The decision

the mouth of the Kennebec river

Julie writes:

During our long walk in the summer of 2010, Rick and I formulated our plans for 2011. We had started the Pacific Crest Trail at it’s southern terminus, Campo CA, the Mexican border on May 17, 2011. Our plan was to reach Canada. Somewhere mid-September, we did. Very wet, very cold and very thin.

During the nearly endless step-step, pole-pole rhythm of that hike one of my favorite directions for distractionary thought was: what will we do next summer, in 2011. Up and down the mountains, Rick and I discussed future plans. But not too much. I didn’t want to wear that subject (or any other) out. Rick and I shared a 2,600 mile hike in near total isolation from others. One requirement for 2011: I wanted to sit down. I knew my knees needed a rest. Another: our adventure would take place during July and August. That is when we rent our house for income.

Bicycling or kayaking?  Rick had always wanted to kayak the Maine IslandTrail.  This is a ‘water trail’, made up of hundreds of offshore and river islands in Maine, some publicly owned, some owned by individuals and some owned by conservation organizations. http://www.mita.org/  Most are small and uninhabited; many allow camping. The Maine Island Trail sounded good, closer to home and I could sit. Best, perhaps, looked at from the Pacific Crest Trail where we had a cold wet winter closing in on us, kayaking in Maine did not dictate a mile quota for each day. There was no actual ‘trail’ to finish, no prescribed order in which to visit the islands. We knew we would not kayak from New Hampshire to the Canadian border.

In the winter, when we were home from the trail, our plans for the summer of 2011 became complicated by obligations. Kayaking in Maine would be sandwiched between selling Rick’s work at Maine craft shows. In August we would go to Maryland to see Rick’s sons. Our route would be a loop: starting and ending in Freeport.

Paddling down Joe River

Joe River chickee

The next morning the tidal current moved us along as we paddled down Joe River towards Whitewater Bay and Flamingo.  We made a lunch and toilet stop at the South Joe River chickee because along the mangrove shore there is nowhere to land the kayak.  The woody roots reach into the water, impossible to walk upon; solid earth is yards into the interior.  Chickees are meant for freestanding tents, we had tied ours to the upright posts. This was our longest day, 26 miles assisted by the tides.  We reached Flamingo’s ranger station by early afternoon and stopped to rework our itinerary.  Two years ago, on the ‘wrong’ island one night we were met by unfriendly gun-carrying rangers.  This trip, we met no one except a young Alaskan wrapped in a tarp waiting out a storm.  He’d been out a month, kayaking from Tampa in a 12 foot sit-on-top.  Days later a ranger asked if I’d seen him; they were worried about him.  We arrived in Flamingo early. In two days we’d be meet friends from home with a

Florida Bay

sumptuous motor home who would take Rick, me and the kayak back to Ft. Myers.  The Wilderness Waterway ends at the Flamingo ranger station with a small dam.  Workers at the small marina, anxious to free up space for their rental business helped us around the dam.  We headed west in Florida Bay.  For two more nights we camped on the beach.  Each afternoon the winds strengthened, making paddling harder.  There was only a narrow beach to camp upon; the mangroves die back leaving their roots and trunks and plenty of firewood.  Here the shallow water was an opaque pale gray.  The ranger called the beaches ‘marled’,  between high and low tides gray sucking mud, clay really, could get the better of one’s shoes.

On our last day we visited the ranger station in Flamingo.  There, hanging around the dock were two crocodiles (apparently the only place in America where alligators and crocodiles co-exist)  who, when the tap was turned on, swam up for the fresh water.  A ranger identified other beach life which had puzzled me.  Hard rubbery mucoid blobs (in the intertidal zone) were tunicates. Most were gray, some patterned like turtles.  We saw hundreds of vase sponges,  colonies of smaller organisms which grow together to filter feed.   The ranger agreed with me that Everglades National Park was underutilized.  What other National Park can one visit in January and sleep out outdoors comfortably?   The water temperature was 72 degrees.  It will be far colder in Maine in July.

