Two-Heel Drive

Steve Sergeant interviews Captain Bligh, Nellie Bly and Scrambler, the family who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 2004, chronicled in the book “Zero Days” (since trail season is officially under way it’s OK to call ‘em by their trail names).

Mary, AKA Scrambler, was 10 when she hiked the trail with her mom and dad. Though she seems like an obvious role model, listening to the interview makes it plain she’s quite a remarkable individual — bright like the sun and wise far beyond her years — almost too exceptional to make the case “well, anybody can get their kids to do something like this.” She was the star of a presentation her mom and dad gave for folks at the Mercury News in the spring of 2005.

Try to avoid the urge to wish you had such great kids; they hate it when you do that.

Dave and Cindy Peters have already logged their first 100 miles from the wall at Campo on the U.S.-Mexico border. They’re now calling themselves Zelda and Tarzan. How Dave got dubbed:

At Scissors Crossing we stopped to rest and make a decision whether to proceed up a hot dry stretch through the San Felipe Hills or to wait it out until early morning when it is cool.

While here at Scissors Crossing another hiker named Zoner gave David his trail name. David was dubbed Tarzan because of the Cheetah gaiters he wears along with his jungle shirt and hat. I don’t want to be Jane because David would have an excuse to drag me around so we’ll wait to see what comes about for me.

Cindy did the wise thing: chose one before some embarrassing trail faux pas did the deed for her:

Last night we had several hikers congratulate us on our 24 mile day as we came into camp at Barrel Springs. Nomad, who is a two-time AT thru-hiker, suggested that my trail name should be Wonder Woman or Super Woman, but neither one hit the spot for me. The next morning the name Zelda pop into mind, which I thought was consistent with the other names mentioned. My sons both love the game, The Legend of Zelda. I ran it by some other hikers and they thought it was perfect. I love it too!

So, Tarzan and Zelda made it to Warner Springs resort and it is paradise. The soap smells so good. And a thru hiker that lives near here named Warner Springs Monty heard about my blisters through trail talk and brought me some Epsom salts to our room. What a great trail angel!

As long as I’m on the subject of local through-hikers, I’ve been meaning to mention one I found last week: JJ, a Bay Area guy who says he used to weigh 400 pounds (down to 290 at last count, as I recall). A briefing from his first day out:

Knees good. Tired. It is much further from Hauser Creek this year than four years ago. And more bicycles. I counted 12 between Campo and Hauser Creek.

Lots of people already on the trail. I’m off for a shower after a
quart of chocolate milk and a quart of cranberry juice.

More later.

Lots of good stuff at JJ’s web site, Old Man Walking, which won’t have many updates for the next few months while he’s working his way north (the The Trail Journals link above should have them, though).

Jellybean, from Mile 43 of the Pacific Crest trail:

I was sitting on a rock out cropping yesterday to air my feet and eat a snack. I could see down into the valley and interstate 8. I was thinking Wow! Its so much better to be sitting here looking at the trucks go by than it is to be in a truck watching the mountains go by!

Priceless because Jellybean Jean is a long-haul trucker half the year, and a through-hiker the rest. Previous Jellybean journals: 2002 PCT | 2005 AT | 2006 AT | 2007 AT

Sgt. Rock, keeper of the Hiking HQ discussion board, has retired after 22 years in the Army and is heading north on the Appalachian Trail. I started thumbing through his trail journal when this part from a post in early January stopped me in my tracks:

The plan was to get up early to make up some miles I missed yesterday. So I went to bed early and set an alarm for 0700. But something happened. This morning at about 0200 I heard a rifle shot really close. As I lay there thinking that was too damn close I heard two more with the crack that comes when a bullet gets close to you. Then there were large explosions and I looked into the draw I was beside where a low hanging smoke was drifting. I could see helmets of soldiers in the smoke and moonlight and heard voices yelling at soldiers. Then machine gun fire and someone saying “Up there on the trail”. I was worried it was me so I tried to get out of my hammock as a machine gun opened up. I couldn’t move or speak. I was getting in a panic trying to get out of that hammock so I could hug the ground. Finally I bolted straight up.

All was quiet. There was no smoke or soldiers. No gunfire or explosions. Just a quiet night. I lay there sweating, my heart pounding away. I realized it was just a nightmare and tried to go back to sleep. I lay there for hours playing it over in my mind. It seemed so real - I could actually smell the smoke and hear a radio plus what sounded like voices talking in Arabic. I finally passed back out at 0400, but I ended up sleeping through my alarm and getting up late.

I used to hang around at the Sarge’s site a lot more but had gotten a bit out of the habit … I never realized all the while he was keeping his site and helping out with Whiteblaze.net that he had never actually hiked the AT all the way — though it makes sense, it’s hard to get six months off to go hiking when your employer is the Pentagon, which has better plans for you in exotic climes.

So anyway, here’s to the Sarge living his dream. And hoping the sleeping gets better.

His Trail Journal is here.

Barbara Egbert, who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail a few years back with her 10-year-old daughter, has a few store appearances coming up:

Barbara will be signing her new book at 2 p.m. March 2 at the Pleasanton Library; at the Pacific Crest Trail Association “Trailfest” in Sacramento on March 28-29; at the Saratoga REI store at 7:30 p.m. April 3; at the Mountain View REI store at 7:30 p.m. April 9 and at the Marina REI store at 7:30 p.m. April 15.

