If You're Gonna be Dumb You've Gotta be Tough

By Joel Perry

One hikers day by day account of personal challenges, victories, and defeats during a 2019 thru hike of the 2,650mile Pacific Crest Trail. An attempt to capture what I felt like day in and day out and the things that I experienced along the way. I also detailed some of the mistakes that I made on trail so that readers might be inclined to avoid these blunders and have a safer and easier hike. There is also a basic gear list in the back of the book for anyone wondering what equipment I use to crush miles...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098374709

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Day 0 5/14/2019

I made it to the trail today, flew from Ft. Wayne, IN>Dallas, TX>San Diego, CA. I was standing at the baggage claim in the San Diego Airport watching the bags coming out on the metal conveyor belt. I was watching for my hiking pack to pop out when I saw one, but it was different than mine. I immediately looked around for other hikers of which I was now alerted to the presence of. I noticed a lady older than myself, possibly 50. She had hiking boots and pants on, bingo, this had to be the other pack recipient. I saw her get her bag and waited and finally, I got my own. I was glad to see it had no damage and everything was intact, except that my water bottles, which were housed in stretchy pockets on either side of the pack were leaking for some reason. Maybe some dedicated security officer had to open and sample the clear liquid to make sure it wasn’t explosives, I may never know for sure…

At this point I made my way through the small crowd and over to the other hiker lady to try to gather whatever intel I could. Her name was Corina and she was from Germany and here to do the California section of the PCT. Awesome! I thought, another hiker, I’ve already met as many hikers on this trip as I met on the two weeks of hiking that I did on the Arizona Trail in February of 2018 as a gear shakedown and training/assessment hike for the PCT. She ended up figuring out what bus to take and where to get on a train and finally another bus to get to the start of the trail in the border town of Campo. I was glad that she already had it figured out and let me tag along.

It was on the final bus ride to campo where I met another hiker named Lost Boy. Lost Boy had already hiked the Appalachian Trail the year prior and attempted the Pacific Crest Trail the year before that. His first PCT attempt was when he got lost and bush wacked his way through a thicket of poison oak and then hitch hiked to a nearby town and ran into some fellow hikers who then gave him the trail name Lost Boy, and he was fine with that name. He made it about a third of the way that year. He said that he was back this year for redemption, to do it all from start to finish. The three of us camped behind the train museum in Campo and got some beers from the convenience store. I set up my tent for the first time ever! (Not Recommended BTW, test your gear prior to reaching the trail, unless you’re a dummy, like yours truly) and turned in early for the night, excited for what the next day would hold…

Day 1 5/15/19

I got up at 6am and broke down camp pretty quickly, drank some cold instant coffee, and started making my way to the southern trail terminus monument with Lost Boy. 1.5 miles south lay the monument right near the US-Mexico border fence/wall and a border security officer in his truck within eye site. It was probably around 8am when we got there and almost immediately the other hikers showed up, around 15 in total. Most of them had stayed the night at a trail angel/past hiker couple’s house that was known for picking hikers up from the airport and shuttling them to the start of the trail while letting the hikers stay at their place in the process. Somehow this information eluded me in my pre hike research process, but whatever… I wasn’t here to make friends anyway, I was here to crush miles;).

We all signed the register unsure of what we had gotten ourselves into but still super excited and happy to be here. We also got the pre hike brief about no fires and the fact that we must bury our shit 6in deep and pack out our shitty toilet paper or wet wipes or whatever we use. Otherwise, the forest and desert critters will dig up and try and eat our shitty paper and it will be strewn all over the trail. That was news to me also, because of lack of research on my part, but no big deal, I guess. We posed for pictures and then I was about ready to get moving myself, no more screwing around. Time to hike…

I started with my Colombia hiking pants on and was feeling pretty good for a couple of miles but when 11am hit I realized that I needed to change into shorts. Lost boy and I stopped to get water and ran into Swiss foot, a 20-year-old who was a gifted runner and had hiked the Appalachian Trail southbound the year before. Lost boy and I stopped at lake Moreno where we ate some food from the convenience store and met some hikers. One of them was named Slim Jim, who had previously hiked the AT. We hung there for a bit and then left out to do a couple more hours of hiking. I ended up hiking 25 miles my first day. That, I was happy about, I would surely sleep well tonight. I camped near lost boy, Swiss foot, and Griffin, who was from Charleston SC. Not a bad day, I was unsure of my body’s ability to recover enough to do it all again tomorrow, but only time would tell.

Day 2 5/16/19

I got up feeling decent, looking at an overcast sky and broke down my camp, packed up and was hiking by 6am. The terrain was decently flat where I started in a river valley, but within an hour I was going into mountains and high desert and a heavy fog started to set in. It started raining by 8am. I was hiking alone and stopped around 9am to put on my rain jacket and eat a dry block of ramen with the chicken flavored seasoning packet sprinkled on top and some beef jerky.