Two years ago Rick and I found the site: http://www.evergladesdiary.com/index.html.  It gives an excellent overview and descriptions (with pictures) of all campsites.  Nautical charts are available at the park ranger stations.  The site includes GPS waypoints.  In preparation for our Maine Island Trail trip, Rick and I wanted to learn to use  GPS.  It was easy, although Rick’s 12 year old hand-held model does not allow for charts to be loaded.  Time to buy more gear.

Visitor Center crocodile

mangrove island in Florida Bay

kayaking the 10,000 islands

Jewel Key

In the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast lie an area called the 10,000 Islands.  This is part of The Everglades National Park at Florida’s southern tip.  Rick and I have returned from  a week of kayaking; a warm, southern preparation for our planned Maine Island Trail trip in the summer.

Rick and I kayaked  the 10,000 Islands two years ago.  At that time we left Everglades City, where one has to sign in and present the park ranger with a night-by-night itinerary, and did a week- long loop, camping on Tiger Key, Picnic Key, Jewell Key,  and Rabbit Key.  These are Park designated campsites, of course, of which there are two types: beach sites and chickees.  The keys (and further south some mainland ‘cape’ sites) are white shell beaches, small sand coves on the windward side of mangrove islands.  Chickees are inland campsites, plastic wood platforms near the mangrove shore.  They are 10X12 feet, covered, and  in the case of the Joe River double chickee where we camped, connected by a walkway on which sits a plastic portable toilet.

In 2009 Rick and I had our leaky Folboat (with sail) circa 1972 that we’d bought over the telephone, without seeing it, on craigslist. There’d been a vague, far-away picture of the craft under sail.  We should have been tipped off by the typography of the instruction leaflet reproduced on the post.  1970′s for sure. The 10,000 islands were so beautiful we wanted to return.  This time we bought a Wilderness Systems Northstar, a plastic tandem kayak, also from craigslist, also unseen.  A better deal all around, and a better deal at $500., than a rented kayak.  Rick found (online, of course) a 50-week a year home for the kayak.  We borrowed paddles, lifejackets and other gear, too cumbersome for carry-on luggage.

In 2011 we went point-to-point, from Everglades City to Flamingo, the southern terminus of the ‘Wilderness Waterway’,  a marked 99 mile water trail inside the mangroves.  Our plan was to stay on the ‘outside’ in the gulf of Mexico because, in our opinion, the sand beaches are nicer campsites than the chickees.  And because the mangrove shores look very much alike.   On the third day, though, rain, heavy winds and a following sea made decision to go inside easy.  I’d begun to think my hat was too tight (tightened in the wind) until I realized that even in the tandem, a tank of a boat, we were wallowing enough for me to be sick.  We went into the Shark River and stopped at the Joe River chickee for the night.  Inland (the ‘Wilderness Waterway’) the waters were much calmer.  Dolphins arched in the river ahead of us, and as I watched one foot-long fish jump 20 inches out of the water, another jumped nearly into the cockpit, deflecting off my hand, it’s cold, hard fishness a shock.

I don’t often get sea-sick kayaking.  It’s like driving; one has something to do and is in control.  Our faded pink  Northstar was so stable that, not wanting to get my feet wet, I could walk along the deck to enter the forward cockpit.  Perhaps best of all, it had tightly strapped hatch covers.  There is no fresh water (except for rainfall and dewfall) in the 10,000 Islands.  Raccoons and rats will chew into soft-sided water containers for water.  We’d started with 12 gallons of water (96 pounds), way too much.  In the cool weather neither of us drank our allotted gallon per day.

Cape Sable

Losing weight

blueberry foliage turns red in September

After 3 weeks on the trail I’d lost six pounds.  I had access to a scale. We’d stopped at my aunt Po’s house in Santa Clarita for a visit and rest.  Po fed Rick and me so assiduously that by the time we left five days later, I’d gained back half that weight.  Rick, more cognizant of the likelihood of weight loss while hiking,  had worked  harder to eat more on the trail, and lost nothing.  The big weight loss, his and mine, was to come.

