Here are a few photos from that day:

This has been a long time coming, but here’s part two of three of my favorite photos from my 2011 PCT trek. Part one can be found here. I really started getting into a stride as I reached mile 500 on the Pacific Crest Trail, but this next 500-mile section tested me like nothing in my life has tested me before.  I hiked 22 miles in a day through the seemingly shadeless High Desert, summited Mt. Whitney, and was humbled by the natural forces always at work in the Sierra Nevada.  There were more than a few times that I wanted to quit and go home.  But I continued northwards, pushing my limits, and finding many moments of bliss along the way. Here are the photos. Enjoy!

I was completely taken aback by the popularity of my little video, Condor’s PCT Adventure in 3 Minutes (below). As of today, the video has been viewed nearly 40,000 times. It has been featured on some of my favorite websites: REI, Sierra Daily, Hiking In Finland, Pete Thomas Outdoors, and Rick McCharles’ BestHike.com. I’ve also discovered international discussions about the video, but only have an idea of what they say since the sites are in Hungarian, French-Canadian, and German. I’ve also discovered some excellent websites thanks in part to the viral spotlight cast on my video.

When I made the video, I wanted to keep it short. Any longer than a few minutes and I knew I’d lose viewer’s interest. I figured that not everyone watching the video would make it to the end and wanted to reward those who did. Based on viewer statistics, only about 64% of you stuck around to the end to see me dance like, well, like a mountain man who spent a little too long in the woods. More proof:

All of the feedback I’ve received about my video has been positive. It gives me great satisfaction that it has inspired people to get outdoors. I’ve been doing my best to promote the outdoor lifestyle for years and had no idea that this video would do so much towards that cause. Thank you for everyone for your messages of support. If you would like to chat about the outdoors or learn more about what I’m up to, feel free to joint the discussion on my Facebook public profile.

Some of you have asked me for a closer look at some of the 300+ photos I used to make my video. I can’t imagine being able to appreciate the scenery as it sped past at about 215 images per minute, so I’ve uploaded all the photos onto Flickr for you to peruse. Keep in mind that I never intended these images to be viewed for more than a split second, so you might see small tweaks I’ve made to a handful of the images (like background cloning or corner distortions) in order to fill the frame while still aligning my eyes in every frame. Click here or on the image below to be taken to my Flickr set.

Then April 2011 arrived. In that month, I was laid off from my job of six years and decided to hike as much as I could of the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). The journey started at the Mexican border near Campo, California, headed north through the harsh deserts of eastern California, into the wilds of the Sierra Nevada, and through the thick forests of Northern California. 159 days later, my life-changing journey came to an end in early October after hiking nearly 1,700 miles of the trail. I came home with a strong appreciation for life and nature, a thinner waistline, and over 850 pages of journals! Before sharing any of the stories, videos, or thousands of photos I took on the journey, I’d like to share that which is most precious to me: my journals.

Here’s a visual representation of every scanned page from all four books:

My “Tower of Moleskines:” Despite their obvious individual distortions, these are all Moleskine plain pocket-sized notebooks. All except Book 2 are hardcover.

Below are my thoughts and sketches from the third day on the trail. I wrote, on average, about a dozen times a day throughout the entire journey. Sometimes I’d write for a minute or so, other times I’d sit down and write/sketch for an hour. Early on, I played around with starting each journal entry with a mileage stamp, as you can see in the spread below. I’d soon move to a time stamp to make it easier. Some of my wildlife sketches were just simple doodles to hopefully recorded enough identifying features to look up later.

When I could, I’d make time to sketch landscapes. The sketch of Eagle Rock (left page) near Warner Springs, CA was done at the scene. If I desired to draw a scene but didn’t make the time on the trail, I’d leave room and sketch it later based on photos I captured, as I did for the cow pasture scene (right page).

Here’s the first pages of my second journal, a soft-covered Moleskine. I learned quickly that I disliked this book as a field journal: the soft cover made it easier for moisture (sweat, rain) to get to the pages within. Note how the postal cancellation mark has smeared because of this.

When possible, I’d collect interesting flowers I found along the PCT. The pages of a Moleskine do a pretty good job pressing and drying out flowers. This flowering plant, however, wasn’t designed for storage. Its small flower petals began falling off almost immediately after placing it on the page. I now keep the flower and its small snowflake-like petals in a wax paper envelope for preservation.

Here I experimented with a different method of recording a section of the hike by centralizing around a physical representation of the trail (left side of these pages).

