Origins of a Hiker - Part II: PCT origin story

This is Part II of my hiker origin story. Read Part I here.

11 September, 2016

Fresh off the back of finishing a Spartan Race, physically the hardest thing I'd ever done to that point in my life, I was feeling strong and ready for new challenges. The next week, we were in Seattle visiting my parents, and for old times sake I'd asked my dad to plan a day hike for us to do with him that would take in a good view of Mt. Rainier. He went through his library of hiking guidebooks and found just the thing: the Naches Peak Loop in Mt. Rainier National Park.

Dad delivered: stunning view of Mt. Rainier from the Naches Peak Loop. Dad's top tip is to go clockwise so you get a jaw-dropping reveal of the mountain when you turn a corner.

The three of us set off for this hike with lunch, snacks, water and sun screen, and enjoyed some beautiful weather and incredible views. I was snapping photos, and at one point I noticed that our trail had joined up with the Pacific Crest Trail. 

The Pacific Crest Trail, or PCT, is a 2,650 mile long distance hiking trail that winds through California, Oregon and Washington from Mexico to Canada. I'd known about it for most of my life, partly because a lot of Washington trails intersect with it, so I'd hiked on and around the PCT before. But mostly I knew of it because my dad's older brother had the aim of hiking the whole thing in sections over the course of his life. That had seemed like an enormous goal, but beyond that I didn't give it much thought. It was just something I'd always been aware of.

Dad and me posing on top of the Mt Rainier National Park entrance gate. Just over that rise I met my first thru hikers.

We had just stopped to pose for photos on a footbridge that spanned one of the roads into the park and then moved on when we came across a bit of trail traffic heading in the opposite direction. A young couple were at the front of a string of hikers, floating toward us despite the massive backpacks they were carrying. They looked like hippies: sun-toasted skin, oily hair, dirty clothes, and a serene glow.

"Hi there! How far are you going?" my dad asked. I wasn't surprised. He goes through life chatting to anyone and everyone, and while it sometimes embarrassed me when I was younger, I've come to admire it. When I'm on trail now I do the same.

"To Canada," they replied. It took me a moment to register. Wow, that's quite the section hike, I thought. That will take them weeks!

"Are you here because of The Book or The Film?" my dad asked knowingly. Later I was to find out that "The Book" and "The Film" referred to Wild, a non-fiction hiking memoir by Cheryl Strayed, which had popularised the Pacific Crest Trail. At the time, however, I had no idea what he was talking about.

The hippies muttered a slow reply - as if they were unused to speaking - that they had indeed read The Book, and my dad went on energetically. "Of course, she was really unprepared. Some of the things she did, it's so irresponsible..." The mostly one-sided conversation quickly faded and the quiet hippies drifted away. 

My dad: crushing miles and making friends.

"That makes sense," Dad mused as we hiked on. "This will be the time of year most of them are getting here,"

"Most of who?" I asked, still struggling to quite grasp what he and the hippies had been talking about.

"The thru hikers. You know, the people who have started at the Mexican border and are hiking the PCT all the way to Canada."

"They walked here from Mexico? All at once?!"

...is what I felt like saying. I tried to play it cooler than that, as if I had always known that you could walk the length of the United States in one go. But I was astounded. As we passed the rest of the queue of trail traffic, Dad stopped a few more grubby looking young people and chatted to them. 

They, too, had just walked. Here. From Mexico. They had chiseled, dirty legs and wide, easy smiles of the sort that seemed a universe away from all of my inner anxieties about how I ought to live my life.

For the rest of the day my mind was buzzing. They walked here. From Mexico. You can walk from Mexico to Canada in one go. One epic hike along the West Coast.

I wasn't fully aware of it yet but I had already decided that some day I would do it too. In Portland the next week, I bought a patch in Powell's Books that said "Pacific Crest Trail" and told myself in my quietest internal voice that one day I would earn that patch. 

This is the face of someone who has just decided to do something really hard and really exciting that will change their life.

I tested myself with thoughts like that for a few months as I started to read more about thru hiking and the PCT. I learned that the definition of a thru hike depends on the hiker, but that broadly it's a hike of every available mile of a long trail in a single hiking season or a single 12 month period. I learned that it can take 4 - 6 months to hike the PCT in its entirety, and your timeline is dictated by a weather window between when the snow melts in spring and when it falls again in Autumn on the highest elevations of the trail. And yes, I eventually read The Book and I watched The Film.

Finally, a few months after getting back to the UK, I started saying it out loud to other people in order to commit myself to it. I started saving money. I started a hiking log to keep track of the hikes we did and the lessons we learned on each. I planned overnight hikes for my partner and I to go on and finally got out the tent I'd bought years before. I started lists of gear, of skills to learn, of fears I had and how I would deal with them. I knew it would be years before I could do it because I would need to save money and somehow get the time off work, but I found myself planning and preparing with a focus that I'd never had before in my life. 

I decided that it couldn't wait until I retired to do it - I needed to get it done and not let "some day" become never. So I set myself the arbitrary goal of completing the trail before 2023, when I will turn 40, and told myself that no matter what it took - even if it meant quitting my job - I would attempt it. Well ahead of time I let my work know and got six months' unpaid leave for 2021, five years after I first decided to do it. Meanwhile, I continue to hike, to train, to save money and to prepare.

Over this time I've deciphered what that initial spark of inspiration was, and clarified what hiking the PCT means to me. It's a long love letter to the West Coast, the place I left but miss daily. It's a challenge that both frightens and excites me. It's outside the box - living in the woods as a dirtbag hiker for six months. It's a chance to find out what hiking means to me by doing nothing else. It's a place to practice grit and self-reliance. But most of all it was those hikers - grubby yet glowing - that inspired me. I want to know what resides behind those easy smiles and serene eyes.

That brings us to the present day, a little over a year before I will start my thru hike attempt. The plans are coming together and honestly, even if I have to leave the trail 100 miles in I will still be proud of myself. Committing to this goal, making a plan and carrying it out has made me a more determined, organised, self-confident person than I was before. I truly believe that the PCT has already made me a better person. I will endeavour to be worthy of the grand adventure that lays before me on a ribbon of dirt 24 inches wide and 2,650 miles long that will both test me and bring me home to myself. I want to meet the person that I will be at the other end.

I plan on posting my hike logs from the past as well as new hikes as they happen. I'll keep interspersing this with environmental and information management content, but I admit it's a lot easier for me to write about hiking than the other topics of this blog!