Tea Bag, left, and his wife, Scabby, walk north on the Pacific Coast Trail on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013. Over the past few years, the couple, who hail from San Diego, Calif., have traveled around the world hiking trails.
Prophet, Burlington, Vt., left, and Grand Entrance, Jacksonville Beach, Fla., walk across a bridge on the Pacific Crest Trail, on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013.
A portable solar panel hangs on the back of Laura Meyers hiking pack as she crosses paths with Emperor while on the Pacific Coast Trail near White Pass Ski Resort on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013. Meyers, who hikes the trail under the name Ice Ax, uses the panel to charge her cell phone once she stops for the night.
You will measure progress by the length of your beard.
The primal needs for food and shelter will supplant common sense, and you won’t hesitate to make camp with strangers, or accept a sandwich and a ride from some guy in a truck.
You’ll find yourself — and probably lose a bunch of weight.
Hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail offer vivid descriptions of the 2,662-mile trek, but say they are only approximations of the experience: To truly understand the journey, they say, you must experience it yourself.
“It will force you to face every one of your fears that you’ve ever had and either conquer it or go home,” hiker Laura Meyers said in late August. “Those are the only options when you’re out there alone, walking four days without seeing another human being.”
In Southwest Washington near the Wenatchee National Forest, the Pacific Crest Trail winds its way through buggy old-growth forest, over a stretch of state Route 12 near White Pass, through a horse camp and then back into the National Forest.
Small bands of ragtag travelers — drifters, or woodsmen who’ve been lost for weeks, by all appearances — begin to emerge from the forest, beginning in mid-August.
Click Here for Audio from 'Faces Along the Trail'
White Pass area residents are accustomed to the influx: Many hikers, during their migrations to the north, stop in the ski town to rest and refuel.
The Trail originates at the U.S.-Mexico border and ends at the U.S.-Canada border near British Columbia. Hikers attempting the journey will walk through California, Oregon and Washington, pass through 25 national forests and seven national parks, and traverse climbs that range from sea level, at the Oregon-Washington border, to 13,153 feet at Forester Pass in the Sierra Nevada.
According to the Pacific Crest Trail Association, a group dedicated to protecting and promoting the trail, the stream of hikers is difficult to quantify.
The Trail Association’s best estimate is that 500 to 800 through-hikers, or hikers attempting to complete the entire trail, set out each spring. Approximately 60 percent finish.
For most, it’s a five- to six-month trek; those who have not completed it in six months usually will not finish, according to the Trail Association.
The woman formerly known as Laura Meyers has a look that’s Scottish dancer meets UPS delivery woman. She takes a photograph of each person she meets on the trail, knows other hikers by name and likes to act out anecdotes as she tells them.
But what she’s best known for, among her trail companions, is the waist-high pick that’s always by her side — the instrument by which she got her trail name: Ice Ax.
Over the last few months, Meyers, a Spokane truck driver, has taken on her new identity, polishing and embellishing it — she adds a feather to the ax every time she finds one — as she goes.
Ice Ax has dreamed of walking the trail for 14 years. Each truck delivery to Phoenix or Los Angeles took her along portions of the trail and stoked her desire to take on the adventure, she said.
Now, though, Ice Ax is ready, and, in fact, needs to complete her trip: “I was thinking I’d be done in five, six months at the most, but I’m not going to get done ‘till sometime in October,” she said. “Fifteen to 20 miles a day is the best my little feet can do with a 35-pound pack.”
The Spokane woman has relished her months of solitude. It has given her time to think and enjoy nature; she experienced a “peaceful encounter” with a black bear. But the connections with other human beings are what she will remember most, she said.
“The highest point I think that I’ve had on the trail is the people, especially the trail angels, strangers that walked the trail five years ago that drop of coolers full of pop and food and stuff,” Ice Ax said. “Trail magic: You’re in the middle of nowhere, you’re low on food, you’re low on calories, maybe you’re cold, wet and you come up on this trailer, and it’s got a root beer and an orange.”
“The last one had chocolate chip cookies, yes! I ate a few too many,” she said, laughing. “I think I had like five of them.”
Trail names are Pacific Crest tradition.
