BACKPACKER LONG TRAILS

I first met Pi as I was hitchhiking into the trail town of Etna, California, from the PCT. He had done his town chores and was returning to the trail just as I was heading into town to start my chores. We waved at each other, exchanged a few pleasantries, and then I forgot all about him, concluding that I wouldn’t ever see him again. Some 200 miles later, in the town of Ashland, Oregon, a good family friend took me to a fancy steakhouse where I assumed no hiker would ever go. A man wearing a red silk, button-up shirt came up to my table and asked if I was hiking the PCT. How did he know? This man—Pi—insisted that he had seen me on the trail. I was quite positive I had not seen anyone wearing a red silk shirt on the trail. Clearly, this man was crazy.

Two hundred miles later near Bend, Oregon, I found myself in a horrible rainstorm for which I was underprepared. I wanted to bail off the trail and go into town to dry off and buy some warmer layers, but didn’t want to do it by myself. Enter Pi. We hiked together 13 miles to the side trail where we could find shelter from the storm. His bright, cheery attitude and fun stories carried me to the restaurant near the trail. We hiked together for almost 500 more miles with his friend, sleeping in a lava castle and sharing a hotel room at the fancy Timberline Lodge in Oregon after hiking a 54-mile day. A few days later, we almost burned down Miss Info’s mom’s house with bacon.

These are the types of crazy up and down stories that you can’t make up. Spending a week with someone on the trail can form a deep relationship that feels more real and authentic than friendships formed at home. On the trail, most hikers aren’t trying to impress you or pretend to be someone they are not. We’re out here to learn things about ourselves, to learn to forgive others, to forgive ourselves, and see good in humanity. You couldn’t ask for a better group of people to become friends with.

A lot of us go hiking to get away from the world, but thru-hiking and section-hiking come with a vibrant social life as well, and your interactions with others can make or break your hike. In this chapter, we’ll teach you the key rules of hiker social etiquette so you can be a confident, positive member of the hiking community.

During prime thru-hiker season on many long-distance trails (AT, PCT, JMT, Wonderland Trail, Tahoe Rim Trail), you really have to work hard not to have other hikers near you. You may start these trails alone, but very few people hike the trail alone the whole way. I have met some of the best people in the world hiking on trails—people who have become my best friends in real life and whom I can trust. For some reason, people who have decided to take a break from their life to hike across the country are usually the best people on the planet. People hiking trails understand you and your dream.

HIKE YOUR OWN HIKE

SOCIAL REGRETS

Felicia “Princess of Darkness” Hermosillo talks about how she wishes she’d socialized smarter in her first hikes.

As a Triple Crowner, I have somewhere close to 10,000 miles of hiking under my belt. The thing that I wish I had known when I started thru-hiking back in 2002 was how important hiking would be in my life. As a 25-year-old with a newfound freedom, I partied a lot on the AT, and I missed a lot of opportunities to interact with other hikers who had a lot more experience than I did. I met a well-known and experienced thru-hiker on Hike Naked Day [the Summer Solstice], and I was so wrapped up in the party scene of Hike Naked Day and the fun that we were having that I missed the opportunity to interact with him and learn from him. I wish I had paid more attention to those who had more experience than me. I could’ve learned a lot. It would’ve made future hikes a little easier. I would’ve gotten into more difficult terrain a lot sooner in my life.

Sure, have fun on the AT—or any hike you do—but I definitely wish I had been more observant of the people who had more experience than me.

—Felicia “Princess of Darkness” Hermosillo

Even if you choose to walk alone on the AT or PCT, or any other long trail, and somehow decide you don’t like any of the other hikers you meet enough to walk with them for a few hours, a few days, or a few hundred miles, the thru-hiking community still watches out for you. If you go missing or if you get hurt, people you may have never met who may have only heard of you through the giant game of telephone that is trail news, spread by word of mouth from hiker to hiker, will go to extreme lengths to come to your aid.

I spent my first few hikes being a lot less social than most hikers. Part of that was due to my speed and part of it was a choice: I thought talking to others took away from my wilderness experience. In retrospect, one of the biggest regrets I have from those thru-hikes is that I did not make more friends and take advantage of the wealth of experience, knowledge, and expertise other hikers have. In subsequent hikes, I looked forward to the friendships I knew I would form. It’s one of the greatest gifts of the trail.

Group mentality can get in the way of your growth and safety. Many hikers—myself included—will say that when they hike by themselves, they take extra precautions. A prime example is treating water. Some hikers always treat their water when solo. But when they are with others who don’t treat, they tend also not to treat. Someone gets an alpha male mentality going on, and it really impacts how the group reacts. The same goes for other dangerous situations—like heading over a peak during a lightning storm. Many hikers wouldn’t do it alone, but, as if the group could protect them from natural forces, will head up into the danger zone with friends nearby. Similarly, many solo hikers will always hang their food in grizzly bear country, but when camping with others will assume that a few extra human bodies are security enough from an 800-pound animal to justify sleeping with their salmon.

