Close your eyes and picture the Pacific Northwest. Tell me what you see. Gray skies? An unshakeable mist? Maybe bright green sword ferns, super-sized trees, and fountains of Starbucks coffee on every Seattle street corner?
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A Tale of Two Winters
The Sierra Nevada—literally, “the snowy mountains”—has recently begun to challenge its very name. In the past twenty years or more, the cyclical nature of snow and sun in these mountains has become anything but cyclical.
The Other Side of Yosemite
The Sierra must be seen to be fully believed. And Yosemite is the beating heart of that Sierra. Of the more than 4 million annual visitors to Yosemite National Park, the vast majority never leave Yosemite Valley, however. With highlights known the world over—El Capitan, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, Glacier Point—you can hardly blame them.
Out of the Cathedral
There was no way around it. This was gonna hurt. For a trail that runs 211 miles, ending on the summit of the highest point in the Continental U.S., you don’t expect the first day to be the one with the longest and largest climb. And yet, that’s exactly how the John Muir Trail introduces you to the scenery of the High Sierra: by exacting a pound of flesh.
Trails of a Different Kind
Skiing isn’t an inherently sensible thing to do. Think about it. From the time we realize, as infants, that standing up seems like a cool thing to do, we spend nearly every moment from that day forward trying to avoid the pitfall of that decision. Namely, we try not to fall flat on our faces. Gravity, it turns out, is an effective teacher.
The Redefinition of Clean
Absolutes are tiring. And also pointless. Stepping back onto the trail after nearly 48 hours worth of rest, my state of being clean does not—surprisingly—disappear in an instant. Little by little, sweat, dirt, and sunscreen conspire against this newfound state of cleanliness and begin to return me to a version of clean more becoming of a thru-hiker.
A Brief History of Time
Honest question: What day is it? Away from the routines and patterns of home, it’s remarkable how something so familiar vanishes so quickly, each day seamlessly bleeding into the next, only the rising and setting of the sun demarcating one day from the next.
Wilderness of Rock
I didn’t remember having gone to sleep in the Sierra, but after rubbing the sleep both from my eyes and from my legs it sure seemed like that’s where I’d woken up. Scattered pines, lumps of stone, a trickling stream. It even had the blackened char of a recent burn clinging to the bark of surviving trees.
Oracle of Arizona
We slept in a ditch. Not exactly like the one from the CDT last year, and certainly not this one from the PCT—I’m beginning to sense a troubling pattern—but a sandy, flat, wash nonetheless a literal stone’s throw from passing traffic.
The Upside of a Pandemic
Every trail has days like today. Hell, the last 4 days. The rest of life is no different. In between the few snapshots worthy of putting on display for anyone who might care to see them, the real work takes place. Quiet. Sweat. Fatigue. Pain. Frustration. Elation. A thousand other qualities, none of which anyone gets to see but us.
Daggers of the Desert
Another day, another few million scrapes, jabs, cuts, and pin pricks from all manner of plants that seem dead set on reaching out and getting a bit too familiar with anything that might be passing by. In this case: us. So it seems only fitting to turn the spotlight on these floral “friends” whose penchant for inappropriate touching is downright criminal.
Land of Mystery
The southwest is a land of mystery. Of wide open space and eerie desolation. The kind that you can easily fill with all of your fears—the setting of the drama becoming a character all its own.
In Search of Sameness
The stars hang motionless, quiet, flecks of salt on an endless piece of black construction paper stretched above our heads. The crickets, less quietly, perform their discordant symphony from a score known only to them. The distant hum of a plane’s jet engine racing across the sky begins as a dull thud, builds to a roar, and disappears behind the mountain.
O Coffee, Where Art Thou?
Discombobulated. No, too strong. Confused. Not exactly. “I feel foggy headed,” says Ace, succinctly serving up the answer to my internal question as we sit down at a brief early morning break to remove our wind shirts. The question: what exactly is going on with my brain this morning?
