Wilderness Backpacking Trails

This is one of my Trail Tales.  Here are entry 1, entry 2, entry 3 and entry 4.

We left Connecticut with sixteen days available to make it back in time for the spring semester.  We took three days to hitch to Sacramento from Phoenix, not bad for three guys toting along a whole bunch of stuff, but we were getting short on time.  The I-5 ramp in downtown Sacramento at midday proved to be a tough place to hitch.  Maybe our vaudeville routine was loosing its pizzazz, or maybe not venturing forth beyond that white line on the entrance ramp dampened our effectiveness.  Zwiebel decided to track down a phone directory to locate transport agencies in the area.  I had visions of him driving back with a car needing to be delivered to Salt Lake City.  During his momentary absence a car finally pulled over, another VW Beetle.

We quickly explained to the red-headed teenager that popped out that there were actually three of us.  This did not seem to faze him; in fact, he was apologetic about going only a few exits north.  Having to hitch out of the suburbs of Sacramento did not bode well, but we were desperate.  For the third time during our journey we crammed three backpacks, three sleeping bags, two grocery bags full of food, one two-burner Coleman stove and one can of Coleman fuel into a Beetle.  To close the hood the driver had to climb up and jump on it.

In a short period of time we found out a lot about each other.  He found out that we were going up to Seattle to look for logging jobs.  We found out that he was about to go into the service in a few days and had some time to kill.  As the only person in the car who had been to Seattle before, I began to bill it up as a great place to visit, with much the same zeal and ulterior motive as a travel agent.  This customer proved to be an easy sell.

“Hey, do you guys mind if I come along?” he asked.

We, of course, were enthusiastically receptive about the idea.

“Do you mind if I bring a friend along?” he pushed further.

Well, what were we going to say?  “No!  Bring your car but leave your friend home?”

Our host went to pick up his friend and then to his house where he dropped off a note for his Mom that said something to the effect of:  “I’m going to Seattle for a couple days.  I’ll call you tonight.”  Meanwhile, the other four of us went about the chore of finding the hidden crannies where two more sleeping bags and another body could be crammed into a VW Beetle.  A younger sister looked out the window with a puzzled expression as we drove off.

I did much of the driving, with the excuse of being the one most familiar with Washington, but with the real motivation of spending the most time in the least cramped seat.  We encountered blizzard conditions at the higher elevations of Oregon, which meant near zero visibility, but the sheer weight in the Beetle kept us on the road nicely.  I was the least troubled person in the car over the fact that I could not see.

We made one pit stop in the state to refuel.  At the station Savitt and I went into the restroom, where I saw a condom machine for the first time.  The novelty alone made me want to buy one.

“What are you going to do with a condom?”  Savitt responded sarcastically.

I resented the implications behind his remark, but had no legitimate answer.  We left the condoms behind.

We arrived at my brother’s house in Olympia, Washington early the next morning. Everyone had become so tired by the drive that we all spread our sleeping bags out on the living room floor and crashed.  In the afternoon we headed up to Seattle to give our benefactors the tour for which they made the trip.  By the time we returned to my brother’s house again “Red” and his friend needed to return right away to Sacramento.  They made the fifteen hundred mile round trip for a few hours of sightseeing:  in a customary Seattle drizzle.

What comes around goes around they say, and taking advantage of two teenagers wanting to see Seattle would come back to haunt me.

Technorati Tags: Pacific Crest Trail, Trail Tales

The group was in pretty good shape by the time we left Mt. Mansfield behind.

View south towards Camels Hump

Playing cards at Gorham Lodge

Inclement weather on top of Camels Hump

Green Mountains south of Camels Hump

Sunrise at Appalachian Gap

Technorati Tags: Nature Photography, TRAIL 2000

This is one of my Trail Tales.  Here are entry 1, entry 2, and entry 3.

Our first ride that morning, the fifth one of our journey to Seattle, was a young man commuting to work.  Evidently his job did not involve heavy machinery because the smell of reefer exited the car as soon as we opened the doors.  Along the short ride he offered us a small bag of marijuana.  We refused at first but when he insisted we took the bag just to save the argument.

He dropped us off at another seedy portion of Los Angeles.  The entrance ramp was heavily littered.  The first thing we did was place the marijuana bag into an empty milk carton and then set up for our hitching routine.  Then we set up on the apron for hitching.

By this time we had our routine down.  Zwiebel rested by our mound of three backpacks, three sleeping bags, two grocery bags full of food, one suitcase, one two-burner Coleman stove, and one can of Coleman fuel while Savitt and I put together an act to attract the interests and charity of motorists.  The act included some Vaudeville-style dancing that at least solicited smiles, if not rides.

