Hiking His Way Through 7 Pairs of Shoes

And to think it all began with a question about impossibility.

What was something in the world of hiking that no one would ever accomplish? What was beyond comprehension, mused Brian Robinson as he sat around with some of his buddies a few years back.

The question itself should be put in context. Robinson was a hard-core hiker who had already conquered the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches from the Mexican border to British Columbia.

He finally settled on this for his answer: hiking all three of America’s major trails--the Pacific Crest, the Continental Divide and the Appalachian Trail--in a single calendar year.

This year, Robinson accomplished his vision of impossibility, hiking all 7,371 miles in less than 11 months. After slogging through snowdrifts and freezing rain, after dodging deadly lightning on bald mountain ridges and, perhaps most of all, fighting through months of lonely solitude, Robinson became the first person to hike the Triple Crown in a single year. In the process, he hiked through 22 states, yo-yoing up and down the nation at a blistering average of 30 miles a day.

“Most people thought it was impossible,” he said in a recent interview. “There were times when I didn’t think it was fun, but there was never a time when I said I was going home.”

To put his accomplishment in perspective, only 27 other people have completed the Triple Crown in their lifetimes. In the close-knit world of long-distance hiking, no solo hiker has ever managed even two of the National Scenic Trails in a single year. The feat is roughly equivalent to walking from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.--three times.

“What he pulled off is an amazing feat,” said Joe Sobinovsky, the program director for the Sacramento-based Pacific Crest Trail Assn. “It’s hard to grasp what it must have been like.”

During his marathon hike, Robinson walked through some of the roughest and most scenic terrain the United States has to offer. He wore out seven pairs of running shoes in the process and ate his way through 6,000 calories a day--about triple the average person’s intake. When he reached a town, he would inhale pizzas and whole chickens.

He went through days when he would have to stop every few minutes to pull off ticks, and it was not unusual for him to wake up in the morning covered with ants. He walked long stretches where there was no water at all and others where it seemed the rain would never stop.

At points along the trail, he had to patch his cracked feet together with duct tape. And in the early going, he developed a form of palsy that paralyzed the right side of his face for weeks. Still, Robinson kept going, usually rising at first light and sometimes hiking by headlamp long after the sun was gone. “I’ve likened the physical toil to the ante in a poker game,” said Robinson, a computer systems engineer who became known as “Flyin’ Brian” by other hikers. “It’s by no means the hardest thing. It’s having the mental toughness to stick it out in the tough times.”

Long-Distance Runs

to Train for Trek

As he approached 40, the lanky Robinson knew that time was running out to make an assault on the Triple Crown, that eventually his body would not be up to the task. Beginning in 1997, the single UC Berkeley graduate took up a strenuous regimen of long-distance running, logging an average of 50 miles a week on dirt trails near his San Jose home, which he upped to 90 as the beginning of the trek approached.

Next, there was the matter of plotting a course, of trying to analyze what route would work. And then there was the minutia of figuring out where food drops should be mailed along the way, what equipment to bring or, more to the point, what not to bring. He enlisted his father, Roy, who had recently retired from the Southern Pacific Railroad, into the scheme.

Furniture went into storage. He quit his job of 17 years with computer manufacturer Tandem (now Compaq). And on Jan. 1, he stood at Georgia’s Mt. Springer, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, and began walking the 2,168 miles north toward Maine’s Mt. Katahdin.

The beginning did not bode well. Two inches of snow were already on the ground at the trail head. The temperature that night fell into the single digits. Yet for Robinson, it was glorious. The sun, after all, was shining.

“I’d certainly trade the future for a whole winter of days like this,” he wrote in his diary that night. As it turned out, that would not happen. Not even close.

Thru-hikers, as these long-distance trekkers are called, are a mixed lot. They range from PhDs to high school dropouts and often go by such trail names as Sunshine and Seahawk, Red Owl and Semper Fi, much the way truck drivers give themselves handles.

The only known study of them shows thru-hikers to be more introverted than not, comfortable with the solitude of the trail and themselves. And, as Robinson’s friend Sean Bourke, a.k.a. Sage, put it: “You have to really like walking.”

Of the three trails Robinson was attempting to hike, the Appalachian is generally regarded as the most sociable, in that more people attempt it and it has a longer history. The first person to thru-hike it was the legendary Earl Shaffer, who as a young war veteran did it in 1948, then hiked it again in 1998 at the age of 79.

Since then, thousands more have tried it, with only modest success. Of the 3,000 or so who attempt to thru-hike it each year, only about 300 succeed, largely because of inexperience and the fact that it can be brutally difficult, even in good weather.

Starting the Hike

in Dead of Winter

It was made even more difficult for Robinson because he began his hike in the dead of winter. But by his reckoning, one of the Big Three had to be negotiated in the winter months for him to have a chance to succeed. He chose the Appalachian because by January, the high mountain passes of the Sierra and Rockies already were covered in deep snow.