The next scale I found was at Pooh Corner, the home of trail angels at Donner Pass.  I weighed 107, with shoes and clothes, after an extravagant dinner.  This was after the passes of the High Sierras, the time of our hunger.  In the weeks after Rick and I had reached Red’s Meadow, where the terrain became a little gentler,  I’d made an extra effort to eat more high calorie foods.  I figured at the lowest I’d weighed 105, and Rick 140.  Rick said he’d weighed that in 8th grade, although I don’t quite believe him.   I was down to my early high school weight.  Each of us had lost about 15 pounds.  My rare opportunities to see myself in a full length mirror came at the home of trail angels, in connection with long-awaited showers.  I looked like a picture in a medical text.  I looked like starvation.  It was painful to look at Rick, but never did he nor I experience weakness or fatigue related to weight loss.  If anything, I’d convinced myself that I had less weight to lug up those steep trails.   My appearance remained a shock to me everytime I had the chance to look in a mirror.  It wasn’t just the thinness; it was the sun, the dirt, the same single shirt day after day.  My age.  Our appearance reflected a strange self-imposed decline all the while we felt great and were having the adventure of our lives.

At our infrequent town stops, in supermarkets or libraries I felt ‘other’, mildly self-conscious about my appearance.  In towns we were among Americans who looked fat and prosperous.   In laundromats people were less prosperous, but no less fat.  Even the Greyhound bus passengers did not appear down and out; by the time we’d finished up with the trail and spent two days travelling by bus to Seattle, cruise passengers, returning to Seattle from Vancouver, crammed the seats.  We had to make the next bus.

There is much press and much hype on the subject of nutrition in America.  Careers  have been made telling us what to eat.   Even our government, controversially, weighs in on our diets.  As PCT hikers, our appearance (including our age) aligned us with a category of the poor that scarcely exists anymore in this country.  We were starving.

When we hitch-hiked (to and from the trail to pick up supplies), Rick and I experimented with different signs; once we wrote ‘PCT hikers’.  We were picked up by a  charming couple who had met each other when the driver picked up his future spouse while she was hitch-hiking back in the glory days, the late 60′s.  They’d been married for 50 years.  They picked us up because they thought our sign said ‘pickers’.  ”You look like pickers”, he told us.  We did, and for  a moment I was embarrassed to be only a recreational hiker.

There was one category of through hiker who escaped the weight loss phenomenon: women of child-bearing age.  Men of all ages lost weight as well as older women.  (There were only a handful of older women that I’d met….we were disappearing fast!)  Young women are ‘hormone protected’.  I imagine that in ancient times of great migration or food scarcity, it was important that young women hold onto the weight.

I have been home now 4 1/2 months, the exact length of our hike.  I gained the weight back months ago.

rain at the US/Canadian border

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This was the last post I wrote last winter; it went unposted until now (Sept 2011).  Summer is over, our kayaking adventure is over and I will, for the sake of simplicity, merge our blogs.  Rick and I will call our summer 2011 blog, yet unwritten, ‘Paddling Down East’.  It begins with our ‘training paddle’ last winter in Florida.   Please read on.

Starving in America, by choice

alpine lake, high sierras

Earlier in this blog, before Rick and I left for the west coast, I wrote about planing the hike.  I described calculating our caloric needs to determine how far we could go between re-supplies.  All of my information about our food needs, prior to the hike, came from reading the blogs of others.  Neither Rick nor I had been ‘big hikers’.  (NOW we are!)  There had been a  prophetic hike in the White Mountains in New Hampshire in October 2009.  It had been cold; snow flurries during the day and a hard freeze at night.  One night we didn’t bother to cook, stopping after dark, cold and exhausted when the lean-to marked on our map turned out to be a pile of boards with nails.  Dismantled.  So I didn’t think too much of it when we each lost 5 lbs over 3 days.  If I had been looking for clues about the difficulty of consuming enough calories,  there was also a You Tube video.  Two young women were discussing the PCT, their hike recently abandoned after some weeks.  ”At least the trail was good for weight loss, if nothing else.”  They laugh uncontrollably.  It was one of those moments that ‘you had to have been there’ for it to make sense.

