Pacific Crest Trail

“I didn’t know anybody climbed trees anymore.  That takes me back.” The author of The Tree Climbers Guide,  Jack Cooke, would I imagine have been pretty smug to hear that the first comment by the first person, a fellow dog walker in his 50’s, that Austin and I bump into, say this to us, as we are climbing trees.  It’s exactly what the author was talking about.  People love climbing trees but it’s a forgotten art, even amongst Austin’s friends, not just when we become adults. Two of his friends can climb trees but the rest either don’t have the passion for it or find they can’t. As a child I’d treat it like an Olympic sport, with timed ascents and descents on the trees I knew best.  But even back then I know some tree climbing was left unfinished.  In fact often I look back on my childhood and feel some living of it was left unfinished because handheld games and computer games arrived in the mid 80’s and captured much of my time in a tense thumb bashing, eyes transfixed life of gamin

4 or 5 mile walks may not seem like much for practicing for 6 months of 15 to 20 mile days in much harsher conditions but we get flickers of what it might be like and we are never happier as a family than when we are out on our little Trails. This week we headed up the back of Dyserth, a town most famous for its waterfall.   The wood we walked through was typical of woods around this area of North Wales.   An abandoned quarry, so taken over by nature, that the only real human evidence of the industry that toiled there were half dozen sets of bore holes, each of which would have taken a strength and patience to make any miles walked feel easy in comparison. Austin dawdled behind in a world of zombies and killer robots, Samantha raced ahead in a PCT world of water shortage and bear attacks.   I walked in the middle wishing I had a long rope to pull them to me so we could walk together.   But they were happy so I have no grumbles.   At the top of Cwm Mountain, which felt like

You see I fantasise The Trail all the time.   I imagine incidences and outcomes.   We don’t last a week and head out on a vehicle led road trip and come back incredibly overweight (which is normally what happens on trips to America.   I’m going to India later this year and that will have the opposite effect.) I imagine Austin will lag behind because he’s climbing trees or moaning about us going too fast (this one is off set rather by the fact he’ll be nineteen if he does with us at all and therefore likely to have left us altogether before the first few sunsets have fallen.)   That Samantha (my wife) will be way way ahead and I will be stuck in the middle hoping I can get them together for camp and wishing I had some company. (not an altogether made up situation as it is what normally happens when we go walking!) Other times I imagine what kind of songs I should play if I come across a guitar and if I will feel good enough to play them by then. You see The Trail is not just

I have been overweight since getting married.   I’m a traditionalist, obviously, that’s what’s supposed to happen.   As Cerys of Catatonia once sang “I’d rather stay single and thin”.   Well I sacrificed a flat stomach for love!   So twelve years later that two stone, that 25 pounds, that 10 kilos I could do with losing just has to go.   Due to my strange contract at the University of Derby I had time off to try a special diet: The PCT Diet. This involves, as I can see it from all I’ve read about people on the trail, walking lots and lots each day and not getting enough to eat.   So I tried it… Day 1:   Miles 14 Day 2:   Miles 14 Day 3:   Miles 14 Day 4:   Miles 14 Day 5:   Miles 8 Day 6:   Miles 14 Day 7:   Miles 5 Day 8:   Miles 13 (ran most of this one.   I got fed up walking)   Now this is perhaps a little off the pace for a hike of over 2600 miles in a weather time limited walk of 6 months.   You need to be doing 100 miles a week which h

As part of my elongated preparation for the PCT I have decided I need to know trees.   I need to know all the fauna and wildlife but I best start with trees.   They are big and obvious.   And I’m starting with those here in the UK.   (well hoping that staring at pictures of trees in America will mean that when I arrive I can recall them perfectly, felt a little over optimistic). I’m not very good at it.   I often can’t remember a tree I named the day before.   And I don’t have much confidence when I do.   It is as if by naming a tree I am lessening it, unless that is I am getting it right.   Right and the tree takes on majesty, important because at some point for someone that kind of tree has had a role.   A thing named is a thing given substance.   Wrongly named and quite the opposite, worse than leaving it alone, unlabelled.   With that it would become a confusion, as if asking it to do things it isn’t suitable for.   A Shire horse being asked to run in the Derby. But that

Along with thousands of others my wife watched the inspiration of Cheryl Strayed’s story in the film Wild and went crazy. “I think I want to walk the PCT.” What? “On my own.” Hey? For about two weeks she was going without me. If she’d set off right away she’d have been 250 miles ahead of me and nearing Big Bear by now. But I caught her up and she said “Ok, as long as Austin comes as well.”  Austin is our eleven year old son so suddenly it was a family affair. Preparation began in earnest! Ready for next year? No I think we need longer than that. 2019? Once we had sorted through the issues of Austin being at school and Samantha waiting until she’d retired, the date got pushed back slightly to 2025. That’s 2791 days away. So we weren’t rushing into it. Saturday April 26 th 2025  This is probably a date too far into the distance for most people to comprehend.   After all fair chance a number of people reading this might be dead by then, including me, so what’s the p