Author: Andrew Carter

c) Andrew Carter, 2022

I’m in Oregon now. My foot is fine. I started my northbound hike to the Canadian border on Wednesday 8/17 at Timberline Lodge on the slopes of Mt. Hood. I’m at Cascade Locks right now (Saturday 8/20) on the Columbia River. Here are some photos of what I’ve seen.

c) Andrew Carter, 2022

The is the famous Tunnel Falls on the Eagle Creek Trail near Cascade Locks, OR. It’s not actually on the PCT, but definitely worth the detour.

c) Andrew Carter, 2022

Ramona Falls, near Mt. Hood, OR

Tunnel Falls, near Cascade Locks, OR

c) Andrew Carter, 2022

Even an experienced hiker can have a hike turn out poorly. Sometimes that’s a function of happenstance. Sometimes it’s a function of poor decisions. (Yes, even experienced hikers make poor decisions.) Usually, it’s a combination of both.

I recently tried to hike from Walker Pass east of Bakersfield to Paradise Valley in Kings Canyon National Park. That’s a distance of 163 miles. This is the last California section of the PCT I have to complete in my “thru in two” attempt to hike the entire PCT in 2021 and 2022. I had to skip this section last year due to terrible smoke from fires in Sequoia National Park.

I only made it as far as Trail Pass near Lone Pine. 93 miles. Why? Look at the photo.

In 60 years of hiking, this is by far the worst blister I have ever experienced. Nothing else comes close.

How did I get it? New shoes. Inadequate cushioning in those new shoes. The half-inch lift I wear in my right shoe because my right leg is one-half inch shorter than my left leg. The lift causes a subtle shift forward in my footstrike, so there is more impact on the ball of my right foot than would normally occur. (I didn’t get a blister on my left foot.) Wet socks from thunderstorms two days in a row. Walking too far, 18-19 miles, that second day with rain.

I had never before thought about the impact of my shoe lift. But it’s true that at the start of many hikes I will get a much smaller blister on my right foot before it has a chance to toughen up. A blister of perhaps 1 inch by 1/2 inch. The blister above is 1-1/4 inches by 2 inches. I don’t tend to get blisters on my left foot.

And no, I’m not going to not use the lift. The back issues I suffered before using a lift were terrible.

Here’s the hiker error in all of this.

First, I keep trying to find the perfect shoe (meaning, lighter weight) instead of sticking with my trusty Merrell Ventilators. That search has led to bad things before — pinched toes once, poor lateral support another time.

Second, I shouldn’t have hiked so far that second day. But there were long distances between water sources, and I like to camp where there is water.

Third, I should have been paying closer attention to my feet. The blister had begun to appear the day before. It hurt some. I put Moleskin on it. Then I didn’t think about it. Big mistake.

Blisters are to some extent a fact of life when hiking, particularly at the beginning of a hike. When I took my shoes and socks off at the end of the next day, I was blown away to see what you see above.

Fourth, I kept walking despite the huge blister. I should have bailed immediately. Instead I walked four more days. To a minor extent that’s a function of how remote the Sierra are and how few the exit points. But mostly it was a function of my driven nature. Persist. Never say die. The result? Sometimes, that will kill you.

Understandably, a hike is no fun when every step carries with it pain. Not crazy debilitating pain. Just persistent ouch, ouch, ouch pain.

But there are other reasons this hike wasn’t that much fun.

At the beginning it was terribly hot, into the mid-90’s. Walker Pass is still the California desert. The Sierra don’t truly begin until Kennedy Meadows, a full three days north. On my second day of hiking, it was so hot I took a 4-hour siesta in the shade from 12 noon to 4:00 pm.

And when it wasn’t hot, it was raining. On parts of three different days I had to hike through the rain. I prefer rain over heat, but I prefer a nice dry cool day over both.

Because this is August of a drought year, water sources were few and far between on my hike which means I had to carry extra water. Usually, I will leave a water source with two liters of water in my pack. That’s 4.4 pounds of water. On this hike, I was usually leaving a water source with four liters of water. That’s 8.8 pounds of water. You feel that extra weight.

