Читать книгу The Pacific Crest Trail - Brian Johnson - Страница 7

PREFACE

Potest quia posse videntur – He can because he thinks he can.

When you reach Manning Park at the end of the Pacific Crest Trail you will be tired and dirty – but you will feel great. You will have had the experience of a lifetime and be a changed person. You will have an intense feeling of personal satisfaction. You will be ready for other big ventures in life. You will have learnt not to give up and you will continue to feel great.

The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) is the world’s longest continuous footpath, running from the Mexican border to the Canadian border through California, Oregon and Washington. It is estimated that about 500 hikers, known as thru’-hikers, attempt a continuous hike of the entire PCT each year; of those perhaps forty per cent succeed. A much larger number, who hike short or long sections of the PCT, are known as section-hikers. This comprehensive but concise guide is intended to provide all the information and maps thru’-hikers or section-hikers will need to hike the PCT.

Hiking 2650 miles isn’t something that just anyone can do, is it? Over the years I have become more and more astonished by the extraordinary things that people who regard themselves as ‘ordinary’ can do when they set their mind to it.

 In 2000 I met Dennis at 12,000ft, on snow-covered Muir Pass. He had had a heart and lung transplant in 1999.

 In 2002 I hiked with 63 year-old George ‘Billy Goat’ Woodard. After starting his thru’-hike he was hospitalised for two weeks with heart pains but that didn’t prevent him reaching Canada. To date he has hiked more than 20,000 miles on the PCT.

 In 2004, Mary ‘Scrambler’ Chambers, a 10-year-old girl thru’-hiked the PCT with her parents, Gary Chambers and Barbara Egbert.

 Scott, in 2006, had one objective: to lose 120lb. He’d weighed 310lb when he set off but when I met him he was already down to 230lb, after just six weeks on the trail.

 In 2006, 22-year-old Ashley ‘Ladybird’ Ravenstein was bitten on the foot by a brown recluse spider and was off-trail for a month with an injury described as resembling a gunshot wound. Nevertheless she returned to the PCT and arrived in Canada in late October.

If these people can hike the PCT, so can you.

Brian Johnson

Early morning view of Mount Thielsen from Crater Lake Rim (Section 70)