“Have you heard any snow reports?’ PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) thru-hikers are accustomed to spending the winter before their thru-hikes obsessing over snow levels in the so-called ‘High Sierra’. For good reason. The High Sierra is the most daunting and beautiful part of the PCT. Hands down. This section both haunts and beckons. It’s all about the snow. In 2006, the year after my AT (Appalachian Trail) thru-hike, I...

Outdoor adventure narratives are a cottage industry. And for good reason. A cursory look at history shows that the deepest yearning of humans is to move. “The great affair is to move,” wrote Pascal in his Pensees’s. “Complete calm is death.”Indeed, from our earliest time as a species, humans have sought to better their plight by perpetual motion, the Bedouins, Kurds, Aborigenes, to name but a few with this...

“I would definitely go to the Kickoff.” Time after time, when I asked ex PCT-hikers for advice, that was the first thing they suggested. They were referring to the annual Pacific Crest Trail Kickoff Party held every year on the last weekend in April in Lake Morena County State Park in the southern California desert. The PCTactually begins at the Mexican border; Lake Morena State Park is 21 miles north of the border. Thru-hikers...

“You’ve never seen anything like it.”This is what I was repeatedly promised by countless people before walking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2009 and the Annapurna Circuit in 2012. I can assure you that both were correct. The Himalayas, of course, are the mecca for outdoor enthusiasts the world over. Almost all of the world’s greatest peaks (Everest, K-2) lie within this mountain range. The greatest hikers and climbers in...

Woo-hoo!  It’s opening day at Hiker Heaven, and there are two hikers in da house!  Volunteers Shelly Skye (aka Upside Down ’12) and Mike Shostak (aka Clutch ’12) have already made a big dent in preparations.  Cucumber Boy and Three Gallon (’07) donated a 27′ RV that will be used for volunteer housing.  There are so many amazing ways to “Serve The Herd!”  I am so grateful and full of anticipation for...

Some have referred to the Pacific Crest Trail as the Appalachian Trail of the West. The Appalachian Trail is America’s trail of the masses; some three to four million people per year step foot on it at any one time each and every year. The Pacific Crest Trail does not have this feeling. For starters, it begins with 703 miles in the desert. The striking thing to me about that long, and sometimes brutal, march through the...