[pct-l] met 'first man to solo pct in 72

[Bighummel]

One name; Martin Papendick.  May his memory live forever as THE first person to hike Canada to Mexico in 1958!

Greg "Strider" Hummel



In a message dated 01/22/07 10:04:14 Pacific Standard Time, pct-l-request at backcountry.net writes:
From: Acu4harmony at aol.com 
Subject: [pct-l] met 'first man to solo pct in 72 
To: pct-l at backcountry.net 
Message-ID: <bb8.b29ac88.32e576c5 at aol.com> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" 

Yesterday I had the honor to meet Henry Wilds who according to many people   
was the first to solo thru hike the PCT doing so in '72'.  I know  Ryback   
hiked before that but the story has never been clear on that. First  or not I was 
fascinated to find out that Henry was 16 years old when he started  his hike! 
He hiked south to north and started at Campo (not at the 'terminus'  once 
located  five miles to the west near Tecate as I would have guessed)  in June, as 
he had to wait to be done with high school to start his hike. We  talked for 
hours about his experiences on that hike. If you ask me a  sixteen year old 
hiking a two and a half thousand mile trail, much of which did  not exist, with a 
60-plus pound pack, is impressive!!! My hat off to him and all  early thru 
hikers!! As Henry lives nearby to me I am hoping he can advise me  some on an 
idea I have had in my head for sometime now. Has anyone considered  (or done 
recently) doing a thru hike attempting to follow the circa 1970's PCT  route? 
Only an idea for down the road some time, but was wondering what some of  the 
'old' timers think of this? Would it be feasible?   Scott