sound.