The First Law of Hiking
The rain is deafening. Inside the spacious shelter of Taylor Lodge, nestled into the shadow of Mt. Mansfield, the sound is amplified by the metal roof making each drop sound like the beat of a snare drum. Lying in the dark, it’s hard to know whether my ears are being deceived by the acoustics or the downpour really is that heavy.
Mountain of Indifference
It’s a habit I ought to break. That’s what I told myself hardly an hour into our hike after returning to the trail following a much needed day off. The man who’d delivered us back to the string of white blazes beckoning us ever northward was Rick Swanson. He and his partner Tim own and operate the Swanson Inn, an idyllic Vermont inn just outside the town of Waitsfield…
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Nostalgia
When I was a kid, I loved geography. Couldn’t get enough of it. Maps, atlases, countries, flags, states, capitals. It was the first way I remember trying to understand the world I was a part of. To learn about my place in that world, and to exercise that childhood curiosity about places I would likely never see with my own two eyes…
A Dream of Canada
August may not be an enjoyable time to find yourself in the desert, but November certainly is. Rather than boiling the water in our water bottles, the temperature topped out in the mid-seventies yet again. Combined with an unrelenting sun, it’s enough to remind you of where you are without forcing you to wring your shirt of sweat every hour.
Land of Enchantment
If you close your eyes and picture New Mexico, what do you see? I'd always pictured a vast, arid plateau. Maybe Taos ski resort. And ancient remnants of the dwellings of indigenous people.
The Folly of FKTs
The 100-meter dash is not for the slow-footed. It is the domain of the rocket ships of the human race and the winners are bestowed the title of world’s fastest man or woman. One simple question though: Why?
Wind of Change
As if bemused by the accelerating pace of our hectic lives, the natural rhythm of the world moves ever onward, inexorably slowly, one season slipping into another almost without our notice. It's one of the many small joys of trail life—the rare attentiveness to even subtle changes in the world around us that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Out of the Frying Pan
If cursing were an Olympic sport, we could have medaled. I wish I could say that rejoining the CDT meant that the blowdown of yesterday evening would be nothing but a painful memory, but to no one’s surprise and everyone’s chagrin, the forest around the first bend of trail looked like the same nuclear devastation.
The Snows of September
It's amazing how quickly things can turn. Mountains are fickle like that, especially in the “shoulder season”—that no man’s land beyond the heart of summer where autumn can so often confuse itself with early winter. Expecting the unexpected, and being prepared for just about anything is what hiking in shoulder season is all about.
A Tale of Fire
I'm on some kind of ride at the county fair, which one I'm not entirely sure. The Tilt-o-Whirl maybe, or perhaps the Scrambler. It might even be the giant swirling swing ride. When my eyes open, I don't see the lights of the midway though, only darkness. Turns out it was only partly a dream.
The Winter Solstice of Hiking
Anything worth doing is worth doing right. And when you plan to have a short near-o into a town stop, you may as well do it with style and not even hike a single mile. It may not be the shortest day of the year, but it sure was the shortest day of hiking we've had on this trail (any trail?) and with the previous day’s miles having moved by faster than expected to put us here, neither of us was complaining.
The Death of Puritanism
The world is infatuated with purity tests, or so it seems. And right when I fall into the obvious trap of thinking this must be a new phenomenon with blame to be placed squarely on the Facebooks and Twitters of the world, I stop and remember that: 1) almost nothing is new; and 2) being puritanical certainly is not.
A History of PUDs
It's the dirtiest of words out here: PUDs. Pointless Ups and Downs. It behooves you not to complain too much when you've signed up of your own volition to walk from one side of the country to the other, but PUDs are like the proverbial thorn in your side, the pebble in your shoe, the tiny thorn entangled deep in the fibers of your sock that you just can't shake…
A Parting of Ways
We're missing something. Well, two somethings. Two someones, to be precise, and it hasn't felt the same without them.
