Bio Products Opportunity

So I didn’t write this post, I’m transcribing an email a good friend of mine wrote me. He is currently hiking the PCT, that would be the Pacific Crest Trail to the uninitiated. About 2 years ago, he hiked the entire AT, thats the Appalachian Trail.

I thought of him today because of this article in the New York Times about the AT and who takes care of it. Most of the people involved now are baby boomers who are retired or nearing that stage. My friend is, however, a very young and sprightly 27 year old and his writings on his experience always make me wonder if I could do what he’s doing.

Enjoy.

From: Dennis Lucey 

Date: June 15, 2007 5:36:20 PM EDT

Subject: [PCT] And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain

 

After nearly two months of hiking, I’ve made it 702 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail through hot desert terrain and now stand facing the heights of the Sierra Nevada. I’m sitting in an internet cafe (really a trailer with four laptops and a donation box) outside the Kennedy Meadows General Store, less than a mile from Sequoia National Forest and the trail’s gateway out of the desert and into the mountains.

THE DESERT

The hike through the Southern California desert region has had stretches that one would expect: long sandy hikes across washes and dry creek beds, constant exposure to an oppressive sun, hillsides dotted with scrub and chaparral, often pine green and occasionally prickly. The saving grace has been the higher elevations, where stands of scrub oak and a variety of conifers have shaded the trail, fragrant with pine needles and sage. Hot days are followed by cold nights — the first night on the trail dipped down to 17 degrees and water froze in bottles. Two days later I got three inches of snow on Mt. Laguna and watched San Diego news trucks come up to get footage of snowy trees, but not of slightly stinky hikers on the porch of the general store.

This design of the PCT differs greatly from trails back east. On the AT, one could look for the highest hill or mountain in sight and know the trail would be routed up and over that point. Here, one must find the point furthest in the distance and know the trail will contour around every canyon, wash, nook and cranny to get there, rarely ever attaining the ridge and never touching the top of anything. I’ve summited four peaks, all involving side trails off the PCT, ranging in acclaim from not-quite-named Peak 7087 outside Big Bear to the peak of San Jacinto, whose 10,834 foot summit stands nearly two vertical miles above Palm Springs and the wind farms of the Coachella Valley below. The descent of 9600 vertical feet in roughly 25 waterless miles, the bottom stretch of which is completely exposed, was rewarding (the drop ranges through several distinct biomes) and frustrating (imagine hiking a mile in one direction only to switchback and walk back towards where you started, just to drop a few hundred vertical feet).

Overall, the trail’s constant sandy tread and gentle grades rarely exceeding 400 vertical feet up/down per trail mile have taken less of a toll on my feet and legs than the AT. Unlike that hike, I don’t wake up every morning with feet that are numb with pain, if that makes any sense. The only drawback, other than heat and sun that forces afternoon siestas to maintain stamina and sanity, has been the particularly dry environment of this year. Springs and creeks that often have water are nothing more than barren clusters of poison oak. Carrying over a gallon of water at a time is an everyday occurrence, the worst being a 27-mile, 4000+ foot climb out of McDonald’s — try that with 4000 McCalories in your stomach! If it weren’t for the many volunteers that stock and maintain water caches along drier stretches of the PCT my water load would easily exceed that of all of my gear.

One particular stretch of note is the dreaded crossing of the floor of the Mojave desert. For twenty miles the trail cuts perpendicular lines using jeep roads and the sealed Los Angeles Aqueduct to make it from the San Gabriels to the Tehachapi Mountains. This stretch is notoriously hot, with triple-digit temperatures common. The fates smiled upon me when I crossed, however, as a system brought in three days of clouds, high winds, and even a spattering of drizzle down on me. I’m glad to say that I was actually chilly.

FLORA AND FAUNA

As noted, flora has varied from sparse grasslands to creosote scrub to manzanita stands (which invariably gets the Hall & Oates song “Whoa-oh here she comes / she’s a manzanita” stuck in my head) to scrub oak forests to stands of pine, with cones as big as my head. The prickly pear cacti seem to always be in bloom with magenta or yellow flowers. Animals have seem to devoured the nuts from previous years’ cones of the pinon pine, which has been increasingly common over the last few hundred miles.

Most interesting has been observing how topography influences what can grow and in what amounts. I had been familiar with the term “rain shadow” before this hike, but looking down on ridges, one side lush, the other dead, has been a mind-blowing experience. For example, just as moss grows on the north side of trees, the north sides of mountains seem to retain moisture a little bit longer than the south side and tend to have more plant life. The positioning of the mountains and the westward winds from the ocean also seem to play a noticeable role in shaping the landscape.

Other than the eighteen quintillion ants I’ve seen marching across the trail (and my sleeping bag!) and the lizards of all colors and sizes that dart around when humans are near, fauna has been sparse, at least by Virginia standards. I have managed to see a few dozen jackrabbits, many ground squirrels, all sorts of different birds (my favorite is something I call “that blue jay looking thing”; it might actually be a blue jay; I should probably ask somebody), a handful of deer, one scorpion, and snakes, including the first three rattlesnakes of my life. The first rattler was spotted on a sidewalk just outside a McDonald’s off Interstate 15. Wilderness Bob, a Special Forces veteran, moved him out of the way with his trekking poles, eliciting a lot of hissing and rattling.

