SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
BACKPACKER.COM 95
trail and I walked right by her? Would we find a
decent camp spot this late? I grumpily ref lected that
there were significant disadvantages to her growing
strong and leaving her dad in the dust.
I tried to speed up to catch Caroline, but my legs
wouldn’t have it. The trail wound over hills and I
couldn’t see far ahead. Soon I would need to pull out
my headlamp. Damn teenagers.
And now I had a bigger concern: What if she
decided to hike the rest of the PCT without me?
MY TRAIL NAME IS SCRIBBLER(because I’m
a writer who often covers global hot spots), and
Caroline’s is Tumbler (because she’s a gymnast, not
because she’s always falling over her feet).^4 Scribbler
and Tumbler decided in 2012 to section hike the PCT.
Caroline was 14 that summer, and I was 53, and we
both had backpacking in our blood. I grew up in Oregon,
hiking chunks of the PCT, and wanted to transmit the
experience to my own kids a generation later. The par-
adox, of course, was that an essential element of my
own youthful treks was that there were no grown-ups
along,^5 while I selfishly wanted to participate as my
kids enjoyed similar experiences.
My wife and I began taking our kids backpacking
when they were young. We brought Caroline on her
first overnight trek when she was just a year old, and
then every summer after that. When she was in ele-
mentary school, we took her on a three-day, 40-mile
hike around Mt. Hood, and later on a 100-mile hike on
the Oregon PCT. While the boys enjoyed hiking, they
developed other priorities in their teens, but Caroline’s
enthusiasm for backpacking only grew as she got older.
At first, our section hike was intended to traverse
only the 455 miles of the PCT in Oregon: That seemed
doable and would take us over new stretches of trail.
Very quickly, we decided to add Washington as well—
but I had some doubts about whether we would manage
this. Our sons were becoming busy with college and
summer jobs, and I worried that Caroline would fall
prey to the real world as well.^6 Anyway, what teenager
wants to spend quality time with her dad, year after
year, getting bitten by mosquitoes?^7 I could already
see that Caroline was growing more independent and
inclined to spend time with friends rather than family.
I wasn’t sure that we could sustain our trek summer
after summer and complete the trail.
Our hiking window that first year was early in July
in what turned out to be a big snow year, and we hadn’t
appreciated how much of it there would be.^8 We c om-
pletely lost the trail under 3 feet of snow in the Three
Sisters Wilderness in Oregon and headed north by
map and compass. Back then, we didn’t have apps like
Guthook and Halfmile to locate the trail, so it was the
most difficult hiking I’ve ever done. On top of that, it
poured so much that at one point we were hiking up a
mountain and not entirely sure if we were on the trail
or in the stream that descended beside it. When it
wasn’t raining, the mosquitoes were on the hunt and
particularly targeted Caroline. She wore DEET repel-
lent and a head net—and they didn’t help much.
“Dad!” she exclaimed excitedly as we passed Elk
Lake. “I just counted—I have 49 mosquito bites on my
forehead alone!”
That moment ref lected two nice things about
4 I thought Scribbler and
Tumbler sounded good
together, but I didn’t realize
that on my own I’d just seem
like a perennial incompetent
who lacked basic motor skills.
Worse, this is not entirely
untrue.
5 You can imagine how
horrified my friends’ parents
were when, in middle school,
I echoed my dad’s idea,
suggesting that as a fun “girls’
night out” activity we could go
on a no-grown-ups-allowed,
150-mile backpacking trip.
6 Well, I am now on LinkedIn
and very employable.
7 Somehow, vacation in the
wilderness seemed luxurious
after Thanksgiving at a
Haitian cholera hospital!
8 “We?!” I was 14!
Left: Caroline at the PCT trail register on the Oregon/
California border at age 16. Below, from left: Caroline on her
mom’s back on her fi rst overnight trek at age 1; with her
brother Gregory on Oregon’s Eagle Creek Trail; backpacking
around Mt. Hood with her dad and her brother Geoff rey