I misjudged how much food to carry. I carried too much. I’ve gotten so focused on maintaining my weight while hiking that I forgot I simply don’t have enough appetite at the beginning of a hike to eat all that I should. I have to use up some of my fat reserves before that crazy hiker hunger kicks in.

An add-on to this is that I forgot that one of the effects of hiking at altitude is that your appetite is suppressed. Here’s an explanation from highaltitudehealth.com:

“Leptin is a hormone produced by the body that results in suppression of hunger. When our bodies secrete more leptin our hunger decreases. Multiple studies have shown that when people not acclimated to altitude are brought to higher elevation, leptin increases and appetite decreases.”

Carrying too much food means you are carrying too much weight. When I’m in the middle of a hike, I go through two pounds of food a day. On this hike, I had trouble consuming 1.5 pounds of food a day. Coming out of Kennedy Meadows, I was carrying seven days worth of food. Not consuming 1/2 pound of food per day meant I was carrying 3.5 pounds of excess weight.

On top of this, hikers are required to carry a bear canister to store their food when hiking in the Sierra. My canister, which is the lightest available, weighs 2 pounds, 1 ounce.

Excess weight tires you out, slows you down, and makes hiking less fun. My pack probably weighed 45 pounds coming out of Kennedy Meadows. On most of my hikes, it’s always less than 35.

Finally, I don’t deal well with altitude, anything above 8,000 feet. It takes me about a week to get acclimated.

Lack of oxygen tires me out. I struggle to hike 10 to 12 miles when I would normally hike 14 to 16. At the end of the day, I’m completely blitzed.

Walker Pass is at 5,200 feet. Between Walker Pass and Kennedy Meadows, you hopscotch between 6,000 feet and 8,000 feet. After Kennedy Meadows, as you enter the Sierra, you quickly climb to 8,000 feet and stay above that mark for the next 450 miles. The high point being Forester Pass at 13,120 feet. The high point I reached before leaving the trail was 10,650 feet.

Aching feet; excess water weight, food weight, and bear canister weight; hot temperatures; rain; high altitudes meant that Andrew Carter was not a happy camper on this hike from Walker Pass to Trail Pass.

Let’s hope things go better when I head to Oregon next week to complete the northernmost 650 miles of the PCT. That will take me until late September.

Assuming that goes well, I’ll come back in early October to finish the remaining 70 miles I have in the Sierra. Then, God willing, I’ll be done. Hurray.

c) Andrew Carter, 2022

Video from three days into my recent Walker Pass to Trail Pass hike.

In the video, I mention my desired end point as Paradise Valley in Kings Canyon National Park. I didn’t make it that far. In my next post, I’ll explain why.

c) Andrew Carter, 2022

I’m heading back out there tomorrow to try to complete my “thru in two” hike of the PCT. I have Walker Pass to Paradise Valley in Kings Canyon NP and Santiam Pass to the Canadian border still to hike. That’s 801 miles of trail.

Sadly, completion is not guaranteed. Beyond the risk of wildfire all hikers face plus the hope that the Forest Service will reopen the Mt. Jefferson area in Oregon in late August or early September, I’m dealing with a 65-year-old worn-out body.

I injured my left knee and right hip this spring while thru hiking the Benton MacKaye Trail in GA/NC/TN (264 of 290 miles completed, wildfire closure) and the Tuscarora Trail in VA/WV/PA (all 253 miles completed).

The knee is the real issue. (I got physical therapy for the hip.) The knee has been an on-again, off-again problem my entire life, ever since I injured it playing baseball in high school. But hey, I was able to thru hike the AT on it in college. The knee was operated on a few years ago and likely needs to be operated on again. It’s definitely past its “best before” date.

In the spring, I tore the meniscus in the knee and also suffered a stress fracture. I was aware of the meniscus the moment I tore it. I wasn’t aware of the stress fracture until I went to see the knee surgeon to talk about the meniscus. I never felt any pain from the stress fracture.