After about 500 miles, my hiking shorts had all but disintegrated. Instead of throwing the badly-shredded shorts away, I burned them in a campfire in a morning ceremony. Afterwards, I took a piece of the smoldering fabric and added it to the journal as a memento. It is said that 500 miles of hiking equals about 1.1 million steps.

Here’s a few pictures from the ceremony.

I like adding ephemera to my journals. Anything flat will do. Here I have a movie ticket stub, a candy label, a sticker, a stamp and a postmark – all from the town of Tehachapi, CA. To add a different feel to the page, I tried following the contour of the oval sticker on the right page. The map I sketched on the page to the left shows the area of the town where I spent most of my time.

The sketch on this page was done a day or so after the writing was added. I left the gap so that I could spend time later sketching the pleasant scene of a house amongst trees.

Music on my journeys is important to me. On this page, I wrote down more than a few songs that were shared on the trail. Swapping MP3 players with other hikers for a section of trail is a great way to hear some new music.

On July 11th, my desire to hike all the way to Canada was waning. I would use my journal to define problems I would experience on the trail and come up with options for trying to solve the problem. On the left page, I listed five plans I could fall back on if my goal of hiking to Canada didn’t work for me. I ended up going with “Plan A”: “NOBO UNTIL GO NO ‘MO”, which meant I’d hike northbound (“NoBo”) until I couldn’t go any further. I think most thru hikers on the PCT are extremely goal-oriented people. Keeping a journal helps me define my main goal as well as daily goals I would make.

I found a coin in a stream while hiking through the Sierras of California. I thought for a while on how I would record the finding in my journal and came up with the idea of doing a rubbing, like one would do to preserve the patterns and lettering of a gravestone. When I eventually got a hold of a pencil, I recorded both faces of the coin on the page.

I photographed the coin where I found it, on the edge of a stream in the Sierras. I’m not an expert in coins, but I believed that the “HELVETIA” inscribed on the coin referred to Switzerland. As it happened, I ran into some Swiss hikers soon after finding the coin and they confirmed it. They also told me that this coin – a 1998 Rappen (or a Swiss penny) – is no longer used as currency, but Swiss like keeping one on them for good luck. So for good luck, I kept this penny on me for the remaining 900 miles of my journey.

The more I wrote, the more a writing style was forming. I would increase the size of words to show importance.

Unfortunately, despite writing so often on my journey, there were days I didn’t make time to write. Oddly enough, I had a hard time writing on “zero” days, or days of zero hiking. While at Vermillion Valley Resort, a hiker-friendly community just off the trail, I didn’t write at all in my journal. Instead, I jotted down some notes about the time spent there that will hopefully jog my memory when I get around to writing in more detail on the blank pages. I plan on doing this sooner than later, before more of those small details of the day slip away forever!

I like adding color to my pages in the form of beer labels. Plus, I like beer. Especially beer after hiking for hundreds of miles. While in Mammoth Lakes, California, I took a much-anticipated trip to the Mammoth Brewing Company to try a selection of their beers. I discovered this delicious beer while on a previous backpacking trip to the Sierras. I also love the creative (and humorous) graphic design of the labels. Note how the text on the right and left of this label is meant to be read while drinking from the bottle.

I made an effort to get postmarks whenever possible. In fact, I once hiked 4 miles out of my way to get one from a small-town post office off of the PCT. At the small post office in Tuolumne, located in Yosemite National Park, the postal clerk was nice enough to give me an assortment of postmarks, including one made only to be used on June 5, 2010, commemorating National Trails Day.

I tend to stick with writing utensils I trust. Here you can see the exact moment I switched from a dying Staples Xeno 1.0 ballpoint pen to a Papermate ballpoint pen. I liked the slightly finer point of the Papermate that I’ve switched favorite field pens. Also on this page is the beginnings of an experiment to find out how productive I am on the trail when it comes to hiking.

Here’s one of the first pages of my third PCT journal, providing valuable calculations/information that I would use throughout the trek: locations of post offices, their zip codes, and what mile they fall on the PCT. For instance, I noted that Etna, CA is at mile 1,606 of the PCT, located 15 miles off the trail, has a grocery store (for resupplying), and when I estimated I would arrive.

I discovered the historic Benson Hut while hiking and stayed there for an evening. I spent an hour or so sketching the inside of the unique “emergency ski hut” found near Truckee, California. Sketching a place helps me remember it more vividly.

Hiking journals shouldn’t be clean unless your hike is clean. In this example, you can see dirt and smears of ink, a subtle clue that I was grimy and had just applied insect repellant to my hands. At the time, I was a little upset that the chemicals had smudged the ink, but I have learned to appreciate that my journal records more than just the words I print on it, for better or worse.

