Hiking with Support

Providing support for another hiker is strange for me. I was supposed to be doing this in the first place, but as plans progressed towards getting Cindy the Triple Crown of hiking I just could not see myself “on the sidelines.” I suppose events out here transpired as they should to get at least one of us on support at all times. I’m providing support as Charissa gets to experience the awe-inspiring beauty of the Northern Sierra. Charissa will provide support once our old backpacking buddy Mike Hinckley joins us.

Even as I envy the girls as they head out for a stretch I know this is for the best. Cindy is all smiles near all the time, with some exceptions. One of the biggest advantages of car support is maximizing the opportunities for outhouses over the woods, where Cindy tends to get confused. Even so, Cindy still needs some help with this most basic and private of functions; being self-aware that she still needs help brings her down occasionally.

At our last town stop Cindy was homesick, missing our pets. She has an extreme affinity for pets. When we walked across the country, with Cindy’s mental health slightly impaired at the time, she remembered the names of pets we encountered, humans not so much. At this stage of her illness the pets bring her great joy, the biggest sacrifice she is making as we complete the PCT.

Outside of those caveats Cindy is in her element. Charissa reports back to me that her Mom continues to get more agile on the trail. When I picked them up yesterday Charissa reported that Cindy led for two miles! That might seem trivial, but not when it’s difficult to just get her walking side-by-side around town.

Now that we’re in the midst of the northbound wave of thru-hikers I wonder at times what their reactions are to someone hiking the PCT with such extensive support. Those we meet have no problem with it. I dare say they find Cindy’s journey with Alzheimer’s inspiring, just as we hoped people would by making this public. However, I know all too well the creeping dogmatism of people who invest so much time and energy into something as demanding as thru-hiking when others do it differently.

There were relatively many thru-hikers in 1977 for that period of time. Light winter snow in the Sierra led a charge that became somewhat thwarted when the Sierra got half their snowfall in May of that year. Even by doing our flip flop, heading north in late May from Donner Pass, we started out in snow, while encountering some snow again when we returned to Donner Pass in September to head south for Mexico.

The only other thru-hikers we met were Dana, Mark and Kyle from California. They were effusive with praise for what we were doing. The late snows caused them to do some road walking around the Sierra. Having started with the “wave” of ’77ers that year, in their estimation us four Connecticut boys were the only thru-hikers actually sticking to the PCT.

Such enthusiasm for what we were doing was not shared by the ’77 thru-hikers we did not meet. Some dissed us in a book because of our different way of thru-hiking. Our flip flop was one sore point. Another was the schedule we worked out ahead of time and pretty much followed, even while slugging through snow.

The biggest sore point was our support for the northern two-thirds of our hike. This differed from the support we are providing for Cindy. A group of five sticking to a schedule (we had a fifth for the first half of our hike half the hike), presents difficulties for hitching into town. Our resupply stretches were still the same length of other thru-hikers, we just did not have the hassle of hitching. The support vehicle also allowed us to go back and hike sections where we got lost. Getting lost was common in 1977, a time before GPS with new logging roads often popping up.

The thru-hikers Dana, Mark and Kyle knew all this about our thru-hike. They still were eager to treat us to everything from dinners to Disneyland when we succeeded, convinced we were the “truest” thru-hikers that year. That was their opinion; mine is that being “true” depends only on what your own personal goals are. Still, the appreciation from those who actually knew and hiked with us more than make up for the disses from those that don’t. However, I can’t imagine any thru-hikers being dismissive of Cindy’s journey.

Our support person in 1977 felt alienated from us. I’ve seen this happen in other support situations as well. Knowing that perhaps helped me deal with my first day totally apart from the girls, but an unexpected sadness crept in. While I’m with Cindy and Charissa I’m buoyed by the hope and adventure of what we are doing. Even back home the daily routine is such as to steer me away from sad thoughts.

I am generally a positive and optimistic person, attested to by others besides me. One of my favorite sayings is that out of loss comes opportunity. Yet even as we dwell on the Hope for Alzheimer’s as our cause it remains such an inevitable disease. I will lose the person with whom I’ve hiked many thousands of miles; the wife with whom I automatically assumed we would reach our 50th. Sometimes in my alone time as support person all I see coming from this ultimate loss is being lost.