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Chapter 1

The PCT, Its History and Use

During the 1800s, Americans traveling west toward the Pacific States were confronted with mountain barriers such as the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada. The idea of making a recreational trek along the crest of these ranges probably never entered anyone’s mind, and probably did not occur until the 1890s, if that. However, relatively early in the 1900s, a party did make a recreational multi-day crest traverse of a part of the Sierra Nevada. From July 8-25, 1913, Charles Booth, accompanied by his wife, Nora, and two friends, Howard Bliss and Elmer Roberts, made a pack trip from Tuolumne Meadows north to Lake Tahoe. Today’s Pacific Crest Trail closely follows much of their trek.

Conception of the PCT

The first proposal for the creation of a Pacific Crest Trail that we have been able to discover is contained in the book Pacific Crest Trails, by Joseph T. Hazard (Superior Publishing Co.). He says that in 1926 a Catherine Montgomery at the Western Washington College of Education in Bellingham suggested to him that there should be:

“A high trail winding down the heights of our western mountains with mile markers and shelter huts—like those pictures I’ll show you of the ‘Long Trail of the Appalachians’—from the Canadian Border to the Mexican Boundary Line!”

To go back six years in time, the Forest Service had by 1920 routed and posted a trail from Mt. Hood to Crater Lake in Oregon, named the Oregon Skyline Trail, and with hindsight we can say that it was the first link in the PCT. (For brevity in this book, we refer to the Pacific Crest Trail as the “PCT.” Technically the official name is the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, abbreviated as the PCNST. However, this abbreviation is more cumbersome, and essentially no one uses it.)

Hazard says that on that very night, he conveyed Miss Montgomery’s suggestion to the Mt. Baker Club of Bellingham, which was enthusiastic about it. He says that soon a number of other mountain clubs and outdoor organizations in the Pacific Northwest adopted the idea and set about promoting it. Then, in 1928, Fred W. Cleator became Supervisor of Recreation for Region 6 (Oregon and Washington) of the US Forest Service. Cleator proclaimed and began to develop the Cascade Crest Trail, a route down the spine of Washington from Canada to the Columbia River. Later, he extended the Oregon Skyline Trail at both ends so that it too traversed a whole state. In 1937 Region 6 of the Forest Service developed a design for PCT trail markers and posted them from the Canadian border to the California border.

But the Forest Service’s Region 5 (California) did not follow this lead, and it remained for a private person to provide the real spark not only for a California segment of the PCT but indeed for the PCT itself. In the early 1930s the idea of a Pacific Crest Trail entered the mind of Clinton C. Clarke of Pasadena, California, who was then chairman of the Executive Committee of the Mountain League of Los Angeles County. “In March 1932,” wrote Clarke in The Pacific Crest Trailway, he “proposed to the United States Forest and National Park services the project of a continuous wilderness trail across the United States from Canada to Mexico….The plan was to build a trail along the summit divides of the mountain ranges of these states, traversing the best scenic areas and maintaining an absolute wilderness character.”

The proposal included formation of additional Mountain Leagues in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco by representatives of youth organizations and hiking and mountaineering clubs similar to the one in Los Angeles. These Mountain Leagues would then take the lead in promoting the extension of the John Muir Trail northward and southward to complete a pathway from border to border. When it became evident that more than Mountain Leagues were needed for such a major undertaking, Clarke took the lead in forming the Pacific Crest Trail System Conference, with representatives from the three Pacific Coast states. He served as its President for 25 years.

As early as January 1935 Clarke published a handbook-guide to the PCT giving the route in rather sketchy terms (“the Trail goes east of Heart Lake, then south across granite fields to the junction of Piute and Evolution Creeks”—this covers about nine miles).

In the summer of 1935—and again the next three summers—groups of boys under the sponsorship of the YMCA explored the PCT route in relays, proceeding from Mexico on June 15, 1935, to Canada on August 12, 1938. This exploration was under the guidance of a YMCA secretary, Warren L. Rogers, who served as Executive Secretary of the Pacific Crest Trail System Conference from 1932 until 1957, when Clarke died (at age 84), and the conference disappeared. (Rogers was an enthusiastic hiker—and mountaineer—which is remarkable considering that he limped because as a child he had been stricken with polio.) On his own, Rogers more or less kept the idea of the PCT alive until hiking and trails were receiving national attention in the Sixties. He stayed active in promoting the trail and its joys almost to the time of his death in 1992 (at age 83).

National Trail System

In 1965 the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, a federal agency, appointed a commission to make a nationwide trails study. The commission, noting that walking for pleasure was second only to driving for pleasure as the most popular recreation in America, recommended establishing a national system of trails of two kinds—long National Scenic Trails in the hinterlands and shorter National Recreation Trails in and near metropolitan areas. The commission recommended that Congress establish four Scenic Trails—the already existing Appalachian Trail, the partly existing Pacific Crest Trail, a Potomac Heritage Trail and a Continental Divide Trail. Congress responded by passing, in 1968, the National Trails System Act, which set the framework for a system of trails and specifically made the Appalachian and the Pacific Crest trails the first two National Scenic trails.