Most travelers have their pseudonyms bestowed by other hikers. The names may spring from a certain quirk or an unusual story.
As Burlington, Vt. hiker Prophet tells it, he got his name from a perilous encounter. He was standing in the desert with a friend, he said, telling her he hadn’t yet seen a rattlesnake, and that he was due to see one soon. At that moment, a rattlesnake shot up in front of them.
From then on, he said, he was Prophet.
Click Here for Prophet's Audio
On the Pacific Crest, trail names offer an additional layer of insulation from the outside world — a fresh start on what many describe as a journey to figure out who you are and who you want to be.
Hiker Sagie, like many others, has embraced his alias entirely.
“The other day someone called me by my real name, and I had no idea who he was talking to,” Sagie said, laughing. “He had to say it a couple times until I realized, ‘Oh, that’s me.’”
Taking on the Pacific Crest Trail requires sacrifice: many will quit their jobs, sell or rent their houses and spend their savings.
A typical hiker spends $4,000 to $8,000 on a through-hike, and, in many cases, it takes longer to plan the trip — six to eight months on average — than it does to hike it, according to the Trail Association.
Nashville, Tenn., hiker Sagie said he left his work as an organic farmer and coffee stand barista so that, on April 27, he could take his first steps toward Canada.
“I wanted to do something different,” he said last week, “change my dynamic as a human being.”
It’s offered him a chance to put aside career concerns — he’s not exactly sure what he wants to do, he said — and expand the scope of his thinking.
“I’ve been stuck in the moment,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about what I can do for people around me, and seeing where I fit into society’s pattern … where I can be useful.”
For most hikers, the trail poses internal and external challenges.
Lullaby, who was hiking with friends Butters and Sagie when he arrived in White Pass last week, said his first day as a hiker was rough: a hot day, 20 miles of hilly terrain and no water.
“But after the first day I never looked back,” Lullaby, Santa Rosa, Calif., said. “It’s the best decision I’ve ever made.”
Click Here for Lullaby's Audio
“Wouldn’t you want to be here? I’m living in it 24/7,” he went on. “I would not want to be anywhere else but here.”
“It challenges what I can do physically, and obviously I have a lot of time to think,” hiker Grand Entrance said. “I’ve definitely thought through a lot of things things from the past, and who I am in general.”
Though hikers over the last three weeks spoke frequently of deeply personal revelations, just as important — what gets you through the miles and miles, they say — is the trail’s social network.
Most hikers band together in small groups that may stay together for days, weeks or months, but, in most cases, dissipate as casually as they came together. Group members will stop to resupply or decide to take a faster clip. They may meet up again somewhere along the trail, may join other groups, or may spend days walking in solitude.
“We just meet on the trail — at different stops rest stops, at water breaks. Stops we all need,” hiker B-Rad said. “You all come from different parts of the world, different jobs, but on the trail everyone is equal.”
Points of Interest Along the Pacific Crest Trail
1 — Manning Provincial Park, B.C.
2 — North Cascades National Park
3 — Okanogan National Forest
4 — Wenatchee National Forest
5 — Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest
6 — Mt. Rainier National Park
7 — Gifford Pinchot National Forest
8 — Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area
9 — Mt. Hood National Forest
10 — Warm Springs Indian Reservation
11 — Willamette National Forest
12 — Deschutes National Forest
13 — Oregon Cascades Recreation Area
14 — Winema National Forest
15 — Crater Lake National Park
16 — Rogue River National Forest
17 — Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument
18 — Klamath National Forest
19 — Shasta-Trinity National Forest
20 — Castle Crags State Park
21 — McArthur-Burney Falls State Park
22 — Lassen National Forest
23 — Lassen Volcanic
24 — Plumas National Forest
25 — Tahoe National Forest
26 — Eldorado National Forest
27 — Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest
28 — Stanislaus National Forest
29 — Yosemite National Park
30 — Devils Postpile National Monument
31 — Inyo National Forest
32 — Sierra National Forest
33 — Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park
34 — Sequoia National Forest
35 — Angeles National Forest
36 — Silverwood Lake State Rec Area
37 — San Bernardino National Forest
38 — Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains
39 — Mt. San Jacinto State Park
40 — Cleveland National Forest
41 — Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