I’ve taken the requisite three months off for the stress fracture to heal, but it was an overuse injury — 1852 miles of the PCT last year plus 317 miles of East Coast trails this year. So who knows if I will reinjure it on the PCT this year? And if I do, will it hurt this time?

The meniscus is being held together by my trusty compression sleeve and knee brace. There’s very little pain. But for how long? Ultimately, I need surgery. But even after that, the knee will be weak.

I’m hoping I can hold it all together over the next 2.5 months to complete the PCT. If not, I’ll have to try to finish the trail over the next few years with one-week to two-week section hikes. Wish me luck.

c) Andrew Carter, 2022

The key question I’m facing right now is whether I will be able to finish my PCT hike this year.  I don’t know the answer.  It depends on how fast my body heals and how soon I want to put additional wear-and-tear on it.

In my last post, I mentioned that I hurt myself when I was hiking back East earlier in the year.  Four days into my first hike on the Benton MacKaye Trail, I was walking downhill when I heard a loud pop in my left knee.  “Uh oh.  What’s that?”

When I was 18, I hurt the same knee playing baseball.  I played catcher.  During practice, a teammate slid over my knee the wrong way.  I didn’t hear it pop, but he did.  I lived with that injury for decades.

What I’d done was damage the cartilage in my knee.  The only treatment I had for it at the time was a cortisone shot.  In the days before arthroscopic surgery, it simply made no sense to have invasive knee surgery to repair such a minor injury.

That knee was always weak, so I wore a knee brace when exercising.  It never gave me any real trouble.  I was able to hike the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail on it when I was 20.

It wasn’t until 40 years later that I had arthroscopic surgery to repair my knee.  That’s because it was getting weaker and was beginning to hurt after exercise.  What the surgeon did was to clean out the cartilage chips in the knee and smooth down the area.

Given my prior experience, I didn’t worry too much about the new injury.  The new injury was to the inside of my left knee.  The old injury was to the outside.

In a trail town, I bought a beefed-up knee brace and was able to finish the Benton MacKaye Trail and the Tuscarora Trail after that.  I hiked 480 miles on the injured knee.  There was no pain, only weakness.

When I was hiking the Tuscarora Trail, I suffered a different injury to my right hip.  That one actually hurt.  It was caused by the pounding of a 14-mile road walk which made my hip sore.  I managed to make it through the remaining 145 miles of my hike, but I was hobbling most of the way.

When I got home, I was able to get an appointment fairly quickly to find out what was wrong with my hip.  Was a hip replacement in my future? (My younger brother has already had one.)

Fortunately, it was something more minor. The pounding of the road walk had caused bursitis.  The remedy was rest, anti-inflammatories, and physical therapy to restore my hip’s full range of motion.  It seems fine now.

It took longer to get an appointment with my knee surgeon.  What I thought I would find out is that I had hurt the inside of my knee the same way I’d injured the outside of the same knee years ago.  I thought I’d be looking at knee surgery in the future with a cortisone shot now to get me through the rest of my PCT hike.

Given that, I was startled to find out that what I’d actually done was to suffer a stress fracture in the knee.  The only solution for that is R-and-R, but for how long?  I’ll have a better sense once I return for a follow-up doctor’s visit on 7/27.

The thing that has me worried is that my knee has begun to hurt since my first doctor’s visit.  Not significantly, but there is a twinge there.

Given this, I’ve been making and remaking plans for returning to the trail.  Before I learned about the stress fracture, I thought I’d be back on the trail in early July.  Now, I’ve delayed hiking until at least the end of July.  But I’m thinking I’ll have to delay again until at least the middle of August.  Realistically, I may have to wait until next year.

Quite the bummer, but it is a first-world problem.  I shouldn’t feel too sorry for myself.  I’ll keep you posted.

Here are the itineraries I followed earlier this year when I was hiking the Benton MacKaye Trail and the Tuscarora Trail.