[pct-l] For the Noob

[Scott Williams]

I'm one who believes prepping for a hike both physically and skills wise,
is some of the most important stuff you can do pre-hike for your own safety
and for the ultimate success of your hike, yet year after year, many learn
their skills and gain their trail legs on trail, and that is not going to
change as long as it's a free trail out there.  The interest in long hiking
continues to climb world wide.  In a few years the Great Himalaya Trail may
be finished allowing for a complete circumnavigation of those mountains.
This is a new phenomenon.  I agree with Gourmet that I'm not sure much has
changed since "Wild" as the numbers were increasing annually on the PCT,
CDT and AT, prior to its publication.

I started the PCT in 2010 with 4 other people.  We'd all met on line and
made no commitments, but all started at Campo together in early April.  One
guy had done no training, was very overweight, diabetic (his Dr. had told
him to loose the weight or die and he chose the PCT to do that), and did
not follow this forum or read any books prior to setting out.   He made it
1/2 mile from the border before falling twice.  Bloody and staggering into
the shade of that first little oak copse, he threw down his pack which was
probably 65 pounds and we all "exploded" it on the spot.  Among other
things was a full on U.S. Army mess kit, metal canteens and all kinds of
other really heavy stuff.  I carried his gear into Campo, and it nearly
killed me, and he carried my much lighter set up and we left him waiting
for his wife to pick him up.  He couldn't even make it to Campo but was
hoping to make it to Canada!

Another person made it just past Mt. Laguna before we heard her in her tent
weeping to her boyfriend at night.  She had trained by walking 3 miles per
day in Portland prior to the PCT, but her gear was heavy and boots didn't
fit right.  She refused all offers to look at her gear and quit just after
Laguna.  A third person had trained with a friend on day hikes in Socal and
joined us at Barrel Springs and hobbled into Warner Springs several hours
later, completely whupped and out.  She was planning on a section, but only
got one day of it.

The fourth person had trained and did have experience backpacking and
eventually made it across all the desert sections before being stopped by
the high snow of the Sierra that year.  She was great on trail and learned
a lot, switched gear that wasn't working and asked for and got lots of help
from more knowledgeable hikers.  Her section was a great accomplishment for
her and she had a terrific summer eventually becoming a trail angel that
year and the year after.

Now, that being said, when I crossed into Canada, I was in the company of a
guy who had never backpacked in his life before the PCT and learned it all
on trail.  By the end of the hike, he was seasoned and experienced and
could tackle anything after that.  But the other 6 people were people who
had trained and learned and had backpacking experiences prior to setting
out.  Most of the folks crossing into Canada within a day of me had found a
way to get strong before starting, Little Engine walked to work from
Brooklyn to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge everyday for months as it
was the only training she could get.  And she and Plain Slice had studied
up and tested gear on short trips for the year prior to setting out on
their long hike.

Another person, Amoeba, one of my personal favorites on trail that year,
had come to long hiking at age 59 when she retired early from a corporate
lawyers job in Upstate NY.  She broke her ankle early on and realized that
she was way out of shape and started hiking.  By her mid sixties she had
thru hiked the AT twice in Crocs and has done large sections of the PCT and
other NSTs and is a very strong hiker.  She carries more than me and hikes
at her own pace, but is one of the really wonderful people you'll ever meet
on trail.  I asked her how she got her name and she answered, "Just watch
me on trail."  She's great, knowledgeable and a strong hiker and started
out as a total Noob.

Last year I hiked the CDT and like all the trails, it had probably the
largest starting class ever, maybe 40 to 50 people.  All of those I knew
personally or met on trail had at least one other thru hike under their
belt.  Several were Triple Crowners doing it for the second time, Lint was
finishing his "Double Triple" and many were completing their first Triple
Crowns.  It felt like the Creme de la Creme of American hiking, yet quite a
few of these very experienced hikers dropped out mid hike for a variety of
reasons, and one complete Noob, the only one I met all summer on that
trail, made it to Canada.