I can now say that Rick and I did not plan the food very well.  I had a cavalier attitude about getting enough calories.   Who wouldn’t in 21st century America?  It took more than a month on the trail to learn from other hikers the sheer quantity of food they found necessary.  And every time other hikers described what they ate (and how much) my thought was: I can’t do that, I don’t want to do that.  I’ll just lose the weight.

At the beginning, Rick and I chose not to pre-plan the food; we would buy food at supermarkets in trail towns (we chose these towns at home).  When we stopped for five days in Santa Clarita, CA at the home of my aunt Po, we decided to box up food for the next month and have it mailed to us at Post Offices  in towns nearest the trail.   This is a great system, except we were sloppy.  In the comfort of Po’s dining room we laid out the boxes, marked 7 days, 8 days, 9 days, depending on number of miles between Post Offices.  I suspect that when we shopped in Santa Clarita, I had not been vigilant.  My math must have been vague because I was overwhelmed by the numbers.  I thought, on some general level, we can’t carry this much, so I’ll eat less.  And when it came time to fill the boxes, I lacked precision as well.  I tossed in the same package of tortillas, box of crackers, jar of peanut butter, in every box, whether 7 days or 9.  For our 13 day stretch between Kennedy Meadows and Red’s Meadow, we increased the amounts only slightly.

The point at which we first realized we had too little food was early in the High Sierras when we contemplated a side trip to Mt. Whitney.  It was clear we didn’t have enough food to take an extra day (make a 13 day stretch, 14 days).  We didn’t even have enough food to make it to Red’s Meadow without seriously cutting back.  The nature of carrying all one’s food for a given number of days involves rationing by definition, we weren’t just rationing here, we were deliberately eating less.  Days after we’d chosen not to climb Mt. Whitney, we stopped and counted out every tortilla, every handful of trail mix.  We needed to increase our food supply.  We were fortunate enough to be offered, on several occasions, ‘extra’ food by other hikers. Had we not received these ‘donations’ and picked up unwanted food from hiker boxes, we would have had to get off the trail by hiking many, many miles to obtain more food.

burning calories

Were we ever excessively hungry?  Rick would answer this differently from  I; he was hungrier.  I was hungry only a handful of times, during the week or so when we climbed the high passes starting with Forester Pass.  We knew we had less food than we should have had, so, curious, we began to add up the calories.  There were days when I ate between 1200 and 1700 calories.   Half of that supplied by dinner, at camp. Hiker wisdom says that number should have been 3,500 or more.

Cooking

Rick cooking with the Caldera Cone Inferno

There are a lot of choices for meal preparation on the trail.  Rick and I cooked one meal at the end of each day on a small woodburning stove called the Caldera Cone Inferno by Trail Designs.  This stove is a flat piece of titanium which is rolled and fastened to form a cone that will support the cookpot.   Finger -sized sticks of wood are burned inside a smaller second cone inverted inside the larger cone.   This system worked very well for us.   The stove is light, cooks quickly and is easy to use.  One doesn’t have to buy or carry fuel.  I was able, dead tired at at the end of the day, to sit at our campsite and within arm’s reach find plenty of wood for dinner.  The first 2,000 miles the Pacific Crest Trail is bone dry; fuel is super adundant.  In wet Washington when we couldn’t find dry wood, we used a tiny alcohol ‘penny’ stove made from aluminum soda cans.  (You Tube has scores of instructional videos.)  Using wood for fuel is very, very dirty.  Both titanium cones and the entire outside of the pot become coated with carbon.  After setting up the stove Rick had to scrub his hands.  The stove comes with a cylindrical plastic container; necessary because whatever comes in contact with the stove becomes black.  We were cooking for two; the dirty stove and pot were a price we were willing to pay for speedy water-boiling.  The alcohol penny stove took twice as long.  Firing up the stove in the morning before we left camp took way too long, we never did it, but I really liked a hot meal at the end of the day.

