To Cheryl Strayed wannabes thinking of the PCT: hiking is not a cure-all

I got in touch with my inner 45-year-old woman and absolutely tore through Wild by Cheryl Strayed over the weekend. I found it a very enjoyable read, much better than I was anticipating. As a friend suggested to me before I read it, its main strength, aside from solid writing on a sentence-to-sentence level, is its editing. It's perfectly paced: it never beats the dead horse, so to speak, about any of the main plot arcs—the mom, the hike, the drugs, the dudes. The structure of the book as a whole is so tidy; fifteen years of retrospect and a good editor have really helped distill it (this may also explain why people who publish their own hiking memoirs on a shoestring in close proximity to their hike tend to create such uneven works).

But I have a big problem with the story. It's not that she went out grossly unprepared for hiking—that's pretty common both in hiking literature and in real life. It should be fairly obvious to anyone, experienced hiker or not, that this resulted in abject physical and mental misery on the trail, and it's a nice cautionary tale in that regard for everybody. Every Cheryl wannabe who reads the book and decides to go on a hike is going to think twice about their gear choices, because the descriptions of the blisters, random pains and her overall exhaustion are pretty lurid. At first I was put off by how these sections are written in a slightly lighthearted tone, because in my experience, hiking in pain is your WORLD when you are out there and it really doesn't seem funny at the time. Later I decided that this levity was a result of a) the author having fifteen years of retrospect from which to look back and laugh, b) relatively speaking, the blisters etc. are still not as serious of a problem as the ones from her outside life, and c) it keeps the entire book from being one huge downer. It's easy for any experienced hiker to tut-tut when they read about her preparation, call her an idiot or whatever, but who cares? We were all like that at some point.

My real problem with the book is the central conceit that one, few-month-long hike can be a panacea for anyone. It says it right in the title: From Lost to Found on the PCT. She went on this hike and, after a series of identifiable and discrete transition points, she was totally rehabilitated! How convenient! There is no afterword that says, "This hike was the first of many steps in the 180 that I was able to accomplish regarding the direction of my life." No, the hike was everything: she was fed into the PCT machine a depressive nymphomaniac heroin junkie, and got spat out at the Columbia River happy, sage and responsible. I am not at all denying that a long adventure can significantly change someone, even for the better; I just think it's unlikely that 3 months and 1100 miles on the PCT apparently fixed everything for her.

The last few paragraphs are careful to note that, as she finished, she didn't know any of this at the time, which is good—it would be even more delusional for someone to get to the end of a few months of journeying and say that they knew right then exactly how they'd changed. The most you can say while you are participating in any adventure is that it is novel and, well, adventurous. You can't determine its sub-surface effect on you without a hefty buffer period of retrospection. But the book does make it seem that, even after that period of retrospection, she has determined that the hike was the cure-all in her life. Now I don't know Cheryl Strayed; she might very well be telling the precise truth, instead of artfully presenting the truth to make it fit into the type of narrative that sells millions of books (which is what I've implied so far). But even if this hike really did rehabilitate her perfectly, that's not going to be the case for 90% of the people who go out to replicate her feat. If you're tired of your own flaws and think that a few months on the AT or PCT is going to fix them right away, you've probably got another thing coming. You'll get back and realize after awhile that those flaws might have been temporarily suppressed, but don't really disappear. People just don't change that much that quickly.

This has been Scrub's self-help session. Now go back and eat that brownie you passed up earlier—might as well do it now because you'll never change and you can't resist it, you FATASS! HAHAHA! No, just kidding. I do hold out hope for people who go on adventures for rehabilitative purposes. It's just that, in my worldview, things are never as tidy as this particular ~non-fiction~ book makes them out to be. I'm going out on the PCT in a week and a half not because it's going to make me a better person; heck, I might come back even worse, more maladaptive to the real world than I already am. I'm going because it's fun: I like walking, I like journeys, I like places I've never been, I like new people, I like the West, etc., etc. It's going to be novel and exciting if nothing else. IF it does more for me ... well, I'll figure that out much later. I don't care if a few hundred lost sheep read Wild and decide to stray out onto the PCT this year or in the future; I just hope they go out with grounded expectations about the inherent value of hiking trips.