She was a young gal from Germany who chose as her first serious backpack
trip, the Continental Divide Trail, because she'd heard it was the
hardest.  She was so new to it, she didn't even understand the thru hiker
importance we put into connecting our daily hikes, so the beginning of her
hike had a few gaps.  She had a 60lb pack when we first met her in Cuba and
was not really interested in having anyone look at it and wouldn't even
consider trading in her 8lb Swedish expedition pack for a lighter model.
She was stubborn.  She had foot issues and hiked so slowly that in spite of
her obvious strength and youth, she couldn't keep up with anyone else on
the trail, not even Why Not or I who were 59 and 60.  By Ghost Ranch she
was looking awful.  Lint and Dirt Monger had tried to help her with her
gear, as had Northern Strider, but finally at Chama or Pagosa Springs, she
let Why Not "explode" her pack.  Nancy found a full large bottle of shampoo
among many other hiker superfluous items.

She didn't actually start hiking with us till the end of the San Juans when
she became so intrigued by our lighter gear that she ordered a ULA, CDT
pack and a pair of Altra Lone Peak shoes and really took off and didn't
stop till Canada.  For her, the lack of experience was made up for in
spades by her sheer stubbornness.  She had almost no skills with map and
compass which made her a real footprint expert, and caused her to spend one
day completely lost in the San Juans, so she could easily have become a
casualty of that year's hike, but could we or anyone else have gotten her
to leave trail until she had the skills?  Not on your life.  It is not my
choice to start such an endeavor so ill prepared, but she did, and she had
the summer of her life.

Another Noob in 2010 on the PCT was Eric, who started Sobo in June and
found himself in deep snow in the Cascades without an ice axe.  He
backtracked, bought an ice axe and started again.  He had backpacked as a
kid, but was new to snow hiking and new to long distance hiking.  He'd been
in Europe for many years and only learned about UL hiking and thru hiking
by following Why Not's PCT thru hike on Postholer in 2009 and by following
this forum.  Not only did he make it to Campo that year, but he went on to
complete the Florida Trail, AT, AZT and CDT as well as his original PCT,
all in just over 2 years.  He's a world class hiker.  He learned on trail
and although he carried a GPS on the CDT, he used map and compass almost
exclusively.  He'd done his first 4 long trails alone and hooked up with us
just before Grants NM and hiked several thousand miles with a "trail
family" so he could have the experience of that.  He could have left Nancy
or I in the dust at anytime and joined the speed demons on trail, Lint and
Dirt Monger, but chose to stay with the old folks and the Noob, just for
the fun of it.

Without question it is important to train, train and train some more with
and without your gear and learn the skills of the outdoors before setting
out on a long hike if you want to be relatively safer and to have a better
chance of finishing the thru hike.  On the PCT, most of the dropouts at the
beginning were total Noobs, and most of the finishers had some experience
before setting out.  But, plenty of Noobs finish and learn a ton on trail,
and plenty of experienced folks drop out.  And a section of a long trail
may be just fine, and hell, we all take our lives in our hands when setting
out on an adventure like a long trail, experienced and new comers alike.

Follow a forum like this, read trail journals and books and try yourself
and gear out before hand, and study up on prudent desert hiking before
setting out on a hot day at Campo, but give it a shot.  Can we make the PCT
safe for all?  Never going to happen!  Can we stop folks from foolishly
starting out at Campo to cure their diabetes? Not on your life.  Folks will
set out without experience, and if the current trends continue, it will be
more and more each year.  Yosemite doesn't close the trails to the falls
due to people foolishly going over the falls in great numbers each year,
and the PCT isn't going to close either.  We can just keep putting out the
best information we can, like at the ADZPCTKO with its training and
Wolverines "exploding" packs right at the site, and this forum and hope
somebody is listening.

Shroomer