Some hikers don’t cook at all.  At first I didn’t understand this.  For gear and food, weight matters.  By re-hydrating food with boiling water (previously referred to as ‘cooking’), one is able to carried light dried foods.  Water for re-hydration can usually be found at the campsite.  If there is plenty of available wood,  the weight of a light stove and cookpot is more than offset by weight savings of light dried food over a cold dinner.  I was able to tolerate macaroni and cheese made with water because it was hot.  Red pepper flakes helped, too.  Some hikers added cold water to the mac and cheese around lunch time,  by evening it had softened sufficiently to eat.  One could also rehydrate with cold water instant mashed potatoes, ramen, couscous and another hiker staple: Lipton Sides such as Taco Rice and Teriyaki Rice.  Rick and I used dehydrated  foods rather than the freeze-dried food because of cost.  Freeze dried foods marketed to backpackers are 6-10 times the cost of supermarket dried food, and the substantial foil packets make considerable trash.

Gear review

Rick wearing an Osprey Exos 58 backpack

Part of the fun of planning a four and a half month hike is choosing the gear.   All through last winter we researched and bought the few things we would carry.  Few it had to be.  Lightness is essential.  We didn’t meet any linebacker-sized long distance hikers, but I suspect if we had, even they would enjoy a light backpack.

Pack, tent and sleeping bag are the ‘Big Three’ in expense and weight.  Our packs were The Osprey Exos model,  46 for me, 58 for Rick.   (I think those numbers are liters of capacity excluding the lid  pocket).  The Exos was chosen for comfort and relative lightness.  It performed admirably.  Rick had no complaints whatsoever; I found the shoulder straps had too little padding.  I added foam pieces over my collar bones and fixed the problem.  The Exos is a pale gray with orange trim. The packs became filthy.  Rick feared the airline wouldn’t let us on the plane.  We’d heard a story of a hiker who, before being allowed to board, was led to a first class airport lounge where he was ‘asked’ to take a shower.  At Cascade Locks on the Oregon/Washington border we found a handicapped shower in a public park.  It had hot water, liquid soap and a spray nozzle.  I’d acquired a nail brush and, locked inside the stall, using 100 gallons of hot water, we scrubbed and scrubbed the packs.  The packs looked great.  I scrubbed them again upon returning home and now they look new.

Henry Shires Tarptent Squall 2

In southern California we’d exchanged our tarp for a single-walled, floored, mosquito-netted tent called a ‘tarptent’.  Specifically Henry Shires Tarptent Squall 2.  We had started with a tarp in Campo. This was a shaped roof, no walls, no floor (we added a flat tarp for a floor), no insect netting. Some hikers hike the entire trail with a tarp like this.  I found that design allowed too much dirt in the sleeping area, too much cold wind blowing over our bodies and, of course, insects to bite unimpeded.  A single wall tent is a compromise; function vs weight.  It worked fine in dry CA.  That is, until the cheap small gauge zippers failed to close.  A common complaint for this tent model, we eventually met our tent’s maker, Henry Shire, at Cascade Locks ‘PCT days’ where he performed a field repair and replaced the zipper pulls rather grumpily.  Through weeks of steady rain  the Henry Shire tent kept us reasonably dry.  The silicon impregnated nylon let pounding rain push a fine mist through the roof.  The walls of the tent, constructed of mesh alone, allowed water to pool along the edges of the floor.  I was surprised and pleased at how much body heat the insect mesh held inside the tent.

Our sleeping bags were REI sub kilo.  Mine, a women’s model was rated at 15 degrees, Rick’s a men’s model, at 20 degrees.  (There is a lot of controversy about sleeping bag ratings, with no published industry standard.  The degree-rating, I’d been told, is for ‘survivabilty’ not comfort.)  I’ve had an epiphany about size and outdoor equipment: small is better.  A few years ago I laughed when I heard there were women-specific sleeping bags.  What?  Pink ones?  In the 60′s and 70′s  I’d used smaller-sized men’s outdoor clothing and not understood what the fuss was about garments designed specifically for women.  (So what if the crotch of long underwear hung halfway down to my knees, empty?)  I first realized smaller was better with bicycles.  I came to own, unplanned, a bicycle that years before I’d have thought was the wrong size: too small.  It was the best-sized bicycle I’d ever had.  I’d figured out that long underwear, now called ‘base layer’,  is warmer when it fits tightly.  So I chose the women’s sleeping bag.  It was dusty lavendar, but best of all it was small. Smaller is warmer and smaller is lighter.  Rick tried it out and found it restrictive.  I hadn’t noticed.  It was a bonus that I could bend my knees inside the sleeping bag that is, without bringing the entire sleeping bag closer to my head.  This is because women’s bags are cut wider at the hip.