Thanks to a light regulating traffic at the foot of the ramp, we coincided our acts so as to play to an immobile audience, which allowed us full use of the ramp to put on a good show.  When a spurt of traffic came up the ramp we would terminate the act and look imploringly from the apron.  Savitt and I were doing one such act, with Zwiebel dozing by the mound, when an LAPD car arrived at the traffic light.  We continued on with the comforting knowledge that hitching was legal on the entrance ramps to Interstate highways in California.

When the light turned we stepped onto the apron just as the police cruiser screeched away from the light and screeched to a halt right in front of us.  Two police men bolted out of the cruiser with clubs in hands and directed Savitt and I to “spread ‘em” while leaning on the hood of their car.  This was sufficient enough activity to arouse Zwiebel from his nap and, with a puzzled look on his face, decided he better come over to join us.

“We don’t want you!” an officer snapped, and Zwiebel quickly sat back down again.

The other officer had by this time got on the radio to determine which states had Wanted posters up for the nefarious team of Savitt and I.  Not having the slightest idea what dastardly deed we had committed I finally asked, with quavering voice:

“What did we do wrong, sir?”

“You stepped over the white line!”  the officer barked back as he rummaged through our wallets.

Luckily, this occurred about fifteen years before the infamous Rodney King incident, or I might have soiled my undergarment.  My concerns were great enough as I imagined the officers searching through our three backpacks, three sleeping bags, two grocery bags full of food, one suitcase, one two-burner Coleman stove,  and our Coleman fuel, and then searching through all the litter on the apron until they came upon the small bag of marijuana stuffed inside a milk carton.

What prevented a long ordeal was the stealthy movements of a young, long-haired adult male not more than a hundred feet away.  Either this character was more stoned than our last ride, or he definitely had something to hide and, in his peculiar slithering movements from telephone pole to telephone pole, attracted plenty of attention.  The cops quickly wrote up a warning for us, which they then tossed among all the other litter on the apron instead of handing over.  It landed not far from the milk carton with the stashed marijuana.  They gave us some right neighborly advice before hopping back in their cruiser to track down their new target.

“You better watch yourselves, people around here aren’t friendly.”

Our next ride was a college student going to Sacramento by way of Berkeley.  He had a station wagon, which was a nice change.  He offered to give us a ride on the conditions that:  1) we help pay for gas; and 2) we helped him with moving some stuff.  We were more than glad to do this, of course, for a ride that brought us all the way from Los Angeles to Sacramento.  However, we could not help but observe the irony that we had gone from being paid to travel from Connecticut to Phoenix, to now paying for rides.  Good thing that our next ride would prove to be our best.

Technorati Tags: Trail Tales

This is one of my Trail Tales.  Here are entry 1 and entry 2.

We presented quite a sight with the three of us standing at the curb of the road with three backpacks, three sleeping bags, two grocery bags full of food, one suitcase, one two-burner Coleman stove, and one can of Coleman fuel.  That we got any rides at all attests to the magnificent goodwill of others, and to our ability to appear so foolish that no one suspected we were dangerous.

We were picked up late afternoon by a military man driving a white station wagon.  He drove through the night on Interstate 10, dropping us off in San Bernandino in the wee hours.  Hitchhiking to Seattle looked like it was going to be a breeze.  We rolled out our sleeping bags behind a dumpster and slept until first light.

After breakfast at a diner we called transport car agencies in the area.  With San Bernandino, Pasadena and Los Angeles all being good-sized cities we thought we finally had a chance, but no go.  We did find out that a mobile home was being delivered to a dealer in Los Angeles.  Since hitching on Interstate 5 in Los Angeles was where we wanted to be we climbed aboard the “shipment” and made ourselves at home playing cards around a table.  Yes, this hitching gig was working out well.

We were dropped off on a limited access highway that mainly served commuter traffic.  That was the point where reality set in.  We set up on the curb of a ramp with our three backpacks, three sleeping bags, two grocery bags full of food, one suitcase, one two-burner Coleman stove, and one can of Coleman fuel.  We worked shifts of two people with thumbs out, one person resting, thinking that the extra person provided more opportunities for showmanship.  We could have had all the rockettes out there with us and it would not have attracted the attention of commuters buzzing by to get home.

Around midnight, as a steady drizzle started to dampen our spirits further, a commuter coming home from the second shift took pity on us.  In fact, he offered for us to have supper and spend the night with him, which we readily accepted.  There was one catch:  we needed to pack our three backpacks, three sleeping bags, two grocery bags full of food, one suitcase, one two-burner Coleman stove, and one can of Coleman fuel into the second VW Beetle of our journey, this time with a fourth person added.

