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Day 5
After a long, long day of contouring through the dry San Felipe hills, we pull into paradise. At last, cottonwoods, grass, fresh water. And singing cowboys. No place is perfect. We wash up, sink into bliss.
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Day 4 (Pete)
There is something psychologically unsettling about trudging headstrong into 40 miles of terrain that isn’t meant to, and doesn’t, support human life. We woke up two frost cakes. A thin veneer of stiff white over our sleeping bags. Walking, and the rising sun, warmed up the land. A wrong turn that, initially, didn’t matter dropped…
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Day 4
The problems we face now bear no resemblence to any we’ve ever faced. Carrying heavy water punishes the feet, brings exhaustion. Running out of water causes not only painful thirst, but also alters perception. We have to filter 38 miles worth of water from a spring choked with poison oak. Then we misread the map,…
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Day 3
The sense of adventure really starts to set in when we pick up our first small resupply box in Laguna Mountain. A cold, windy, foggy morning. We take turns getting warm by the heat lamp in the bathroom. We know we need extra water for the near waterless Anza Borrego trail ahead, but the hills,…
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Day 2 (Pete)
I lost my phone and address list as well. We are at about 6000 ft. in a beautiful, but chilly, meadow adorned with green grass and large pines. This evening I laid back and watched clouds whip across a nearby hill and dissipate through the tree tops. It is a very peaceful life so far.…
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Day 1 (Pete)
Day 1: First day. Night rather. I have my head lamp on in order to write this. We’re camped in a small, ten by ten, clearing twenty yards from the trail. The sand is accommodating. We are hidden by a thicket of virtually impenetrable brush called “Chemise.” A mere hour after farewells at the border,…
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Day 1 – The Mexican Border
It’s like we parachuted onto a different planet. We’ve spent a long time preparing for this, but we aren’t prepared. All we can do is walk. It doesn’t take long before we have the map & compass out. We’re crawling through chemise, getting scratched and gouged, learning navigation the hard way. Finally we find the…
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Pete’s Forward
Forward: My mom and I walked into the C&R Clothiers on Clairmont Mesa Boulevard in San Diego. I was a Sophomore in College and she was down visiting. In addition to the usual meaningful conversations, walks on the beach, and graciously accepted fancy meals, she was to intervene on my naive student life in a…
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Flipbook: The PCT at 100 miles/second
Following a plan of Pete’s, each day I took a picture of him with a disposable panoramic camera. We tried to pick a spot representative of the day’s terrain, and I carefully paced out the same distance from Pete for every shot. Pete, keeping mental track of the sequence, changed his pose slightly every day.…
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My Formative Journey Begins
This 1700-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail with my good friend Peter Bergman took us through the mountains and deserts of California from the Mexican border up to Oregon. Neither of us had ever done anything like this, and the journey gave shape to much of the rest of my life. I attempted narrate…