The Proposed Route

Meanwhile, in California, the Forest Service in 1965 had held a series of meetings about a route for the PCT in the state. These meetings involved people from the Forest Service, the Park Service, the State Division of Parks and Beaches, and other government bodies charged with responsibility over areas where the trail might go. These people decided that so much time had elapsed since Clarke had drawn his route that they should essentially start all over. Of course, it was pretty obvious that segments like the John Muir Trail would not be overlooked in choosing a new route through California. By the end of 1965 a proposed route had been drawn onto maps. (We don’t say “mapped,” for that would imply that someone actually had covered the route in the field.)

When Congress, in the 1968 law, created a citizens Advisory Council for the PCT, it was the route devised in 1965 which the Forest Service presented to the council as a “first draft” of a final PCT route. This body of citizens was to decide all the details of the final route; the Forest Service said it would adopt whatever the citizens wanted. The Advisory Council was also to concern itself with standards for the physical nature of the trail, markers to be erected along the trail, and the administration of the trail and its use.

In 1972 the Advisory Council agreed upon a route, and the Forest Service put it onto maps for internal use. Since much of the agreed-upon route was cross-country, these maps were sent to the various national forests along the route, for them to mark a temporary route in the places where no trail existed along the final PCT route. This they did—but not always after field work. The result was that the maps made available to the public in June 1972 showing the final proposed route and the temporary detours did not correspond to what was on the ground in many places. A common flaw was that the Forest Service showed a temporary or permanent PCT segment following a trail taken from a pre-existing Forest Service map, when in fact there was no trail where it was shown on that map in the first place.

Perfect or not, the final proposed route was sent to Washington for publication in the Federal Register, the next step toward its becoming official. A verbal description of the route was also published in the Federal Register on January 30, 1973. But the material in the register did not give a precise route which could be unambiguously followed; it was only a general route, and the details in many places remained to be settled.

Private Property Glitches

As construction on PCT trail segments began, many hikers were optimistic that the entire trail could be completed within a decade. Perhaps it could have, if it weren’t for private property located along the proposed route. While some owners readily allowed rights-of-way, many others did not, at least initially, and years of negotiations passed before some rights were finally secured. While negotiations were in progress, the Forest Service sometimes built new trail segments on both sides of a parcel of private land, expecting to extend a trail segment through it soon after. At times this approach backfired, such as in the northern Sierra Nevada in the Gibraltar environs (Map M3 in this book). The owners of some property never gave up a right-of-way, and so a new stretch of trail on Gibraltar’s south slopes was abandoned for a snowier, costlier stretch on its north slopes, completed in fall 1985. But at least the stretch was built, which was not true for a short stretch northwest of Sierra Buttes (Map M1, Section 7), where the PCT route is a road.

PCT logo

The major obstacle to the trail’s completion had been the mammoth Tejon Ranch, which began in Civil War days as a sheep ranch, then later became a cattle ranch, and in 1936 became a public corporation that diversified its land use and increased its acreage. This “ranch,” about the size of Sequoia National Park, straddles most of the Tehachapi Mountains. An agreement between the ranch’s owners and government representatives finally was reached, and in 1993 this section of the PCT was completed. However, rather than traversing the length of the Tehachapi Mountains as intended by Congress, the PCT for the most part follows miles of roads along the west side of desert-like Antelope Valley before ascending to the edge of ranch property in the north part of the range. The trail is described in Pacific Crest Trail: Southern California, this book’s companion volume

Finally, there is another stretch in northern California, (Section Q and the start of Section R), where a trail will not replace existing roads. Private property was part of the problem, but also building a horse bridge across the Klamath River proved economically unfeasible. One still treads 7.3 miles along roads, which is a blessing in disguise, for if the trail and bridge had been built, you would have bypassed Seiad Valley, a very important resupply point.

“Golden Spike” Dedication

The Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail officially was dedicated on Nationals Trails Day, June 5, 1993, a lengthy 25 years after Congress passed the National Trails System Act that had mandated it. The dedication was touted as the “Golden Spike” Completion Ceremony, in which a “golden” spike was driven into the trail, a reenactment of the 1869 ceremony at Promontory Point, near Ogden, Utah, where the converging Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroad companies joined to complete the transcontinental railroad. For the PCT, there were no competing trail crews, and the completion site should have been in the Tehachapi Mountains. However, the public was (and is) not welcome on the Tejon Ranch, and since that area is out of the way, a PCT site closer to metropolitan southern California was chosen: a flat at the mouth of a small valley on the north side of Soledad Canyon (Map D13 Pacific Crest Trail: Southern California). Protected under a canopy to shelter them from the unseasonably cold, windy, drizzly weather, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and others spoke to an unsheltered audience of about 300 hearty souls (and a dozen or so others protesting various unrelated environmental issues). The trail was proclaimed to be 2638 miles long officially, though the accuracy of this mileage may be questionable, since this number existed as early as 1990, before the completion of several stretches in southern California and in the southern Sierra Nevada, and before the major relocation of the Hat Creek Rim stretch north of Lassen Volcanic National Park. Future relocations are likely, and so the authors of the Pacific Crest Trail books, for better or for worse, have used mileages that they have measured either directly along the trail or indirectly along the route they accurately drew on topographic maps.