Think about how group mentality might impact your decisions on the trail, and choose friends and hiking partners who have similar values as you.

• People who are not the same pace as you, or are not willing to go your pace, or get cranky if your pace is not the same as theirs.

• People who do things you think are not ethical or responsible, like not following Leave No Trace principles or having bad trail etiquette.

• People who annoy you, are mean, and whom you genuinely dislike. This one sounds obvious, but it happens on the trail more often than you would think. Hikers sometime stick with folks they genuinely find distasteful because they are afraid to hike alone, especially in high snow years. My advice is that if you are concerned about entering a section of trail alone, take a few zeroes and wait for a new group of hikers to catch up with you. Maybe you will like that group more, and you can hike together.

Keeping in touch while on the trail is a theme we touch upon a lot in this book, but it’s so important that it bears repeating here. Your decision to hike the trail does not make you an island of one. There are people who care about what you are doing and will worry about you if you don’t let them know you are okay every so often. You get cell reception more often than you might expect on most long trails in the United States, so that’s one option. If you don’t want to carry a cell phone, here are some other ways you can stay in touch with the folks at home and on the trail:

• Libraries in town are a great way to get Internet access if you do not have a smartphone.

Social Media and the Trail

Many hikers I meet admit afterward that they became so engaged in blogging or keeping up with their social media on the trail that they found it hard to stay “present” during their hike. “I just spent all day on the trail thinking about what my next blog post will be about,” one blogger told me. “I focused more on what would make a beautiful picture than on savoring being in that beauty,” a photographer told me. Is that how you want to spend your hike? Think about how big a role you want your communication with the outside to be before you start your blog.

Thru-hiking is a great opportunity—one of the last opportunities we have left—to turn it all off. I urge you to experiment with turning your phone off and escaping your regular life while you are on the trail and only using your phone in town. You may find the experience makes your hike more rewarding and helps you engage with nature, yourself, and other hikers better. If you do decide to blog, get a wifi-enabled camera or SD card for your camera. It will save you a lot of time sorting photos in the library.

It’s easy from the comfort of your home to think you’ll have the energy to blog every night. But the truth is that thru-hiking is exhausting, and it gets to be hard to blog or even post photos every night. I know bloggers who sometimes stay up past midnight and then have to get up and hike the next day. You get into the groove of not being connected to social media 24-7. Tell friends and family you expect to blog once a week, but don’t make any promises.

• Many hikers send themselves a cheap netbook or tablet that they use and then bounce up the trail.

• Ask day hikers, trail angels, or those you meet in towns to call or email your home.

Now it’s time for you to experience your journey. Soon you will feel the cool breeze on your face as you look down on the world from a sweeping ridge. You started your trail as far as you could see in one direction. You will continue on as far as you can see in another. Your body will become accustomed to being outdoors all day. Sleeping on the ground will become restful. You’ll find that you don’t miss TV, constant updates from your phone, or so many similar aspects of your old life.

When I headed off on my first hike on the AT, I was so anxious about the journey ahead that I could barely sleep the night before starting. Despite all the research and preparation I had done, there were still so many unknowns. I felt like there were so many questions that I didn’t even know I should have asked.

Before I end this book, though, I do want to leave you with three simple but important takeaways.

First: Although this is the end of the book, it’s definitely not the end of your learning process. In fact, one of the reasons I love thru-hiking is because I learn something new every single day. Maybe it’s about myself, and how I react when conditions are tough. Maybe it’s about my gear or the areas I’m walking through. The point is, don’t feel like you have to already know every single thing before setting out. Discovery is part of the adventure.

Second: If whatever you’re doing on your hike feels difficult, stop, sit, and eat something. It seems simple, but eating is your number one defense against injury, your number one source of recovery, and your number one way of getting along better with others.

Third: At this point you’ve heard the phrase “Hike Your Own Hike” a million times—and you’ll hear it a million times more once you hit the trail. But seriously: Reflect often on what it means, and don’t judge yourself compared to others. The trail isn’t a race, competition, or sporting event. It’s an exploration, where you get out of it what you came for.

As you come to the end of this book, I hope you have found the answers to many of your questions—plus the answers to questions you didn’t even know you had when you started. But if there’s a big topic you still feel fuzzy on, I’m here to help. Email me at liz@eathomas.com to schedule personal, one-on-one consultations with me or visit my website at www.eathomas.com. Visit www.facebook.com/TrainWithAnish to schedule a consultation for personal training with Heather Anderson. I’d also like to personally invite you to come to one of the live events put on by the long-distance hiking community. They’re a lot of fun and a great place to learn more.

And finally, I just want to say thank you. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to share what I’ve learned. Thanks for the hard work you’re putting in to making sure you’re truly prepared for a long hike. And most importantly, thank you for daring to dream of a big outdoor adventure. I truly believe that this world needs thru-hikers. The more people who get to experience hiking a long trail, who risk facing their fears and come out stronger for it, who love the natural wonder of this ever-surprising planet, the better our world can be. So thank you. And see you on the trail!

+ MAKING FRIENDS, SAVORING EXPERIENCES