My “Zero Days” review is here.

Not to be confused with the Pacific Crest Trail, the Pacific Northwest Trail runs for nearly 1,200 miles from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Ocean. Two-Heel Drive reader and blogger Greg Seitz interviewed a friend of his who hiked all those miles over two months this past summer. The hiker is Sam Haraldson. From Part 4 of the interview:

Although not formally educated as such I feel as though I found Zen while walking in the woods. Life reduced to its simplest parts, sustenance and shelter being your only concerns one is forced to grasp life at its minimum. Stripping away the intricacies of society the mind far better grasps the relationships not of one person to another but rather one person to the world. Kicking your foot mid step knocks over a plant which ultimately rots into compost making way for new life. A pebble thrown into a pond creates ripples of water which send ripples into the air and so on and so forth.

This rippling effect followed me back into society and strengthened my beliefs in the interconnectedness of all things. It boosted my beliefs that people must be good to each other as the ripples arenít just in the water, but in the conversations we have with others as well. As my sister-in-law loves to quote, ìLive well, laugh often and love much.î

Sam’s an ultra-lighter, so of course there’s a discourse on gear.

All the gear I brought I hold in the highest regard but a few items stand out as being very superb. As the year comes to an end and I determine my 2007 favorites I predict the list will be topped by two items. One being the Bushbuddy Ultra backpacking wood stove and second being the Montbell Thermawrap jacket. These two pieces of gear packed the highest value per ounce of anything I carried with me.

Hey, I have one of those Thermawraps — handy to have around, even on day hikes near civilization.

The interview starts here.

Sam’s hiking pages start here. His photo album is here.

Sounds to me like the PNT is an excellent alternative to the PCT, particularly if you haven’t got a free six months to spend hiking.

The Mercury News has posted my review of Barbara Egbert’s “Zero Days,” which recounts her 2004 Pacific Crest Trail through-hike with her husband and 10-year-old daughter. Excerpt:

Egbert and Chambers, who live in Sunol, started taking their daughter on backpacking trips before she was old enough to walk. By the time Mary started out on the 2,650-mile PCT trek, she had already hiked all 165 miles of the Tahoe Rim Trail. Chambers also is a veteran rock climber and mountaineer.

Egbert’s first-person prose is plain-spoken and unpretentious. It’s not the equal of, say, Bill Bryson’s, whose “A Walk in the Woods” is a classic, antic tale of failing to through-hike the Appalachian Trail. But Egbert, a Mercury News copy editor, has success on her side, having hiked all but a couple hundred miles of the PCT (medical issues forced her off the trail for a few weeks) and finishing the trek in Canada with husband and child.

Between 200 and 300 hardy backpackers try to through-hike the PCT every year. Most start in April or early May at Campo, on the U.S-Mexico border, and head north toward Manning Provincial Park in British

Columbia (they rest on “zero” days, when they log no miles). Around 50 to 60 finish.

Along the way they, usually adopt descriptive trail names: Chambers became “Captain Bligh,” leader and navigator; Egbert was “Nelly Bly,” the famed 19th-century true-life storyteller; and Mary was “Scrambler,” adept at crawling over rocks and other trail-side attractions.

Wilderness Press page for the book is here. Barb & family have a site here.

So 4WheelBob is not the only chaser-of-remarkable-firsts in my acquaintance. It so happens that a woman I work with hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 2004 with her 10-year-old daughter, the youngest ever to hike the whole trail.

Barb Egbert is a copy editor at the Mercury News who has just finished writing “Zero Days,” a Wilderness Press title accounting her six-month sojourn with her daughter, Mary, and her husband, Gary, in the spring/summer/fall of 2004. If you were on the trail that season, you might recall their trail handles: Nelly Bly, Scrambler and Captain Bligh.

Our books editor left a copy of the book on my desk last week, and I spent several days rationalizing why I should blow off reviewing it for the paper. What if I have to say something unkind about a co-worker’s book? It’s like saying something bad about their kids, in print no less.

But the books editor promised to actually pay me for writing the review, which would pay for many pairs of high-tech hiking socks, so I figured, what the heck

The book’s only about 180 pages so it shouldn’t take too long to read, but posting may be light around here in the next few days, because, well, people become authors because it’s easier than becoming book reviewers.

Rebecca of Calipidder.com was finishing her John Muir Trail trek just as I was gearing up for the White Mountain Adventure. She now has several days of words and pictures posted, starting with this introduction, which includes links to each daily entry. She still has another week’s worth to post, so be sure to check back.

As long as I’m on the subject of bloggers’ outdoor ramblings, you might as well check out Gambolin Man’s Lake Tahoe adventures.

The many-tattooed, multiply-pierced PCT thru-hiker concedes she won’t break the speed record she was shooting for, but she’s still down for the whole 2600 miles:

I talked to Tattoo Joe and we both know we won’t be able to get the speed records that we were trying for. We decided that we will team up in 2009 and give the record another try. I am still going to try for the women’s record of 91 days but it doesn’t matter how long it takes me, I am going to finish. Some hikers were saying that people who try for records usually quit if they can’t get the record. NOT ME, I am out here until the end!

She’s gone over 500 miles in 24 days, which ain’t too shabby, considering the heat and dryness of the So-Cal desert.

(Horny teen-aged boys and the entire staff of GoBlog will appreciate this post in which Catra presses the flesh while a hulking bearded guy leers.)