Frequently Asked Questions

Posted on December 26, 2014 by Helen Beelen

Without really intending to do so, I’ve developed a trail spiel. A why-I-am-doing-this soliloquy.

I recently returned to the Pacific Northwest from a week visiting family in West Michigan. Over the countless cups of coffee, lunches, beers, and evening holiday parties with old friends and extended family members absent from my daily life back in Seattle, I honed my answers to the same Trail Questions they posed, each thinking his query unique and untested “But have you thought about–?!” Yes, I have. I’ve spent the last six months thoroughly researching the trail’s sections, trying out gear, and testing myself in the woods. I’m not a complete idiot.

Here are the FAQ from friends/family/strangers/coworkers:

THE LEGITIMATE QUESTIONS:

Where does the trail start/end and how long is it? The trail’s southern terminus is in Campo, CA on the border with Mexico, and northern terminus in a provincial park in British Columbia called Manning Park. The trail is 2,660 miles long, but the distance actually hiked fluctuates depending on where you might hike into a town, trail detours due to flooding or fires, getting lost, or skipping sections. Check out this map for a better idea.

What are you going to eat? Food. And a lot of it. Thru-hiking the PCT is actually an exercise in self-starvation, as it is incredibly difficult to keep up intake with expended calories. I’ll mail myself (or rather have my lovely friends LeeAnne & Nolan mail me) pre-packed boxes of trail mixes, peanut butter, dehydrated soups and stirfries, and plenty of Oreos. No, I won’t be hunting (or fishing) for any of my sustenance. I won’t walk away from a ripened raspberry bush, but I’m not actively foraging for my meals. Otherwise, I’ll purchase food as I go… hitchhiking to nearby cities, or patronizing ones in the towns along the trail.

showing my uncanny solo-pioneer-explorer pose, ala lewis & clark.

How long is it going to take you/how far are you going to hike each day? Short answer, about five months. Long answer, the PCT is different from the Appalachian Trail in that there is a specific hiking season. Section-hiking the trail or traveling southbound (SOBO) bring up different issues, but as a northbound (NOBO) hiker, I must leave in April to beat the high temperatures in the Mojave, should enter the High Sierras no earlier than June 15 to give the snow enough time to melt a bit, and should reach the Northern Cascades in Washington in late August/early September to beat the autumn snowfall. As for distance–in order to hit these approximate dates, I’ll be hiking anywhere between 20-30 miles/day. Sometimes I’ll do ten. Sometimes I’ll take a zero (a day off). Sometimes I’ll go 35. Sometimes I’ll go eight miles through the snow and it’ll feel like 28. It’s hard to say from my living room couch.

Who are you going with? No one! Going solo.

Do you have all of your gear? I sure hope so! There are a couple big things I need yet (lightweight thermarest, sun umbrella for the desert [I’m not so good with the overheating], pack rain cover, and sundry apparel). In actuality, I likely have more gear than I’ll need. I’d like to keep my base weight (pack weight minus consumables) under 20lb, and will probably ditch the items I realize I don’t really need in the first couple weeks.

What’s next? I have no idea… and that’s probably my biggest anxiety–yes, more than the bears and the cougars and the rattlesnakes. I’ll be broke and homeless and unemployed. Can I camp in your backyard?

THE STUPID QUESTIONS: (and yes, there are stupid questions).

You shouldn’t go alone. Is this a question?

Are you going to carry a gun? Wait, what? I couldn’t tell you the difference between a revolver and rifle, much less fire one accurately. Also, have you ever shot–or even just picked up–a gun?! Those things weigh at least… well, a lot. Ain’t no way I’m carrying that.

bear! spotted in the Enchantments last summer.

But what about safety? Probably a more apt question for you, oh city dweller. You’re in more danger from motor vehicles and teenage girls on their smartphones running into you on the sidewalk. I like to think I have a good head on my shoulders. I use, you know, reason and logic, and I generally trust my intuition about people. What about mace? What about mace? It’s not worth the weight, and I’d probably just end up stuffing it in my pack where it’d be useless against whatever/whomever you’re imagining attacking me. And bears?! Yes! Bears! They eat berries and fish, and sometimes humans. What’s the question?

Have you head of… Wild? Yes. Please see my post about this. A Walk in the Woods? Yes. Different trail.

My cousin biked from New York to LA once. You should talk to her! Right. Ok. Thanks.

Fears & Changes & Wild

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Helen Beelen

I’ve changed.

Several days ago I was clicking through some photographs from earlier this year on my computer, and was struck by their strangeness. That girl in the pictures–standing next to my sister on the Oregon coast in May or backpacking with friends in the Alpine Lakes in June–she’s not me anymore.

Sure, our lives are always in flux. Our opinions and behaviors and speech and beliefs altering ever so slightly over the course of a year or a decade or a job or relationship. But I’ve never felt so completely removed from a life and a way of being as I have over the last six months.

I can’t say with any specificity what, exactly, brought this about. A handful of new, sometimes exciting, but often less so, new experiences perhaps. I think, though, that I can attribute a lot of this (most of it?) to the trail. Though I have yet to set out from the Mexican border, the PCT has become an intricate part of my daily life: I live frugally in order to put away a hundred here, a dime there for the five months away from civilization. I think about who I might meet or the days I won’t see anyone at all; about the nights under the stars or the deluge of rain or snow; about the days I accidentally stray off-trail and lose my way in the wilderness. I think about which items to include in my first aid kit as I push through another day of work, counting down the days till I can leave my job.