One evening not too long ago, a Canadian hiker named Potential 178 (referring to the designation given to him by Customs agents using code that he was a possible economic drain on the U.S.A.) asked for a demonstration of my karaoke skills, to which I gave him a couple of verses of Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife”. Soon thereafter the sound of loud heavy breathing filled the air — bear? We couldn’t spot him in the dark, but managed to scare him off, or at least stop its heavy breathing, with the first few lines of George Michael’s “Faith”. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Besides the rare sighting of a mountain lion or Mojave green that hikers dream about, there is the much fabled sighting of the running illegal. Since the trail does start at our border with Mexico, many illegals use it as a means to make it to a road in hopes of getting picked up and folding anonymously into our country. In the first few days of the hike I found many a sleeping bag, empty gallon water jug, and discarded sweatshirt along the trail. At one point I took a break where the trail met a jeep road, only to see a train of eight illegals walking full speed ahead past me. I said “Hola!” and they smiled, not breaking stride. I spotted another illegal later, this time carrying what appeared to be a prescription bottle, again on a pace that would leave even the most seasoned hiker in the dust. Different goals, I guess.

TRAIL SHENANIGANS

What happens when a few hundred people decide to walk hundreds of miles through the desert? They go crazy and do and see crazy things. The trail pass along side Deep Creek Hot Spring, a hangout for various San Bernadino County residents…that also happens to be a nude beach. Besides the very old, very oiled naked guy who laid down on a boulder with his leg propped up, there was also the naked guy that tried to break up a fight between two big and very vicious dogs. That’s not kibble!

The Andersons, a family that feeds hikers full of taco salad and waffles and lets them sleep in the enormous backyard manzanita forest, maintain a water cache before the road to their house that’s also stocked with beer. This hiker and two others took a five-hour siesta and knocked back eight each before hiking the seven miles to the Andersons. Hmmm…desert heat + lots of hiking + mild dehydration + low thru-hiker alcohol tolerance + ninety-six ounces of Budweiser = weaving, yelling, bathroom breaks, and an honest-to-goodness hangover at the end of the day’s hike.

Heavy useless items have started to appear. The group here at Kennedy Meadows have been hiking with a horseshoe, a hammer, and a wrench. A few railroad spikes are being carried further up the trail. Right now I’m hiking with a pinkish floral bag (so floral, in fact, that a few hummingbirds have buzzed around it expecting a nectary treat) that I’m using to hold extra water bottles and Robert the Sheep, a two-ounce fishing weight that trail angel Girl Scout included as part of a “lead weight cache” next to an important water cache, and the nameplate from a Colt Vista (yes, Chris Lindsay, a Colt Vista) that lay abandoned on the trail near Onyx Summit.

In one hiker box I found half of an English muffin in a homemade vacuum-sealed pouch. Not a whole English muffin, just half. I poked a hole in the pouch, ran some cord through the hole, and tied it off to form a Flavor Flav-esque medallion, which I hold up at times to demonstrate my Left Coast credibility. The peanut gallery has speculated if and how badly the muffin will mold, decay, or bring forth insects three hikers have put up a pool of $205 if I can hike with it around my neck all the way to Canada. (For some reason, if I collect I have to give $50 to Roni from Israel. I think he hoodwinked me sometime between beers.) Given the muffin’s current petrified state, I’m confident about collecting the prize.

Of course, what list of my shenanigans would be complete without karaoke? A group of us took a zero day in Wrightwood specifically to sing at Yodeler’s Pub. A small cast of locals was present when we entered the bar, and within an hour they were all gone, except for three-year-old Scotty and six-year-old Lily and their parents. Scotty got the entire crowd going for a rousing rendition of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”, while Lily surprised everyone by following Garth Brooks’ “I Got Friends in Low Places” with the Marty Robbins’ old standard tearjerker “El Paso”. Once again I got in a dispute over the rights to sing Blake Shelton’s “Austin”; this time no half-Irish guys threatened to fight me outside, and a quick game of a variation on Rochambeau was sufficient to settle the dispute. To those that care, I also performed Travis Tritt’s ” T.R.O.U.B.L.E.”, Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”, George Michael’s “Careless Whisper”, Fuel’s “Hemorrhage (In My Hands)”, a duet with Fester of Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” (yes, Chris Lindsay, “Steal My Sunshine”), and a duet with a Dutch girl named Apple Pie of one of the twenty-five most totally awesome songs ever written, Aaron Neville and Linda Rondstadt’s “Don’t Know Much”. A group rendition of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”, where even all of the remaining staff put down their washrags to join us, rounded out the evening. A good time was had by all.

THE FUTURE

Despite having hiked over 700 miles, there’s 1961 more to go. Indeed, one of the sadder points of the trail was when we reached Mile 488 and realized we had 2175 miles, the length of the entire AT, left to hike. The next 400 miles is the section that most folks have been waiting for: punishing elevations, mountain lakes, and even snow, passing through Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks and ending up near Lake Tahoe and its casino buffets just over the Nevada state line. In the next few days I expect to summit Mt. Whitney, which at 14,494 feet is the highest point in the Lower 48.

I hope all is well,
Dennis/Fusion