Before our PCT hike I believed that zipping sleeping bags together would result in warmer sleep.  It does not.  That ‘cold column of air’ ( http://montybillpct.net/blog2010),  makes for a much colder night than if one zips up a well-fitting bag alone.  So much for ‘shared bodily warmth’ (from the James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977.  Isn’t the internet amazing?)  For insulation from the cold ground, and comfort we used Thermarest Ridgerest foam pads.  We chose these non-inflating closed cell pads for weight and durability. We’d heard that inflatable pads are likely to be punctured by sharp objects, particularly cactus spines.  The Ridgerest pads held up well and proved to be a good insulation from the ground, but were only ‘fairly’ for comfortable.  I’d wake in the night, tossing from left to right because my hip hurt from the hard ground.  Rick complained his shoulder hurt as well.  This was a common complaint from other hikers and one that did not improve as the weeks and months passed.   We acquired  pieces of closed cell foam, as thick as the pads, about 9 X 14 inches and placed these between ground and foam pad.  This helped, but next time I’d try an inflatable pad after the desert and danger of cactus spines is past.

Electronics

all photos taken with Canon Power Shot Digital Elph (widest angle)

I have promised in this blog to review our gear.  I’ll begin with electronics.  You may have figured out that I am an uneasy citizen of the electronic age.   In years past I would have been satisfied to leave home for 4 1/2 months and telephone occasionally from a pay phone. Expectations have changed, however.  Rick and I each brought a basic cell phone on the hike.   I had read (where?) that our service provider, Verizon, claimed service on 70%  of the trail.  My estimate:  10% , maybe less.  We kept our phones off,  preserving battery life.  If I needed to make a call, I’d turn the phone on  when we reached a high spot or rounded a corner to face a new direction.  Or when we crossed a road.  Most times there was no signal.  Despite bars, the phone was too weak to send calls.  Calls were made when we were in a town, re-supplying.

I had a point-and-shoot digital camera, an adequate size/weight/quality compromise.  I started the trail with my daughter Alexandra’s six year-old Canon Power Shot.  It died in northern California, and I had her buy and send me a new model of the same camera.  There were a few weeks when I had no camera; hence no pictures of the Trinity Alps, Castle Crags  or Mount Shasta.  I  learned, after my new camera went home to Cape Cod before being remailed to me at Seiad Valley, that one can have UPS deliver to a P.O. General Delivery address. Battery life was adequate.  A harder problem to overcome was that I often didn’t wish to stop to photograph.  My hands were occupied with poles, the camera stashed in a case for dust-proofing.  The last three weeks in Washington the rain was steady; my hands painful blocks of ice.  One particularly miserable day I saw a rainbow.  We’d started a switchbacked descent looking down into a narrow valley.  My hands hurt too much to take off my mittens.  I realized  after the rainbow was gone that what made it look so special was that we stood above the rainbow,  it was projected against a background of dark greens, not the usual sky.   I wish I had taken more pictures of Rick and me as we lived life on the trail.   All our blog posts are illustrated with landscapes; it is all I have.  Next time, I will think more about blog- illustrating.  I’ll photograph (as others do), dirty blistered feet, shopping in town,  packing the re-supply boxes, collecting wood, cooking dinner  and details of outdoor life that I happily left out.