Some food and money stats from the middle of my AT hike

I have no idea how I was able to keep this up so thoroughly, but for the first 600 miles of the Appalachian Trail in 2011 I took a page out of my girlfriend Kristin's book and noted and categorized every single expenditure of my hike. I aborted this practice abruptly after Bland, VA, which was about six weeks into proceedings--most of the novelty of trail life had worn off by then and I had gotten too lazy to keep writing entries like "pizza & Dew - $17" or "moonshine - $9.27 + one day of blindness" over and over again. The tallies after six-plus weeks were as follows:

Lodging: $226
Prepared food (i.e. town food): $436
Alcohol, separate from that ordered with meals: $163
Resupply: $324
Misc. (laundry, tips, ATM fees, etc.): $81.50

This goes to show just how ridiculous the cravings for food and drink in town can be. Keep in mind that I chose restaurants and food options modestly, and everything is super-cheap in the South--the ledger is full of $5-15 meals and purchases, nothing crazy (except one trip to the brewpub in Gatlinburg, but that's another story). It does include three and a half days of Trail Days in Damascus, Va., which set me back about $100 in meals and $50 in beer. Unlike most of the attendees, I wasn't even day-drinking or doing drugs ... lame, I know. I was, however, relying on restaurants for every single meal, as I did, and as most hikers do, in every town. It turns out this adds up quickly.

The message boards that I read often feature people saying, "I don't plan on eating or drinking much in town on my thru-hike; what should I budget for?" Sweet, sweet baby Jesus are these people wrong--and usually there are a lot of other people around to politely tell them as much. Unless they are on a tight budget and very experienced at handling one, or they are in that minority of people who really are genuinely uncomfortable in any town or city, they'll be stuffing their faces at restaurants whenever they get the chance. Burning 4,000 calories a day will do that to a man.

And speaking of calories, I was also keeping track of total ounces of peanut butter and Nutella consumed, as well as total number of chocolate bars. I briefly tracked my Little Debbie fudge round/oatmeal creme pie consumption as well, but after a few tries I found these packed too heavy and bulky for my liking. I kept these statistics almost a month past the previous ones, up until Luray (pron. LOO-ray), Va., 930 miles and two and a half months in, at which point I stopped for a weeklong break to see Kristin and my family in Virginia Beach. When I started back up again, the stats-keeping impulses had been left somewhere behind. The results:

Peanut butter: 217 oz, or 13 jars.
Nutella: 93.1 oz, or 7 jars.
Chocolate bars: 85.

The peanut butter was almost always Skippy or Skippy Natural because Cooks Illustrated says it's the best brand and they're never wrong. Also I was told at several points that Skippy is the de facto peanut butter of thru-hikers everywhere and no one knows why (it can't be that we're all reading the same issues of Cooks Illustrated ... can it?). Anyway, this was about halfway through the mileage that I ended up completing, although I didn't know that at the time. Properly mortified by these statistics and their implications for my arteries, I tailed off ever so slightly from the junk foods as I went further north, although I never came close to giving up PB and Nutella altogether. Put together in a spoon at a 2:1 ratio, they absolutely give the strongest, best-sustained boost of any trail food I've tried so far. On the PCT this year, I want to say I won't be relying on them as heavily as on the AT, because my breakfasts and dinners will be quite a bit better (see previous posts for details), but it's really hard to know in advance how one's body will start to react after a few weeks of 20-mile days.

A final note: I wrote this whole entry on my phone--no internet access because I'm in the process of moving--so if it goes through and actually ends up on my blog, I will be pretty happy about my chances for updating successfully along the PCT.