The first days were spent getting into the rhythm of the hike, becoming accustomed to his pack and new shoes. Georgia quickly became North Carolina, and then it was on to Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains. The weather remained cold and the snow deep. And it was clear from Robinson’s journal that he was at times frustrated as he slogged through 2 feet of snow in the Smokies.

“The first six miles this morning took five hours,” he wrote. “There were places where I was post-holing up over my knees!”

Still, he pushed on to Virginia. It is here, said veteran thru-hiker and author Karen Berger, that many people decide not to go on.

“They call it the Virginia Blues,” she said. “You’ve been hiking for a month, and you all of a sudden look down the road and see that you have to keep going for another 1,800 miles.”

Robinson, of course, kept going. In spots where there was no shelter, he would erect a makeshift tent using his poncho and hiking poles. That, or he’d just spread his sleeping bag out on the ground. He ate breakfast as he walked, and cooked his evening meal on a homemade stove made from cat-food cans. In Springfield, Va., he stopped to visit his brother, Greg, who immediately noticed something was wrong with Brian’s face. The diagnosis was Bell’s palsy, a normally temporary condition that was partially paralyzing the right side of his face.

He hiked on, through Maryland, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and into Vermont. And there he stopped with 575 miles to go because the snow was so deep the chest-high trail markers were obliterated. The tree branches were covered with ice that fell on him as he struggled forward.

“Once again I was wet and frustrated,” he wrote, “reduced to crawling, climbing and crashing through the trees.”

And so, he boarded a bus for New Mexico. The plan was simple enough. He would hike the length of New Mexico’s Continental Divide in April, hoping it would be relatively free of snow. Then he would do the Pacific Crest and return to finish the rest of the Continental Divide in summer. Finally, he would return to the Appalachian Trail to finish it off.

As luck would have it, there was snow in New Mexico, as well as stretches where the only water to be found was in stock tanks for cattle. He was taking on a Forrest Gump look, not having had a haircut or shave in four months. In Grants, N.M., two barbers looked him over and immediately announced they were booked for the day.

“Even when I’m clean and don’t stink, it looks like I probably do,” he wrote.

By late April, Robinson was through New Mexico and on the Pacific Crest. This was familiar territory for him, and the thousands of miles he’d walked already had conditioned him thoroughly. With a summer pack that weighed in at 12 pounds, he started putting in the miles, sometimes as many as 40 a day. The trail followed the Sierra to the Oregon border, which he reached in 57 days. He picked up the Cascades and came to the end of the trail at Manning Park Lodge, British Columbia, in a record 84 days. By July 21, Robinson had logged 4,850 miles and the rest of the Continental Divide loomed in front of him.

Having gone so far in his quest, there were still moments of doubt. Even at this late stage of the game, he found there were times of mental and physical exhaustion when he had to steel himself for what lay ahead, to convince himself that he had to keep going. He made his way through Montana and Idaho and into Wyoming, passing through grizzly and pronghorn sheep country. At Crooks Mountain, Wyo., he spotted a herd of 50 wild horses. And on Sept. 3, he hiked into Colorado, the last state he needed to add the Continental Divide to his list.

Cut Off From News

of Terrorist Attacks

As he hiked through Colorado, terrorists attacked in New York and the Pentagon. But Robinson did not hear about it until the next day when he walked out of the woods. When he came into the town of Silverton, he knew something was wrong because all the flags were at half-staff. After learning the news, he walked along for hours in shock.

On Sept. 28, he made it to the New Mexico border and boarded a Greyhound bus for a return to Vermont. Less than a month of hiking later, much of it done in drenching rains, Robinson arrived at the base of Mt. Katahdin, the last leg of his journey. The media were there, as were his brother, Greg, and his hiking buddy, Sage. When he reached the top of the mountain, Robinson wiped the rime ice off a sign that said “Northern Terminus of the Appalachian Trail,” then held up his arms in triumph. The journey was complete.

“Today I achieved my dream, something even I had doubts I could do,” he wrote. “I have done well.”

To skeptics, Robinson concedes there is no way to absolutely prove that he made the entire journey. But picking up 95 food caches and his daily diary are partial proof. The other evidence, he said, is the hikers who followed his journey on the Internet and set off to find him.

“A lot of them came unannounced, and I was always where I said I’d be,” he said.

Much has happened to Robinson since that cold day in October when he climbed the summit. He’s become a celebrity of sorts, and the phone rings often at his parents’ home here, where he is staying until he finds a new place to live.

The bushy beard is gone now, and the hair is short again. Robinson thinks that he is a changed person, someone who is more willing to reach out to people. He says he’s no longer the shy guy occupying a cubicle at a computer company. He says he now welcomes people into his world much more than he did before his very long walk in the woods.

“It was only when I spent so much time in isolation that I got hungry enough to reach out to other people,” he said.

He won’t be going back to work any time soon, taking at least three months out to write a book, which he then hopes to sell. Robinson sees his walk as a spiritual experience and sometimes feels as if he spent 10 months in a glorious outdoor cathedral.

“This experience has changed me a lot,” he said. “Because of the time I spent in my church, if you will, I’m much more comfortable with myself.”