Some Who Walked and Rode

No doubt hikers did parts of the Pacific Crest Trail in the 19th Century—though that name for it didn’t exist. It may be that someone walked along the crest from Mexico to Canada or vice versa many years ago. But the first person to claim he did the whole route in one continuous journey—in 1970—was Eric Ryback, in The High Adventure of Eric Ryback. Actually, he accepted rides for some of the approximately 2500-mile route, and so his claim was not quite true. Nevertheless, he hiked most of the route, which was quite an accomplishment for a 130-pound 18-year-old, hiking solo in the more difficult north-to-south direction sans guidebook or detailed maps. His 1971 book focused attention on the PCT, and other people began to plan end-to-end treks. Actually, the first documented hiker to complete the entire three-state trek was Martin Papendick (1922-2000), who did so way back in 1952 when a tri-state trail was still a dream.

As mentioned earlier, in June 1972 the Forest Service maps of the PCT route became available to the public, and the race was on. The first person to hike this entire route, as it then existed, was Richard Watson, who finished it on September 1, 1972. No one knew of Papendick, so for years Watson was considered the first through-hiker, as backpackers who did the trail in one continuous, multi-month effort would come to be called. Barely behind him, finishing four days later, were Wayne Martin, Dave Odell, Toby Heaton, Bill Goddard and Butch Ferrand. Very soon after them, Henry Wilds went from Mexico to Canada solo. In 1972 Jeff Smukler did the PCT with Mary Carstens, who became the first woman to make it. The next year, Gregg Eames and Ben Schifrin set out to follow the official route as closely as possible, no matter whether trail or cross country. Schifrin had to drop out with a broken foot at Odell Lake, Oregon (he finished the route the next year), but Eames got to Canada, and is probably the first person to have walked the official route almost without deviation.

Road 38N10 forces the PCT onto a narrow rim, Section O

In 1975, at least 27 people completed the PCT, according to Chuck Long, who was one of them and who put together a book of various trekkers’ experiences. Perhaps as many as 200–300 hikers started the trail that year, intending to do it all. In 1976, one who made it all the way was Teddy Boston, the first woman to solo the trail, so far as we know. Teddy, then a 49-year-old mother of four, like Eric, made the trek the hard way, north to south.

Fascination with the trail steadily dropped, so that by the late 1980s perhaps only a dozen or so through-hikers completed the entire trail in a given year. However, as completion of the trail approached, interest in it waxed, and some notable hikes were done. Perhaps some day a trekker’s PCT anthology will be written, and in it many can be given due credit for their accomplishments. However, in a trail guide, space is limited, so we will mention only a (subjectively) select few who set “higher” goals. In the past we recommended that the through-hiker allow 5–6 months for the entire PCT. No more, thanks to ultralight backpacking espoused by Ray and Jenny Jardine. In 1991 this couple completed the entire trail (their second through-hike) in only three months and three weeks, and Ray subsequently wrote a how-to book (see the next chapter) based on this accomplishment. This was comparable to the length of time taken by Bob Holtel (in his mid-50s), who over the summers of 1985, ’86, and ’87 ran the PCT at the pace of a marathon a day, and he also wrote a book about it (see the next chapter).

A few through-hikers not only did the PCT, but also did the two other major north–south national scenic trails, the CDT (Continental Divide Trail) and the AT (Appalachian Trail). The first person to have accomplished this task may have been Jim Podlesay, hiking the AT in 1973, the PCT in 1975, and the CDT in 1979. Back in 1975 many new stretches of the PCT had yet to be built, and in 1979 the CDT’s route was still largely a matter of whatever you chose it to be. By 1980 the PCT was essentially complete, except for gaps between the Mexican border and the southern Sierra and the initial southern Washington stretch, which would become an annoying, out-of-the-way ascent and descent to the level, direct, temporary route. And with the PCT mostly complete, the first person who hiked it plus the AT and CDT may have been Lawrence Budd, who did all three in the late 1980s. Starting earlier but finishing later was Steve Queen, who hiked the PCT in 1981, the AT in 1983, and the CDT in 1991. The first woman may have been Alice Gmuer, who hiked the PCT in 1987 and ’88, the AT in 1990, and the CDT in 1993. Close behind was Brice Hammack, who over eight summers completed the last of the three trails in 1994—at a very respectable age of 74.

While there have been hundreds of successful through-hikers on the PCT, very few equestrians have matched this feat. Perhaps the first equestrians to do the trail were Barry Murray and his family, who rode it in two summers in the early 1970s. Much later, in 1988, Jim McCrea became the first “through-equestrian,” completing the entire trail in just under five months. Very few through-hikers actually do every foot of the trail, and for through-equestrians this feat so far has proved to be unfeasible, due to icy snowfields impassable to stock.