rain in Washington

Music was our electronic disaster.  Before we left home Rick and I did some research and bought two Sansa Clip 8 GB MP3 players.   We looked for good battery life and a minimal screen (no shuffle only).  I found a two port ‘rapid’  USB to AC charger.  At home we loaded the players with music, audio books, and for me, Spanish for beginners.  (I didn’t know how much of my energy the trail would take.)  I loved the distraction of music on the trail!  I ran down the battery within a few days and began to lust after electricity.  When I saw an electrical substation or the trail crossed a dirt road with power lines, I dreamed of a plug-in to recharge the music player.  Finally, we stopped at our first laundry in Idyllwild, CA and I was able to recharge.  As our small nylon load spun in the dryer, our Sansa Clips fried.  Mine first, then Rick’s.  Killed by overcharging.  I know now that where batteries are concerned, slow is best.

After tossing the MP3 players and the battery charger, I called home and asked my daughter Rebecca to buy and load an ipod.  She sent me her old nano.  I was shocked at the short battery life; 4-6 hours, even after I’d turned the screen brightness to barely perceptible.  We were in towns with a possibility of electricity for recharge every 7 or 8 days at best.  I called home, again.  My sons researched, bought and sent a solar charger. (Solio Universal Hybrid solar charger.)  This charger, clearly meant for stationary use, was awkward to attach to the top of  the pack, slipping and flopping.  Worse, for reasons I don’t understand, it did not sync with the ipod nano.  The solar charger would charge the phone, but we had no need to charge the phone; every week or two in town was adequate.  Because it would not charge the ipod, I sent it home.  The lesson here is have good familiarity with all electronics before  leaving home.

Cell phone, camera and very limited music were our only electronic devices.  Some hikers bring GPS devices, SPOT beacons (satellite signals which pinpoint trail location to someone at home), and smart phones.  The question is: what do you need and how much weight are you willing to carry?

fog and rain in Washington, blueberry bushes with red foliage

Trail signs

This is a blog about signage.  Rick is a calligrapher, but I went to art school.  We looked carefully at the signs.

The Pacific Crest Trail is so well-trod a hiker cannot get lost.   Almost.  Except where snow obscures the trail.  We carried a guide book to learn what was up ahead, how far till the next water source and the suitability of the terrain for camping.  And because one would be a fool to travel in the wilderness without maps.

Trail markings were managed by many, many different jurisdictions.  In the southern California desert, where there were no other intersecting trails, and no growth to obscure the trail, the PCT was sometimes marked every few hundred feet.  In the northwest it seemed entire states went by without a trail marker.  Well, entire days, anyway.  The PCT emblem as a plastic decal or screened aluminum shield was affixed to trees , downed or upright, posts of wood or fiberglass, even incorporated into road signs.  Some national parks, inexplicably, had a policy of not allowing PCT signage.

Sometimes PCT emblems were comically huge; sometimes gone. They had been taken as souvenirs.   I liked the old trail markers, the blazes cut deep in the bark of trailside trees.  I could  find no one who could tell me how long ago it was that removing bark for blazes fell out of favor.  I think it may have been the 1970′s.  The PCT blazes (as far as I could determine, one short and one long blaze, stacked vertically)  were so deep, the bark edges grown down to the old wound, that they must have been very old.

Yosemite National Park

Signage in national parks is under the auspices of that park’s superintendant.  Each creates the ‘look’ he or she desires.  In Yosemite I thought the style was ‘apocalyptic’, but Rick described it as ‘western’.   Maybe the signs simply were designed to be permanent; vandal and natural disaster-proof.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park

Default signage in national parks was routed anodized aluminum.

As we travelled northward, there were more wooden signs.  Screened PCT emblems gave way to that emblem burned into 6 inch wooden squares.

Once on the trail we met a ranger with a work party, a few young men with shovels.  The ranger explained that they were breaking up illegal fire rings and removing trail junction signs.   She told us that there is a movement within the park management community that believes  all signs should be removed (or never installed).  That these signs are evidence  of man’s intrusion and thus detract from the wilderness experience.   Rick and I met this ranger a few days after our own very expensive illegal fire (see ‘The Ticket’ blog post) and asked the ranger how one could know about where fires could legally be built if there were no signs.  The ranger answered that this information could be sought prior to entering the wilderness and that fire restrictions were frequently  imposed and lifted for specific areas; prior research would be necessary in every case.  As to questions about safety and the greater liklihood of getting lost without signage,  she shrugged.