The man lived in a depressed section of Los Angeles.  His roommates had a big batch of delicious chili prepared that they shared with us and some visiting teenagers.  After the company left we sacked out in the living room, a distinct improvement from sleeping on pavement behind a dumpster.

The next morning we encountered more goodwill in a surprising way.  As we walked in the morning to the nearest Interstate 5 entrance ramp, two teenage girls who had shared chili with us the evening for spotted and stopped us.

“Hitching around here could be dangerous,” one concerned girl warned us.

“We’ll be OK,” I assured them, “There’s safety in numbers (even if our numbers get us stuck there for eternity, I added in my thoughts).”

“I don’t know,” the girl said doubtfully.  “Look, I just got this for Christmas, you guys probably need it more than me.”

She whipped out a huge knife with that pronouncement, one intended to gut something of flesh and bones.  The disconnect of a teenage girl selflessly sacrificing a Christmas gift best appreciated by Jack the Ripper left us a bit speechless.  Perhaps this was a rough neighborhood indeed.  In any case, we did not think such contraband should be added to our formidable load and we declined the gracious offer.  We would be offered additional contraband that morning that almost put an abrupt end to our journey.

Technorati Tags: Pacific Crest Trail, Trail Tales

I’m calling the Smuggler’s Notch/Mt. Mansfield area as the second leg of our TRAIL adventure, which brought together four youths with three young adults (plus me) on a five week journey from Canada to Long Island Sound.

View from inside Whiteface Shelter, north of Smuggler's Notch

View of Smuggler's Notch and Mansfield

Ascending "The Chin" of Mt. Mansfield

Descending "The Forehead" of Mt. Mansfield

The northern Long Trail is one of the most rugged stretches in the country

Green Mountain greenery on our way towards Camels Hump

Technorati Tags: Nature Photography, TRAIL 2000

This is one of my Trail Tales.  Here is entry 1.

When the two Daves picked me up early the next morning, I immediately noted what Zwiebel defined as light packing.  Besides a sleeping bag and backpack, two necessities brought by each of us, Zwiebel additionally had loaded into the Beetle an extra suitcase, two full grocery bags of food, a two-burner Coleman stove, and Coleman fuel.  Amazingly, we were able to squeeze a good amount of the stuff into the trunk of the Beetle (recall that these cars have their trunks in the front and engines in the rear).  The food bags were kept on the back seat and the sleeping bags were unraveled to fill in the available space from about the chest down.

The roomiest seat was the driver’s and I angled to drive as much as possible.  Along the way I managed several firsts.  I got my first speeding ticket in Pennsylvania; I drafted my first trucks through Virginia; and I managed my first dent.  Actually, none of us were aware when the dent happened, though we suspected it was at a gas station in Tennessee during my turn at driving.

Technically, I drove the car illegally.  Since only the two Daves had picked up the vehicle only their names were on the official contract.  This presented an annoying problem when we reached the border of New Mexico.  We checked into a border station (state border, not country) whose attendants insisted upon examining our transport vehicle and papers.  These folks could count up to three and, having done that, informed us that one person, namely me, could no longer ride in the car.

The wise thing to do at that point would have been for me to simply walk out of sight across the border and then be picked up, but such wisdom would have been out of character with the overall folly of our mission.  Instead, I hitchhiked while the two Daves kept an eye on me from the car.

My first and only ride was with a laborer who migrated between jobs at oil fields in Texas and California.  His beat-up Mustang, with faded red paint blending in with extensive rust, rattled under the hood.  Only a few miles down the road he stopped to check out the noises.  The two Daves pulled over about fifty feet behind us.  Through the windshield I could see the laborer make a questioning glance at my comrades behind me.

We proceeded down the road a few more miles before the rattle became much worse.  We pulled over and this time both of us got out to look under the hood.  Once again the Beetle pulled over fifty feet behind us.  Both Daves waved at me and I instinctively waved back.  A concerned look came over the laborer as he looked back and forth between the two men in the Beetle and myself.

“Who are those guys?” he nervously asked.

“They’re my friends,” I honestly replied.

The laborer suddenly became much less interested in his car than in the open desert landscape surrounding us, undoubtedly noting the difficulty of any escape route through the tumbleweeds.  I did some fast talking to explain why a total stranger hitching a ride with him should have friends tailing behind.  If my explanation did not satisfy him, he at least figured he had no other choice and went along with my request to be dropped off at the next road junction.