While sitting in the rain and cold enjoying my meal I saw Griffin pass me. It didn’t take long before I was up and hiking again. This cold and rain was not what I or anyone else had expected from Southern California in mid-May, but they said it was a weird year with above average precipitation all over the western united states. The wind was picking up and I was getting low on water, so I stopped to filter some with my sawyer squeeze and ran into Griffin again at the creek. He looked about as miserable as I felt. I figured that because he hailed from the beach town of Charleston, South Carolina he probably wasn’t accustomed to the cold. After all, it just got done snowing in Northern Indiana where I had just come from, not that that made me any less miserable. We talked for a few minutes and exchanged our own expression of how, this sucks, and I can’t feel my fingers, and it’s probably not going to get any better anytime soon and chugged on.

Once I got closer to the top of the mountain the trail entered a wooded area where I saw a deer and I saw a sign that said I had a couple of miles to go before I got to the top of Mt. Laguna where there would supposedly be a restaurant and an outfitter. I was soaking wet when I got to the campground road and I kept trying to use my phone with the Guthook’s app to navigate my way to the restaurant, but I couldn’t keep the rain from dripping off the hood of my rain jacket and landing on the touch screen and totally screwing things up. I was able to hide in one of the campground bathrooms and get it together enough to get back out on the road and ask some campgrounders in a pickup truck how to get to the store and they pointed me in the right direction. I finally got there around 1pm and tried to dry myself off the best that I could, left my soaking pack and hiking poles outside and went in for some warmth and a coffee.

Once inside I saw Lost Boy sitting at the hiker table and sat down across from him and ordered a coffee and scanned the menu. As I sat there in the warm and comfort of the café watching other people eat and smelling the food, I decided it was time to order a breakfast skillet with jalapenos and sausage and an order of biscuits and gravy. I mean I wasn’t out here to spend a ton of money, but the situation dictated that I get some hot comfort food and that’s what I did. After devouring all of that I sat and drank more coffee as other hikers trickled in and sat down. Griffin and Von Braun sat at the hiker table and Joyce came in and sat at another table.

Joyce was a woman, probably in her 50s who was out here just like the rest of us but probably more hard core than most, including myself. She stayed for about an hour and then went back out to hike the rest of the day and camp that night in the rain. That surely made me feel like a wimp for not doing the same as an able bodied 31-year-old man. I just didn’t have the sheer willpower to do what Joyce did that day. I gained a lot of respect for that lady and so did the other hikers.

Not long after Lost Boy took off as well and four of us remained, Griffin, Slim Jim, Von Braun, and me. We talked about what we would do, and the other guys said that they had rented a tiny house for the night and they thought they had room to squeeze one more in to make things a little cheaper. That’s the hiker way I thought, I’m in!

Not long after Griffin mentioned joining the Army and of course I had to tell him that I was once in the Army for a few years. He asked what my MOS (military occupational specialty) was there and I told him, ‘’you’ve probably never heard of it before, but it was 18C’’ (Special Forces Engineer Sergeant). Sure enough, he knew exactly what that was and had an interest in trying to do that himself when he got through hiking the PCT. Of course, I had to follow that with the story of how I got out which is kind of embarrassing but its 100% my fault so I own it and tell people when I get the chance.

It’s simple really. I joined the Army when I was 19 signing a contract that would put me through Infantry Basic Training and Airborne (Jump) school and then allow me a chance to attend the Special Forces Assessment and Selection course. Well, I got selected and went through almost another two years of rigorous classroom and field training to then graduate and get my Green Beret and then be assigned to the 1st Battalion of the 10th Special Forces Group stationed near Stuttgart Germany. While there I got a little ahead of myself, and as a 22-year-old Special Forces Sergeant I thought I was a lot cooler than I was. I got heavily into partying and wound up doing a decent amount of cocaine with some of my local (German) friends one night over the German holiday of Carnival. A day and a half later I, and my entire company were given a drug test.

That was what ended my short army career of just under 3 years. I will say that my superiors handled the situation professionally. When I was questioned, I told the truth, that I had in fact knowingly taken the drug. I told them everything except the names of the friends and who all was there with me. No need to implicate anyone. While still in Germany I did the best that I could at my job and focused on staying in good physical shape. I knew that the thing I had trained and worked toward for the last 3 years was ruined now by my own doing. So, whatever… I was alive and it was over, and I went back to Indiana to live.

So, the four of us packed into the tiny house that night and talked about all kinds of stuff, gear, the sierras and what that would be like. Slim Jim was a veteran hiker that had done the Appalachian Trail the year before, so we all looked up to him for gear advice. His general rule was to try to identify things that we weren’t using and get rid of them in order to make your load ultra-light. Although it was only day 2 of the hike, I took that advice and was already cutting access straps off my pack and getting rid of stuff I didn’t think I would use. I slept on the floor of the tiny house that night. I did 16 miles in total on day two, hopefully day three would be more.