Lassen Volcanic National Park (WTMI)

Glacier Peak Area WA

I knew from conversations with other rangers that there is controversy surrounding the subject of trail maintenance.  Here also, the issue is the quality of  wilderness experience vs accessibility.  Is the roar of the  chainsaw so onorous  to require logs downed across the trail (some 5 feet in diameter) be sawn by a two-person crosscut, as they are in some jursidictions?   Should washed out  bridges be  replaced,  and should boulders that have tumbled to block the trail be removed?  This argument seems to leave out the question of places, such as the area around Crater Lake, which have been paved  for years.

The trail itself is man-made, of course, for a true wilderness experience the PCT could be left to fill in with vegetation and wash out with snow melt.  I believe that trail maintenance (including unobtrusive signage) is an appropriate role for government.   That it is a necessary part of promoting responsible recreational use of lands that belong to all the people.  And that these public lands should be able to be used by as many people as possible.

I valued a cleared trail,  footbridges across churning rivers  and signs that helped us find our way.  The walk from border to border was hard enough without getting lost.

A bubble of ignorance

Rick traverses volcanic soil

The obvious point here is that Rick and I spent 4 1/2 months with no news.  No newspapers, radio or television.  No news of the world from other hikers either.  We live in the information age, we read the newspaper every day at home, yet it was easy to do without.   The trail is an odd way of life; different from life in a town or on a farm and different, too, from a nomadic life.  It is unsustainable, except for the rarest of individuals.  We arrived in Campo, the trail’s southern terminus, with everything we used to support life.  We shopped with money earned at an earlier time, we had packages sent to us that we prepared prior to the hike.  Our self-sufficiency was an illusion.  We relied entirely on pre-planning.   We moved from place to place in a planned linear fashion ignorant of the places we passed through.

For most hikers, the limitations of weight carried on one’s back rules out more than a single smallish book.  My choice was a novel.  If I wasn’t too exhausted,  I could read a few pages at night and once finished, exchange that novel for another in a hiker box.  I would have loved a guide to the animal and plant life on the trail, but  I was relying on cast-off material.   Most important would have been a guide to the geology, for it was the rock formations that were striking, beautiful and puzzling.

volcanic extrusions in CA

It was strange to be in frequent and intimate contact with trailside plants and know little more than their name.   Often I didn’t even know that.  It was strange, too, to have as my 24 hour a day companion,  a landscape that changes dramatically (and clearly had a dramatic history of creation and change),  yet be ignorant of it’s age, composition and history.  Personal thoughts occupied only so much of my hiking day.  I observed a lot, but in ignorance.

We carried a guidebook, of course;  Eric the Black’s PCT Atlas  (More on that when Rick or I review our gear in a future blog).  For reasons of weight it was minimal;  narrow strips of USGS topographical maps, no more than half a mile wide.  It told us place names; lakes, rivers, peaks.   There were occasional historic plaques at points of population.  (Who writes those things?)   There were a few interpretive signs on public lands; mainly fire and land use restrictions.  Best of all was when we could find  a ranger.  The PCT passes through seven National Parks and scores of other federal land areas.  Back country rangers were few and busy, yet when we did find one, I had a list of short specific questions that could be answered on the spot.  What were those flowers with the big green leaves?  How long ago was the fire in this area?  Some rangers were wonderfully knowledgeable and eager to talk.  Others knew less.

Our pre-trail research consisted of blog reading and  research into the ‘how’ of the trail.  What gear to buy, what food to take,  how to re-supply.   Trail conditions, town amenities and other practical considerations were the common subject of  conversation with other hikers we encountered.  Next time I’ll read more of the places the trail passes through before leaving home.  As an Easterner,  I could have had guidebooks on the western mountains packed with the rain gear and shoes we left to be mailed to us on the trail.  Next time I’ll be better prepared.