Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail Read Online Free PDF

tell you the anti-climactic final result of her crapshot. She missed. Needless to say, that led to emergency cleanup action that exposed her to the cold more than if she had just gone outside her tent to begin with.
    Missing this once-in-a-lifetime crapshot, however, may not have been her biggest mistake. If you ask me, she made an even bigger blunder the following morning. That’s when she told another hiker (“Hey, don’t tell anybody, but guess what happened...”). Of course, that hiker did what almost anybody would. She commiserated with the woman before slinking off to tell somebody else. The poor girl who suffered the mishap was soon saddled with the trail name Shit Bag for the next 2,600 miles.

     
    The Kickoff Party was started in 1999 by a group of ex-hikers to serve as a springboard for the long journey ahead. The weekend is divided between festive eating and drinking, meeting and greeting, and educational seminars on various issues hikers will face along the way. It has been a smashing success.
    When I had called to make a reservation a lady had told me, “We hate to turn people back, but we’re fully booked.”
    “Even for thru-hikers?” I asked alarmed. It had seemed like a good place to meet potential hiking partners for the desert. Better yet, it was billed as a butterfly killer.
    “Oh no, any thru-hiker can come,” she said to my relief. “That’s who the party is for.”
    Even before first light I heard people setting up tables and trays of food in the thirty degree weather. These people were all ex-PCT hikers who probably hadn’t been beneficiaries of such trail magic during the trail’s early years. I had worried that the PCT was just an isolated footpath. To my great delight, though, I was to see countless examples along the way that the PCT is making solid strides at forming its own culture, just like the Appalachian Trail.

     
    Hikers just aren’t like other people. Any time I’m around lots of long-distance hikers, this truism reveals itself anew. I got to see plenty of them this weekend because the seminars were packed.
    At a standing room only seminar on hiker food, a lady with a striking resemblance to the character Major Houlihan on the television show MASH, was going on about the importance of continually eating nuts throughout the day.
    “Some nuts are better for hikers than other nuts,” she emphasized, going into the details of calories, protein intake, etc. She had an innovative teaching style, variously quizzing us on the difficultto-remember names of various nuts. Finally, she lined up all the nuts together.
    “Okay,” she barked out. “Which nut works the best for a thru-hiker?”
    “The left one,” some droll male voice in the back answered without missing a beat. That, of course, brought the house down, including Major Houlihan.
    A swaggering fella’ of about thirty then took the stage to tell us about hiking in the desert.
    “I can’t stress enough how important it is to stay hydrated,” he kept repeating. “It is much, much easier to stay hydrated than to re-hydrate once you start getting dehydrated.” Made sense. The next part, though, stirred up some doubts.
    “The best way to do this—trust me on this—is to hike at night.” That is the kind of practical advice you get from hikers. Incidentally, it was also just the opposite from the counsel you consistently receive from trail guide books, park rangers, and trail bulletin boards. And this guy meant every word of it.
    “What about rattlesnakes?” somebody asked. “Aren’t they all over the place at night?”
    “No doubt about it,” he plainly answered. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been night-hiking through the desert when I heard that rattling sound and wondered, ‘Where is it’? One time a rattler lunged at the girl in front of me. By the way, less than half of rattlesnake bites are deadly.”
    “Have you ever seen a cougar at night?” I asked him.
    “I’ve heard ‘em