Scrub's glossary of important trail terms

Whenever I hear rock climbers say something like, "And then he did a totally heinous dyno onto this manky overhang," I usually want to puke. That's not necessarily because I suck at rock climbing, or that I have known some climbers who have been real asshats (both of which are true)—at its core, my annoyance is based on my failure to understand the jargon of a group of people who are doing something pretty cool. You see climbers doing neat things, and you want to know about them, but you can't, because they've developed their own little argot that's inaccessible to the rest of us. Thru-hikers do the same thing. If you want a comprehensive and mostly PG list of trail slang, check out this article on WhiteBlaze. But below I am supplementing that list with a glossary of the terms that you're especially likely to see me using on this blog in the future. Study up now, so that when you're reading my August 14 blog post and I throw out a banana-blazing reference, you'll know the score.

THE BASICS

zero day — a day in which zero miles are hiked. Often spent in towns, but the on-trail zero can occur from time to time (for instance, Manks and I waited out a storm for a full day in the Fire Wardens Cabin Shelter north of Hanover, NH on the AT in 2011).

nearo day — not quite zero miles, but not a full day's hiking either. Fiddling around in town accounts for most nearos.
   (note: nearo and zero can also be used as intransitive verbs: "Cynthia nearoed into Idyllwild and spent most of the afternoon gorging on ice cream.")

trail magic — any act of generosity, often the provision of food or drink, to hikers by members of the community. Can be planned or unplanned. Examples include someone leaving a cooler of Gatorades/sodas at a road crossing, or grilling hot dogs and handing out fresh fruit by the side of the trail for hikers to enjoy. Very common in the beginning stages of a NOBO PCT or AT hike.

cowboy camping — sleeping out under the stars, no shelter of any kind. Not very common on the AT because there's seemingly always the threat of rain; very common in spring and summer out West. I've read some people say they had to pitch their tarp/tent a total of 5 times over an entire PCT thru-hike.

NOBO/SOBO/flip-flop — northbound, southbound, or different-sections-in-different-directions thru-hikers. People flip for any number of reasons, but running out of time before winter is the biggest one.

hiker trash — a nebulous term. Refers to the fact that hikers generally start to look, and sometimes act, like shit after a few weeks on the trail. Used as a term of pride or scorn, depending on speaker and context.

hiker hunger, or simply the hunger — refers to the incredible rate of metabolism acquired after a few weeks of hiking. Feats like eating $26 of Taco Bell food, having to order multiple entrees at sit-down restaurants, or consuming upwards of 10,000 calories on a zero day become possible. Tends to outlast the trail and result in significant weight gain upon returning to civilization.

SUBCATEGORY 1: TYPES OF BLAZING

The Appalachian Trail is marked for its entire length by white blazes painted on trees. People have since combined other colors with "-blazing" to mean many different things. Such as:

pink-blazing — adjusting one's hiking schedule to be in the company of a lady

banana-blazing — the opposite of pink-blazing. Significantly rarer due to the imbalanced gender ratios among thru-hikers, but still possible.

blue-blazing — taking any side trail that reconnects to the white-blazed trail eventually. On the AT, these are sometimes marked with blue blazes.

retro-blazing — hiking a portion of old trail which has since been re-routed

yellow-blazing — skipping sections of trail via car. Yellow-blazers are severely annoying to me.

aqua-blazing — on an AT thru-hike, canoeing through Shenandoah National Park instead of hiking. People on the whole, myself included, don't get nearly as morally uptight about this as about yellow-blazing, mainly because it sounds awesome and everyone who actually forced themselves to hike through SNP is jealous.

brown-blazing — 1) leaving the trail to find a place to poop. 2) hiking with giardia or other pooping-related issues

MISCELLANEOUS

hitch bitch — the female, hopefully long-legged and long-haired, that you stay nearby whenever a potential hitchhike is coming up. Cars are much more likely to stop for her than for you (assuming you are the average grimy, bearded male). Also called a "ride bride" by people of taste.

Type 2 fun — not fun to do at the time, but fun to talk about later. Contrasted with Type 1 fun (fun at the time, fun to talk about later) and Type 3 fun (not fun at the time, not fun to talk about later).

Vitamin I — a lot easier to say or spell for some people than "ibuprofen"

cameling — drinking a bottle (or two) of water right at the water source, then filling up again before moving on

the Dirty G — Giardia. The enema enemy of hikers everywhere.