Day 3 5/17/19

I got up and made coffee, packed up and left the safety of the tiny house. I was walking with the other 3 by 6:30am. The weather was sunny, but still had some morning chill and wind as soon as we got out of the forested area. We were making pretty good time and talking as we went. I kept relentlessly talking about how excited I was to hopefully see a mountain lion, but I usually called them tigers because I just thought it sounded cooler. I also talked about Chupacabra’s (a mythical Mexican bloodsucking creature) and how they are all around this area and we should keep an eye out for them. That’s when Von Braun (who got his name because he went to school for rocket science) said that he thought my name should be Animal Planet. It seemed to work for me, that was a fitting name I thought. So, there it was, my trail name was Animal Planet.

Later in the day we were making our way down the trail on the side slope of a hill and I managed to roll my ankle a bit. It just scared me more than anything because that could be a showstopper if it was bad enough, potentially ending or postponing my hike. At this point, like the rest of us I had done a lot of planning and preparation and saved money for a couple of years to do this PCT, so that was the last thing that I wanted.

I had some issues rolling my ankle back when I was in the Army stemming from a time when I was drunk in a mosh pit at a Disturbed concert in North Carolina. I rolled it seriously there and my ankle was bruised badly, and I had to take it easy for a week or two. After that I kept having issues with it rolling while training and trail running. So that day I decided that I would consciously change the way I was walking to fix this problem. I would walk more on the insides of my feet focusing on pushing off with my big toe, rather than the outsides of my feet which seemed to cause the instability. After doing this I haven’t had any ankle rolling problems since, fingers crossed.

We took a long break at a water point bathroom combo and ate lunch. It was really windy and not to warm, but sunny. We huddled behind the bathroom eating and cracking jokes. That’s when we gave Griffin the name Chef because he was always getting his stove out every chance he got to make hot food or drinks. Slim Jim and I didn’t even have stoves, in an effort to save weight and space in our packs. We filled up on water, then it was back to the races. We found a long smooth downhill and Chef and I ran most of it for about a mile and a half and went a little further to a nice camp spot where there was already one tent set up but no one outside. Von Braun showed up and we all camped together. We made 24 miles that day, not bad. That night I woke up briefly to the sound of a pack of coyotes howling. Half asleep, I thought that the howling sounded like Native Americans having a war ceremony.

Day 4 5/18/19

I woke up at 5:20am to the sound of Von Braun packing up and getting ready to take off. He said that he had to make it to the road and hitch a ride to the town of Julian by 10:00am to get a package before the post office closed. Good luck, I said and got up and dug a cat hole and got back in my tent for a bit. I got up and got a 45minute head start on Chef for the day. I passed some hikers here and there as I descended into the valley where the temperature grew hot and I had to stop to change into shorts.

Then I reached scissors crossing where there was a bridge with a water cache and a hiker box with discarded items that other hikers didn’t want. I saw flip flops, lotion, and books among other things. I hung out under the bridge for an hour or so waiting for Chef to arrive. I was faced with a decision. Wait for Chef and see if he had extra food or hitch a ride into Julian and buy more food even though I would be reaching Warner Springs the next day where I had a package of food at the post office. I really just wanted to keep moving forward. I left the shade of the bridge and went up to the main road to try to hitch when I caught a glimpse of another hiker. It was Chef. Sure enough, he had extra food and wasn’t planning to go into Julian either.

He filled his water from the cache and ate some food and we headed back to the trail and started making our way back up into the mountains. The long break and extra water that I drank under the bridge must have helped because I noticed I was feeling good toward the end of the day. As we walked, I broke down Special Forces Selection and the SF Qualification Course in as much detail as I could to Chef. I told him about SERE school in more detail than I’d ever talked about before, accept to other people that had been through it already. He said he appreciated it. I just wanted to give him a heads up in case he decided to go for it. Plus, it was a good way to pass the time. I also saw my first snake on the trail, a rat snake, I think. Chef and I camped together and had some of my tortillas and spicy pinto beans that he warmed up on his stove. I was still stoveless but I could see why a lot of hikers carried them. Hot food sure is nice! We ended up doing 21 miles that day.

Day 5 5/19/19

I woke up at 5am because the wind blew and one of my tent stakes for my Zpacks Duplex tent came out of the ground and part of the tent fell on me. It was totally user error, but you learn as you go, I guess. With those non free- standing tents it can occasionally be difficult to place stakes because of rocky or sandy soil, so sometimes one must get creative. I had to go number two anyway, so I got up and took care of my business and staked my tent a little better and got back into my quilt bag and listened to some music with my phone and my cheap corded headphones. I drank my morning dose of instant coffee and got packed up and hiked out. Chef was still in his tent when I left,