The Pacific Crest Trail

SOMEWHERE IN THE Glacier Peak Wilderness I recorded in my journal the following thoughts:

I’m excited about creating a PCT book and feel like I need to make it happen. No matter how hard it is or how long it takes. I’ve got to be as committed to it as I have been to hiking the trail itself.

I made it a goal to create a book about the Pacific Crest Trail at nearly the same time I decided to walk from Mexico to Canada. I had been working as a bookseller and a book designer and other than hiking, books were the main focus of my life. It only made sense to combine
the two passions.
It turns out that creating this book has proven more difficult than walking to Canada, though no less enjoyable. Throughout the experience I often thought what a gift it was to continually relive my time on the trail and that even if the book was never published, the process alone was more than worth it. It’s surprising for me to consider that the PCT has been a consistent focus of my life for nearly a decade.
I committed to thru-hiking in the fall of 2012 as I stood along the trail in the Goat Rocks Wilderness in Southern Washington. I stared out at the Knife’s Edge and Mount Rainier, one of the most iconic views of the PCT, and made a pact with myself to return to that point, having walked there from Mexico. It was a gorgeous October day, part of a wonderful backpacking trip during that Indian Summer. I had met several thru-hikers on the trip—at the “ass end” of their cohort, as they put it. Summer ended soon enough and some of them made it to Canada and some did not. One of them, in fact, ended up spending a week lost in the snow north of Stevens Pass and was lucky to survive.
I made it back to that point in 2014, but the only thing I saw was the silhouettes of my thru-hiking companions as they disappeared into the fog ahead of me. The previous day had brought the worst rain of my entire thru-hike, leaving the beautiful scenery of the Goat Rocks to my memory and replacing it with the cold, wet discomfort of life on the trail. It was one of many difficult days I experienced over the course of that summer. When my hike was over, however, I often claimed that I never had a bad day on the trail. Bad minutes and bad hours, sure, but never a bad day.
It was Washington that always kept me going. Had I never moved to Washington I may never have become a backpacker and would surely never have hiked the PCT. I came to know the beauty of the Cascades, and knowing what lay ahead gave me motivation to walk back home as I progressed step by step across California and Oregon. So, when I crossed the Columbia River and set foot in Washington, I set foot in the state where I fell in love with hiking. It is where I gradually found myself taking longer and longer day hikes, until eventually I mustered the courage to embark on my first overnight trip in the shadow of the tallest of all the Cascadian volcanoes—Mount Rainier. The state where I first set foot on the PCT and stared south, wondering what it would feel like to have walked all the way from Mexico, imagining the terrain I would pass through along the way and how beautiful it might be. The state where I would weather a hailstorm in a high alpine basin, grabbing my tarp just before it blew away and then holding it firmly against the ground on both sides, fists clenched and digging into the earth as I waited an hour for the storm to pass. Where I experienced the joy of solitude in true wilderness, far from any road. Where I forded a remote backcountry creek nearly a hundred miles from the ocean, filled with salmon floating in its current like glinting jewels—their crimson backs reflecting the sun like rubies. And though I did not know it at the time, when I crossed that bridge over the Columbia, it was where I would fall in love in an altogether different way. I had already met my future wife on an August afternoon amidst the High Divide of the Olympic Mountains. Washington was my home before the trail and over the course of the summer, the PCT had become a new home and the two became entwined.

THIS BOOK HAS been created from a northbound thru-hiker’s perspective and from the perspective of someone who hiked the trail in 2014. It was that year, two years after the publication of Wild by Cheryl Strayed, that the PCT was really on its way to becoming
a popular trail. If you are thru-hiking in 2021, your experience will be much different than mine, just as my experience may sound vastly different to someone who hiked the trail in 2007. My experience is also that of a white male. All thru-hikers worry about the heat, lack of water, or inclement weather. There are, however, a great number of worries that I was unburdened by during my hike. Worries that a woman or person of color carries with them on the trail. Worries that may surface when they meet a stranger, hitchhike, or enter an unfamiliar town. When I walked past a Confederate flag in Sierra City, California, I took offense, yet continued on feeling safe and unthreatened. There are significant historical and systemic reasons why people of color have been unable to establish a tradition of outdoor recreation, while Indigenous people have been forcibly removed from their land to create national parks and wilderness. As I recall, I met very few people of color on my entire thru-hike. It is important that the trail community grow to reflect our greater society. To that end, let us all seek out and promote the stories of those who are not in the majority.

I HOPE THIS BOOK inspires people to hike the PCT, whether for a day or an entire summer, but as the trail becomes increasingly crowded, it is imperative to preserve it for those who will feel inspired to hike it years down the road. Respect the trail towns you visit and the people who call them home. Be a good ambassador for the trail. While hiking, leave those Sharpies in your pocket and refrain from writing on signs. Take only photos and leave behind the flowers, bird feathers, and animal bones for others to enjoy. Respect wildlife and forgo building a campfire. Bury your waste properly and pack out your toilet paper. Camp only in established sites. I regret falling short of these rules on a few occasions during my hike. I encourage you to educate yourself and follow Leave No Trace ethics. If not, we risk loving this trail to death.

Joshua M. Powell, “Southpaw”

Steinbeck
About halfway through California I found a copy of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and decided for the first time to carry a book with me on the trail. I chose it for the fact that I enjoyed Steinbeck, but perhaps just as much for the fact that it was a small and lightweight paperback. I read in the long evening light of summer and was surprised to soon discover that the protagonist of Cannery Row, based on Steinbeck’s friend Ed Ricketts, was none other than a long-distance hiker, before such a notion existed. This novel has become strongly linked to my experience on the PCT and thus I can’t help but consider Steinbeck’s Monterey as much of a PCT trail town as Lone Pine, Ashland, or Stehekin. After the trail I read and reread many of Steinbeck’s books, as well as his biography, and found a surprising number of connections between his writing and my time on the trail. I’ve included some of these observations in this book.

Trail Name
Hiking up into the foothills of the San Bernardinos, I climbed through a narrow canyon as daylight seeped from the sky and the mountains became enveloped in darkness. In the distance behind me I saw several pricks of light amidst the pitch black—the headlamps of other hikers. A moment later I was startled by a bright light moving directly toward me on the trail. It was another thru-hiker who had dropped his sunglasses a few yards south. He retrieved them and then caught back up with me, introducing himself, appropriately, as Lost and Found. We hiked together through the dark hills until we finally reached a remote preserve and trout farm that allows hikers to camp on their property. We paused at a trail register to sign our names and I jokingly complained about how hard it is for a left-handed person to write in a three-ring binder. “I think you’ve got yourself a trail name now,” he said. “You’re Southpaw.” When I Introduced Myself on the Trail 28% of people knew what Southpaw meant. 72% of people looked at me with a blank stare.