Body Glide — anti-chafing lubricant. In my top five of essential pieces of gear. Would not have been able to walk some days on the AT without this stuff.

trail tail — carnal relations between or among hikers

Connecticut cute — refers to the state by which a northbound AT hiker might eventually find a given member of the opposite sex attractive. Connecticut, for reference, is ten states and usually 3.5 - 4 months into the trail. "Georgia cute" would be more of a compliment.

PUDs — Pointless Up & Downs. The AT has hundreds of these, the well-built and more gently-graded Western trails not so much.

gram weenie — someone overly concerned with cutting ounces from their pack weight. They may want to talk about gear a lot more than you do.

base weight — the weight of one's pack excluding consumables (water, food, fuel) and clothes worn. Skin-out weight includes clothes and shoes worn. Ultralighters might go an entire thru-hike with a base weight at 5 or 6 lb. Mine is 11 lb for comparison. Average is probably 15-20.

goofer — a weekend warrior. Someone carrying more weight for a 6-mile day hike than you are for a 2,000-mile thru. Someone decked out in shiny new clothes that an REI salesperson convinced them were necessary. Someone hiking 1.5 mph convinced they're going 3. Someone doing their dishes in the water source. Etc., etc.

SUBCATEGORY 2: FOOD CHALLENGES

Half-gallon Challenge — at the store at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Pennsylvania, which is on the AT at roughly the half-way point, eat a half-gallon of ice cream purchased from the freezer. I've heard something like 75% of attempts are successful. I was one of them, but it was a long, disgusting slog (1 hour, 11 minutes). Here's a picture of me doing it in 2011.

Pancake Challenge — consume five pancakes at one pound each in under two hours at the cafe in Seiad Valley, CA on the PCT. I think only 6 thru-hikers have ever completed this challenge. Whatever it is, it's a minuscule percentage of the number who have attempted.

Case Challenge — From the VA 606 road crossing, which is 24 miles before Pearisburg, VA on the AT, obtain a case of beer. Over the next 24 hours, hike the 24 miles into Pearisburg consuming all 24 of your beers in the process. This one is particularly sadistic and of the 10 people I knew who tried it in 2011, only one finished.

McDonald's Challenge — 50 McNuggets and a gallon of McD's Sweet Tea in under an hour. Only the McNuggets part is known to have been completed.

Mayo jar + spork = kitchen

That whole thing about the alcohol stove and the joy of trail cooking? Forget it. I changed my mind a few weeks ago and I'm back to being a stoveless hiker, as I was on the Appalachian Trail. Backpacking without a stove is somewhat of a fringe technique—I'd guess that less than 10% of long-distance hikers do it for an extended length of time. But it works for me, and here are the brief pros and cons, as I discovered on the AT. Pros:

1. NO FUSS. This doesn't refer just to the possibility of mechanical failure, which is essentially nil with some alcohol stoves. It refers to the entire act of cooking: finding a flat place to set the stove, making sure it doesn't start a wildfire, tending to the kitchen when the weather sucks, carefully packing the stove and fuel, rationing fuel, resupplying fuel in town. When I hike, I am LAZY and HUNGRY and I want that food in my stomach as SOON as I stop moving. No fiddling around and waiting for 15 minutes while it boils and soaks.
2. You can eat whenever and wherever you damn well feel like it. This is especially nice in the tent in bad weather.
3. Cold foods may, but don't necessarily have to, use less water than cooking. It's a nice option to have when water is scarce, as on, say, most of the PCT.
4. Meals are a vague concept when resupplying (not always a pro; see below). Basically, as you're standing in the grocery store, you don't feel so limited to "dinner food," "lunch food," and "snack food" when you're eating them all interchangeably at different times of the day.
5. Weight savings? Disputable. Some cold food staples have a lot of water or fatty weight built in (think peanut butter, for instance). That said, if someone really had their diet dialed in and was using a lot of dehydrated food that reconstitutes well with cold water, they would absolutely save weight over someone with a stove and fuel. This is what I'm trying to accomplish this year.

