FOOTPATHS

Walk the Best of the West
on the Pacific Crest Trail

San Felipe Hills, CA

Yosemite Valley, CA

Goat Rocks Wilderness, WA

North Cascades Wilderness, WA

Sisters Wilderness, OR

By Angela Ballard
Photography by Robert Francisco

For walkers, hikers, and backpackers there is an extraordinary place offering access to everything that is magnificent and wild in the Western United States. Whether you would like to walk for a morning, for a few days, or for an entire season, the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail (PCT) is a gateway to matchless adventures, remarkable encounters with nature, and self-discovery.

Meandering from Mexico to Canada for 2,650 miles, the PCT traverses three states, three national monuments, seven national parks, 25 national forests, and 33 federally mandated wildernesses. Along the way it ascends more than 57 major mountain passes and skirts the shores of countless lakes, tarns, ponds, creeks, and rivers. Scurrying, slithering, foraging, and hunting in the trail’s environments are a wealth of extraordinary creatures – many of which PCT walkers are privileged to glimpse — including rattlesnakes, coyotes, mountain lions, marmots, bears, mountain goats, and elk.

Located within three- to four-hour driving distance of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle, the PCT is both easily accessible and magnificently untamed. Tens of millions of people live within 100 miles of the trail. And while thousands of day hikers and backpackers visit the trail to enjoy its unique opportunities for outdoor recreation each year, most often find relative solitude and a chance to reconnect with nature and themselves — whether they are walking a few miles or the entire trail in one long, often 4- or 5-month long hike (called a “thru-hike,” a topic which will be covered in-depth in a future issue of Walk About®.)

“Every single part of the trail has its beauty,” says Melouise Pfeffer of Sebastopol, Calif., who has completed the entire trail in sections (called “section-hiking”) over the course of 15 years.

Recognizing that the crest-line of the Pacific states’ highest mountains and their surrounding environments represented a marvelous and special slice of landscape, Harvard graduate, successful oilman, and avid Boy Scout, Clinton C. Clarke dedicated his life to preserving it for future generations. His vision, first articulated in the 1930s, was a border-to-border trail along mountain ranges in California, Oregon, and Washington, “traversing the best scenic areas and maintaining and absolute wilderness character.” It would take millions of dollars, 60 years, and thousands of hours of labor, but eventually Clarke’s dream would be realized.

In 1932, Clarke founded the Pacific Crest Trail System Conference to lobby for and plan the trail. The founding members of the PCT Conference included the Boy Scouts, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and a young photographer named Ansel Adams. During the summers of 1935 through 1938, more than 40 YMCA groups, traveling in relays and carrying a logbook over 2,000 miles, hiked, explored, and evaluated a route for the trail from Mexico to Canada. Today’s PCT closely follows the route blazed during those relays in the 1930s.

On October 2, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Trails System Act, which named the Appalachian Trail and the PCT the first National Scenic Trails. The Act defined National Scenic Trails as “…extended trails so located as to provide for maximum outdoor recreation potential and for the conservation and enjoyment of the nationally significant scenic, historic, natural, or cultural qualities of the areas through which such trails may pass.” Over the next 20 years, land management agencies, the trail’s non-profit advocate the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA), and countless volunteers constructed nearly 1,000 miles of trail. Finally, in 1993, the PCT was declared complete. Much work to protect the trail, its natural environment, and the wilderness experience it affords remains to be done. For information about how you can get involved, visit www.pcta.org where you can join and donate to the Pacific Crest Trail Association and also volunteer to perform trail maintenance as part of a crew.

Whether you choose to walk among the fuchsia cacti blooms along the PCT in Southern California’s deserts, to climb over its boulder-strewn high passes in the Sierra Nevada, to cross ancient lava flows in Oregon, to clamber up the same hills as mountain goats and elk in Washington, or to take on the ultimate challenge of trekking its entire length, a PCT hike is one that you will never forget.

“As an immense whole,” says Mike Fonda of Big Bear, Calif., “the PCT represents a magnificent wilderness adventure. But a whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. And those parts, the short sections of trail in your backyard, the ones you visit time and again and get to know intimately, are where some of the most incredible memories are formed. Each moment, sunrise, sunset, wildlife sighting, and season tells and individual story.”

This article is the first in a series about the unique opportunities available on the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail for walkers, hikers, backpackers, trail runners, and volunteers of all abilities. Portions of this article have been previously published by the Pacific Crest Trail Association. Useful guidebooks and maps of the Mexico-to-Canada PCT can be purchased through the Pacific Crest Trail Association’s online store at www.pcta.org. Of particular interest to Walk About® readers may be the two-book series Day Hikes on the Pacific Crest Trail by George and Patricia Semb and Best of the PCT Washington: 55 Hikes by Dan Nelson.

Angela Ballard is Editor of the Pacific Crest Trail Association’s (PCTA) bi-monthly magazine, Pacific Crest Trail Communicator, and author of an award-winning book about the Pacific Crest Trail titled A Blistered Kind of Love, One Couple’s Trial by Trail. For more information about the Pacific Crest Trail and how you can help protect and maintain this national treasure, or to join the PCTA, visit the Association online at www.pcta.org.