The Art of the Perfect Near-o
There's an art to performing the perfect near-o. It takes just the right mix of near-zero miles (hence the name “near-o”), but also a healthy dose of town food and, potentially, transportation to or from the trail. Nail all three, stick the landing and you have yourself a textbook near-o. Limit the miles to less than five and you've got what our good friend Gazelle would lovingly call a “hard near-o”.
The Legacy of Water
Its fingerprints are all around us. The lingering patches of snow that still cling to the coolest of high alpine corners. The lifeblood of the thick carpet of tundra-thriving grasses, bold enough to color such a forbidding landscape with their flowering blooms. Even the glaciers that long ago sculpted the waves of stone we've called home for these past 6 weeks.
The Magic of Kindness
Like a truck stuck in second gear. That's what it felt like when my feet took their first steps away from our camp this morning. The evening rains had left only to return a time or two overnight, ensuring that we'd be packing up wet tarps, at a minimum. There was no blue sky to herald the morning, only a thick cloud that we seemed to be finding our way out of little by little.
The Better Part of Valor
Compromise. Deviation from the desired. Challenging concepts that we all struggle to face and to come to terms with from time to time. Peter, the father of my high school girlfriend once told me, after listening to my story of beating a retreat and abandoning an attempt to summit a peak: “The difference between a mountaineer and a fool, is that a mountaineer knows when to turn back.”
Love in the Time of Corona
Just south of South Pass City, Wyoming. That’s where I’m supposed to be right now. That is, at least according to a now defunct spreadsheet of trail logistics that could have only been described as “complicated.” It’s not a place of any particular importance, merely a small dot on the Continental Divide Trail that is connected by millions of other small, insignificant dots.
The Modern Day Adventures of Ulysses
As previously published on the Ulysses app blog Truth be told, I’ve never thought of myself as a writer. Homer, I most certainly am not. As an engineer, numbers have always come more easily to me than words. Safer. More predictable. Less apt to be used carelessly. Perhaps not surprisingly then, my relationship with writing...
The End of Newdle-palooza
Little did I know how close we were. Our hammock spot last night was a mere few hundred yards from the junction of where the Tahoe Rim Trail joins the Pacific Crest Trail for a 50-mile stretch through the mountains along the west side of Lake Tahoe.
The Land of Dust and Fire
The shade of blue hadn’t changed at all. From high above and through a scrim of smoky haze, the sapphire hue of Lake Tahoe was no less brilliant than when I had last seen it two years ago while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Only this time, Emily and I were back to join our good friends Beardoh and Sweet Pea for a summer send-off thru-hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail.
Persistence of Memory
Up the stairs to the fifth floor, a collection of Impressionism, surrealism, and cubism masterpieces adorns the starkly white walls of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Nestled among Monet’s famous Water Lilies triptych and Pollock’s massive drip painting canvases hangs a work of a very different kind, scarcely larger than a piece of paper.
Confessions of a Chacoholic
I love Chacos. True story: I own 8 pairs of them. Two pairs hiked the Appalachian Trail, two have hiked the John Muir Trail and the Wonderland Trail twice, and three have now hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. Combined they've been my companions for well north of 5,000 trail miles. The 8th pair? I got married to my best friend in those.
54 Miles East of Seattle
All morning it was thoughts of a bed and our first day off in over 600 miles that propelled us on. The return of the sun a day before had morphed into cloud cover this morning and by the time we had our first view of the I-90 interstate, the rain had begun to fall yet again. With only a handful of miles remaining to get to Snoqualmie Pass, it hardly mattered.
Sins of the Virgin Voyage
Early this morning, just before leaving Olallie Lake I stepped out onto the dock to enjoy the view over the lake to Mount Jefferson bathed in the early light of the day. There wasn't a soul stirring anywhere and the lake was glassy with calm. I can't think of a better way to start a day.