When I first contemplated thru-hiking the PCT, I was scared shitless. As writing helps me think things through, I made a list of my fears–the things I knew I must conquer before the trail, and the fears I’ll just have to face as they present themselves.

In confronting these things that frighten me, I’ve had to step intentionally out of my comfort zone. While, admittedly, some were abated with simple research, others murmur more insidiously in the lower recesses of my thoughts, simmering slowly and compounding other anxieties…. most specifically, going alone.

I’ve never shirked from doing things by myself. I’m not shy by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a strong streak of introversion and independence, and perhaps selfishly, I like to do things at my own pace.

However, enjoying my own company on a day-to-day basis is a far cry from committing to a five month solo journey through the wilderness. Although I won’t always be alone on the PCT, I’m learning to rely on my own intuition and my own resourcefulness, and I’ve overcome, I think, a lot of those fears I had at the outset. Or at least I’m able to face them with reason instead of blindness.

It is for this reason I’ve decided not to read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. You’ve probably heard of it. Woman going through a divorce and overcoming a heroin addiction hikes 1,000 miles of the PCT. A film version of the memoir staring Reese Witherspoon just hit theaters last weekend, and there’s talk of an Oscar already. When I tell people about my plans to hike the PCT I’m almost inevitably asked if I’ve read Wild. “I haven’t,” I respond, “I hadn’t even heard of it till several months ago.” “Well, you should definitely read it,” they usually say.

But for the same reasons that most people want to read the book, I don’t. I don’t need to live vicariously through Strayed’s experience. I don’t want to read about her self-discoveries or her struggles… not yet at least. I want to have my own experience, undiluted by the musings of another. I want to make my own mistakes and have my own triumphs, and maybe I’ll come to some of the same conclusions she did. But whatever they are, they’ll be mine.

As a side note, Strayed has faced a lot of derision from hikers and backpackers for various reasons, and though some are unfounded and somewhat cruel, others bring up more serious concerns. Most notably, she failed to comply with some backcountry ethics, she began her journey without any idea what she was doing and made some foolish and life-threatening decisions as a result. With the book and ensuing film’s popularity, seasoned backpackers worry the trail will be busy with inexperienced and inept hikers unready for the challenges of the trail. Be careful out there.

Experience Level: 0.5

Posted on October 12, 2014 by Helen Beelen

I didn’t grow up hiking and I was ten the first time I went camping.

The entire fifth grade at my small parochial school clambered onto the school bus, our backpacks stuffed with fleece jackets and granola bars, and with the necessary parent-signed permission slips, cheap pocket knives clipped to our belt loops.

The nights we didn’t curl up in warm cabins, we lived on the brink–constructing lean-tos from dead tree limbs and massive fern fronds, wondering if we’d make it through the night to tomorrow morning’s strawberry pop-tarts.

Olivia H. in the attractive bucket hat, my partner in crime in most elementary school shenanigans, surviving like a champ.

A year at an alternative public school for sixth graders pushed me out into the woods again–camping, tapping maple trees next to the freeway, and traipsing around marshes on private property, all culminating in the feared “survival night” on our spring camping trip. (Spoiler: We survived. Mostly on Ramen Noodles and wild leeks).

Me & Olivia posing before our big 6th grade “survival” camping trip. Also undeniable proof that adolescence is awkward.

Over the next ten years, I didn’t venture much beyond that. The closest I ever came to wilderness backpacking was on a trip to Lake Michigan’s North Manitou Island with my father. Despite the 80ºF humid afternoons, we were decked out in jeans and sweatshirts to avoid the persistent mosquitos and black flies, trying to orienteer with a tourist map and a chipped compass we found in the glove box of my dad’s work truck before hopping on the ferry.

Miner’s Rock at Michigan’s Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

My real interest in hiking and backpacking came in college in Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula where I met people whose idea of a good time was to wander along Lake Superior or through the hundreds of square miles of uninhabited land for long afternoons that stretched into evenings and eventually weekends.

I even tried ice fishing once or twice.

But if I’m being honest (and if you can’t be honest on a blog, where can you be?) I didn’t really get the bug until I moved to Washington state almost exactly a year ago. The mountains were so near and inviting and I couldn’t help myself. In June, after deciding to attempt the PCT next year with next to no experience or backpacking knowledge, I set about to learning. Now at the end of the summer, I can hike 20 miles a day without fatigue, and I’ve seen some of the more amazing things the Cascade Range has to offer.

Along the Enchanted Lakes Trail at 7800′; July 2014

I’ve read a some books, a few articles, a trail anecdote here & there, and I’ve tried to get out into the wilderness as much as possible. Am I ready? Probably not to those ultralight backpacking purists. My pack still weighs over 20lb. My orienteering skills are for shit. My understanding of weather and pressure systems is non-existent. My experience hiking long distances in snow and desert is dismal. My tracking ability is laughable.

But I can light my stove and unstuff my sleeping bag and set up my tent and read a map.

And I can walk.

And in the end, that’s all it really is.

i have walked here

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Tag Archives: wta

Frequently Asked Questions

Fears & Changes & Wild

Experience Level: 0.5