Long and Winding Road : New Segment Completes Pacific Crest Trail After 25 Years

For its 25th birthday, the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail got a new leg--its last one.

U.S. Forest Service crews recently carved out a 7.5-mile segment near Neenach, a remote community east of Gorman, completing the 2,638-mile transnational trail, scheduled to be inaugurated in a “Golden Spike” ceremony near Acton on Saturday.

While hikers have journeyed along the trail since its inception in 1968, it was not until recently that they had an unbroken path to follow.

But for Cam Lockwood, a trails coordinator for the Forest Service who has worked on 133 miles of the trail over the last 20 years and has hiked another 500 miles of it, the end is part of another beginning.

“The emphasis . . . was to get the trail completed,” said Lockwood, who used a bulldozer-like contraption to cut the final segment of the trail. Now parks officials need to compile detailed information on its twists and turns. “We literally don’t have a completed map of all the parts of this trail,” Lockwood said.

But every year a few dozen people hike the trail’s length from the Mexican border to the Canadian and pass on their knowledge of it to people such as Joel Hathhorn, who ran into Lockwood just as he was putting the finishing touches to the trail.

By Thursday, Hathhorn had carried his metallic blue ice ax through more than 500 miles of desert. It will come in handy later.

The 27-year-old civil engineer had been traveling along the edges of the Southern California desert for 27 days, going 25 miles a day, his heavy black hiking boots browned by dust.

Now, standing on the edge of the Antelope Valley, he was tired of it.

“Let’s face it, the Mojave Desert is a pain,” said the travel-worn hiker from Portland, Ore., his soiled football jersey bearing an equally grimy 1985 Orange Bowl patch. “It’s hot and dry. You get one good view, and then it’s the same view for 400 miles.”

But it’s just the beginning of a journey that is bound to become more interesting. Soon, the path will take Hathhorn to the Sierra Nevada, where he plans to climb to elevations of 13,600 feet, mostly through snow, ice and freezing creeks. Then he will need that ax.

Hathhorn asked Lockwood if a portion of the trail up north was clear. Lockwood assured him it was. Hathhorn nodded.

His travel plan is similar to those of other “through-hikers” who travel the entire trail in a single year. Other hikers, “end-to-enders,” take the trail a section at a time over several years.

Before setting off, Hathhorn bundled up about 30 parcels of provisions for a friend or relative to mail to him at various post offices along the route. Post offices will hold packages only for 30 days, so they have to be mailed in stages.

Then he packed a tent, sleeping bag, compass, clothes and mountaineering gear into a backpack, all of which weighs about 30 pounds on a good day. It will weigh more than twice that when the pack is fully loaded with food and water. There will be stretches of the trail where he will go days without a chance to load up with either one.

Then, taking a six-month sabbatical, he started in mid-spring from Campo, hoping for good weather.

With luck, he will arrive on the Canadian border in October, before it gets too cold.

“I’m an outdoor nut. I’ll do anything,” he says.

Most through-hikers travel alone because, Hathhorn said, “if you’re not married to the person you’re hiking with, it’s real tough to deal with someone for five months straight, day in, day out.”

The trail was conceived in the 1920s, said Alice Krueper, 66, the local coordinator for the volunteer Pacific Crest Trail Assn. She began hiking segments of the trail in 1986 and finally finished last September.

The first Pacific Crest Trail Conference was held in 1932 to raise interest in the idea, Krueper said, but when its founder, Clinton Clarke, died, so did the conference.

The national trail idea was resurrected in the 1960s by Warren Rogers, Krueper said, and the result was the National Trails System Act of 1968. The act tied together various trails already in existence to form the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail and also established the Appalachian Trail, which runs from Florida to Maine.

The Pacific Crest Trail is scheduled to be dedicated in Soledad Canyon, outside Acton, with the driving of a ceremonial golden spike as part of National Trails Day. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt is to be among the officials attending.

The Pacific Crest Trail is more than 500 miles longer than its East Coast cousin and crosses 19 major canyons, passes 1,000 lakes and climbs 57 mountain passes. Krueper said she prefers the Pacific Crest trail because it takes hikers from desert chaparral to the snow-topped Sierra.

Not everyone goes on foot. Take Ben York, a 68-year-old retired veterinarian from Alpine in San Diego County, who rode his trusted steed, Leverage, over the trail last year. His wife, Adeline, 62, started the trail with him, but a broken arm early on forced her to drop out and leave Ben and his horse on their own.

“There’s a tendency to think you’re closer to the Lord when you’re out there,” York said. “You have the quietness and the solitude and the awesomeness of it.

Hikers from all over the world have used the trail, and most receive help along the way. Word of where a hiker can take a shower, receive a hot meal or spend a few nights spreads quickly, and the names of Richard and Chamalene Johnson and Milt Kenney are legendary.

Kenney, the 83-year-old unofficial “Mayor of the PCT,” has greeted more than 600 hikers over the last five years as they passed through Castella, near Mt. Shasta.

The retired logger spends his winters playing pinochle with friends at the local store. But when summer rolls around, he has hikers to take care of.

It’s not hard to spot the Johnson home in Wrightwood. A sign out front reads: “All PCT hikers are welcome at the Johnsons’. Food, laundry, friendship. But no one that smells is welcome. Just kidding.”

For the first four years of living in the San Bernardino County mountain town, the Johnsons had no idea why dozens of hikers would walk by their home every spring. It wasn’t until four years ago that they realized they lived on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Since then, they have opened their door to the hikers, and now they have a toll-free telephone number for them.

“I always felt like they needed it as an emergency number in case they have trouble,” said Chamalene Johnson, 44.

Everyone is welcome, she said, and “all the hikers smell.”

Pacific Crest Trail

The Pacific Crest Trail, which was begun in 1968, was completed last week. The 2,638--mile trail goes through a variety of terrain, from the Mojave Desert to the Sierra.