Cons:

1. Variety is limited, especially if your resupply takes place only in grocery stores along the way. Some of my favorite no-cook foods, instant hummus and instant refried beans, are not found in most grocery stores and need to be shipped from home, where there is this glorious thing called the Winco bulk aisle. You may get into a rut, as I sometimes did on the AT, where you walk into each grocery store and don't have the imagination to come up with new meal ideas that really satisfy you. But I'm not sure that this problem is limited to stoveless hikers—a lot of people who cook their meals basically eat the same hot salty mush (ramen, Lipton or Knorr instant rice/pasta, instant oatmeal) each day. Being able to receive maildrops from home, modified to your real-time specifications (i.e. not all prepared before the beginning of the hike), increases the potential food variety for just about every hiker.
2. Meals are a vague concept (see above for why this is a good thing too). The whole no-set-meals concept on the AT frequently resulted in me taking more food, and hence more weight, than was necessary, as it was harder to plan for what I needed. People who have really figured out their trail diet have learned how to determine their food needs by weight and calories per mile, not by planning for specific meals. For instance, Scott Williamson lost zero pounds on his record-setting 64-day PCT thru-hike. But I'm not at that stage of understanding my metabolism yet. This summer I'm sure I will learn more.
3. Breakfast. I almost never found no-cook breakfast food that satisfied me on the AT. Pop Tarts and granola bars are shit when you have to eat them day after day, cereal doesn't go well with just water, and powdered milk gives me awful acid reflux. Nowadays I'm working on a homemade muesli concoction that can be soaked overnight, Swiss-style, and eaten on the go in the morning. Again, it will have to be shipped from home to ensure that it's (a) what I like, and (b) is the right amount for each section.
4. Not good in very cold weather. Fortunately, there's not a lot of that on an AT or PCT thru-hike. It may freeze overnight, but during a normally-timed thru-hike there will hardly be any days where you walk all day, and have to prepare food, in freezing weather.

So what do I actually eat on the trail if I don't use a stove? Well ...

Breakfast: 

• That muesli I just mentioned. Ideally, it's soaked in water for a long time beforehand, overnight if possible. Sometimes, if I have to buy granola or cereal from the store and it doesn't go well with water, I'll soak it in peanut butter instead. (You see, when you're a hiker, it's okay to write sentences like that.)

Snacks/lunch: 

• cheese
• summer sausage/pepperoni
• Nutella
• peanut butter
• chocolate bars
• Snyder's flavored pretzel bits (Buffalo wing + honey mustard and onion = ambrosia)
• jerky
• mustard
• sometimes a bread medium like bagel-thins or tortillas. My consumption of bread decreased as the AT went on; I found I rarely desired it and it was too dry to ever want to eat. I envision a similar issue on the PCT.

Dinner (if it's not more of the above): 

• couscous
• instant refried beans
• instant mashed potatoes (Idahoan only)
• powdered hummus
• ramen (without the flavor packet)

These can all be rehydrated nicely without hot water. They also all benefit from an enthusiastic application of olive oil and spices—the spices added at home, the olive oil added on-trail. The couscous and beans that I have been experimenting with, both from the Winco bulk aisle, take about 25 minutes to come fully back to life with cold water. The ramen I'm not sure about yet, but I've heard half an hour. I plan on using either a screw-top tupperware container or perhaps something like an empty plastic mayonnaise jar to let the rehydration take place as I hike, rather than after I've stopped. Again, waiting around sucks.

Going stoveless takes away some of the burden on Kristin, my maildrop coordinator and self-appointed Dehydration Doyenne, which is probably a good thing. We're way behind on learning the dehydrator, and there's only a month left to figure it out, in which time we each have only a hundred other things to take care of. The new food strategy is easier to manage logistically, but still leaves plenty of room for experimentation and variety. After the AT, I thought I might not like to go the no-cook route again, but I hadn't really paused to consider how much I could improve on my food options if customized maildrops are thrown into the mix. Luckily, I have someone who is willing and able to assume that role for me.