As soon as we entered Phoenix we hunted down a small repair shop to hammer out the small dent.  We were charged something like fifteen bucks.  We then delivered the car to a nursing student who had flown out for school.  Zwiebel was the kind of guy who could start up a conversation and make friends with anyone, which is precisely what he did with nursing student.  Before long she divulged her life’s story and problems to him.  She then brought us all to a very nice park south of the Phoenix area, I suspect with the intention of enticing Zwiebel to stay behind.

While Zwiebel was making nice with our host Savitt and I tried to locate a transport car going from Phoenix to Seattle.  No luck.   The great northwest appeared to be the only region in the country back then to which everyone preferred driving their own cars there themselves.  Our host dropped us off on an entrance ramp to Interstate 10; we now would be making our way to Seattle via Los Angeles and our outstretched thumbs.

Technorati Tags: Pacific Crest Trail, Trail Tales

I’m going backwards in time with these photo journeys, at least for now.  The next series will be TRAIL Journey 2000 – a five week wilderness journey from the Canadian border to Long Island Sound.  First by hiking the Long Trail, then the Appalachian Trail, then canoeing the Housatonic River.  TRAIL was a nonprofit organization I founded and directed for two years that served as a wilderness Big Brother program, pairing up youths from single parent homes with young adults (and me).  These pictures were taken with my first digital camera and are not as good quality as the Wonderland Trail photos.

Last minute laundry in Montpelier, VT. Four of the kids in the picture are family joining Cindy on support.

Final shakedown near the Canadian border.

The four youths at the marker for the Long Trail.

Thru-hikers call this state Vermuck

The Long Trail goes over Jay Peak

This is one way to keep out the bugs.

Technorati Tags: Nature Photography, TRAIL 2000

“Phoenix!  You gotta be kidding!”  I yelled into the telephone receiver.

“Nope,”  Zwiebel replied, “We’re down in New York picking the car up now.”

“But Phoenix is not that much closer to Seattle than we are!”  I shouted.  “We can’t drive a transport car to Phoenix!”

“Too late, we already signed up for it.  We’ll be by to pick you up in a few hours.”  I knew, by the eagerness in Zwiebel’s voice, that I might as well pull raw meat away from a hyena as dissuade him from going to Seattle by way of Phoenix.  The crazy idea of Savitt and I going out there to look for logging jobs during our winter break had been mine, Zwiebel was not even interested in looking for such a job, but once we included him in our plans his natural zeal for far-fetched enterprises took over.

The entire week between Christmas and New Years we called transport agencies in the Hartford, Boston, and New York areas, searching for a car that needed transport to anywhere in the northwest region of the country.  When Zwiebel asked hopefully if we would settle for St. Louis I called the search off, with a hint of relief that I was perhaps coming to my senses in spite of myself.  However, Zwiebel would not be deterred, which perhaps explains why I was not consulted about a transport car to Phoenix until after an official agreement had been struck.

“What kind of car is it?”  I asked with resignation.

“Oh, yeah, glad you asked,” Zwiebel said quickly, “You better pack light; we’re going in a VW Beetle.”

I was not thrilled about three people riding a couple thousand miles in a Beetle, with Savitt at 6’3”, and with the gear necessary for a three-week trip to Seattle and back (by way of Phoenix!).  Yet, the original idea to look for logging jobs had been mine, and my traveling companions would be two of the best buddies one can have on an ill-advised adventure.

The three of us were part of a group that thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 1975.  An instant chemistry developed between Savitt and I since the very first practice hike.  Savitt was my nickname for Dave Beffa-Negrini, originating from our passion for playing cards and a jeweler who coined himself “The King of Diamonds.”  Our natural abilities for long-distance hiking, our shared passion for games and puzzles, and our ability not to take ourselves or our tribulations too seriously made the challenges we faced along the trail enjoyable.

Zwiebel was the nickname given Dave Hall during the 1975 hike, partly to distinguish him from Savitt and yet another Dave in the group.  He was not an original member, yet began the thru-hike the same day as the group and had stuck pretty much to our schedule, in large part due to our support vehicle and to the charms of Katie Brown.  I  proposed to the group that we adopt him, which in essence meant joining us in a circle at occasional resupply points and reaffirming our commitment to help each member of the circle hike the whole trail.  Unanimous consent followed.  I am not sure whether he now blames or credits me with what followed, but we have remained good friends.

My relationship with these two, then and always, reminds me of a quote from Melville:

As for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by an unseen and unaccountable old joker . . .

I knew that the three of us would meet any ill-conceived or ill-fated endeavor good-naturedly.  With this certain knowledge, I consented on going to Seattle (by way of Phoenix!); thus began a true adventure in its own right which, consequently, ultimately gave birth to the adventure of hiking the 1977 Pacific Crest Trail.

Technorati Tags: Pacific Crest Trail, Trail Tales