Now here’s something I found interesting: each of the four black and white butterfly wings were found miles from each other along the trail. I rarely saw this species of butterfly alive, but it seems to be a popular snack of the local bird population. When I arrived into Sierra City and went to the post office, it seemed appropriate to adhere the 64-cent Monarch stamp on the page.

I draw maps to help learn the geology or terrain of the trail or to note reroute options to share with future PCT hikers. In this instance, I learned of a short and steep trail for getting back on the PCT from Drakesbad Resort in the Lassen Volcanic National Park. I generally would only consider taking side routes if they were equal or greater in distance than it would be to stay on the PCT. A motto of all thru hikers is, “Hike your own hike.”

To record the excitement and messiness of finding ripe blackberries on the PCT, I smeared the berries onto the page. Until then, I never considered using natural pigments as a way of adding color to my journals.

Am I the only one who finds beauty in the colors of poison oak? They say that “leaves of three, leave them be!” but I broke the rule and plucked a few for my journal, careful not to touch them. On this journey, I started carrying scraps of wax paper in the back pocket of my Moleskine to be used in preserving items like this.

On the left, I recorded a water source near the trail that isn’t well documented in the books and maps. I also found an interesting Orthopteran that I took time to sketch on the trail. I enjoy coming home with these sketches and try identifying them in my collection of nature guidebooks. If I’m confident in its identification, I’ll go back and write the common and scientific name in the journal.

Reaching mile 1,500 on the PCT was a feel-good moment for me. I never thought I’d be able to hike so far. It just goes to show you that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

One of my favorite stamps to look for in the post offices along the trail is the Go Green stamp called “CHOOSE TO WALK.” It was the perfect representation for my journey. (Unfortunately, in this instance, I forgot to put the stamp in the journal BEFORE getting it post marked. d’oh!). The notes below the stamp are mileage estimates designed to calculate food resupplies. The thrown in notes on the left are for when I find time to write about the week I spent in Etna waiting for a snowstorm to roll through. Unbeknownst to me at the time, these would be my final days on my journey. The snow was too deep and so I called the hike finished, leaving the trail and going home on October 6th.

I love hiking data. Here I diligently recorded my latitude and longitude every evening from my campsite. I picture myself someday revisit these sites with my family, maybe even with my unborn children.

More PCT data. Everyday at the end of the day, I would record what PCT mile I was at, how many miles I did that day, what kind of accommodation I stayed in (ex. “T”=tent), and the location. I had fun naming my campsites if they had not already been named. For instance, “Camp Buddha Belly” was the name I gave the campsite I stayed at immediately after leaving Drakesbad on a full stomach.

While on this amazing journey, I learned a lot about myself and the art of keeping a journal. Since you made it this far in the post, maybe you’d like to learn more? I am currently writing a guidebook that I hope will help hikers and travelers start and retain their own journals while on the trail. If you follow me on Twitter (@thehikeguy), I’ll keep you posted on the book’s publication.

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This is it – I’m about to get a ride down to the border to start the big hike north…

This Is It!

I’m here at Lake Marina about 20 miles from the border of California and Mexico, on the Pacific Coast Trail…

Greetings From Lake Marina

I’m tinkering with the idea of podcasting from the trail. Click on this to hear the first entry:

Preparing for the Journey

Moving, moving moving, keep those boxes moving, rawhide!

There’s been a lot of talk on the PCT-L about how much snow is covering the mountains of California. The Sierras apparently have over 70 feet of snow, more than what has ever been recorded in the past. Some hikers are reporting problems hiking through the mountains of Southern California, Baden-Powell and San Jacinto. To help in getting through these areas, I’ve invested in a sweet ice axe, made by Black Diamond. I’ve done some climbing with an ice axe in central Chile where I used it to self arrest, but that was a couple years ago. I’m looking forward to the refresher snow course at the Kick Off, run by Ned Tibbits from Mountain Education.

Ice Axe, made by Black Diamond

Just five more days until I’m at the KO! I’ll be starting my hike on Sunday, May 1st, from the Mexican border. I’ve got so much to do before I can get too excited about it! Moving into storage is a pain in the butt!

In the chaos of planning a trip that takes most thru-hikers a good portion of a year, I’ve been asked a lot of questions from friends and family. I realized that not everyone has heard of the Pacific Crest Trail. Heck, I didn’t know what it was either until I started seriously hiking a few years ago. So, without further ado, here’s a quick primer on the Pacific Crest Trail:

The Pacific Crest Trail, more commonly referred to by hikers as the PCT, is a long-distance hiking and equestrian trail that runs from the California border of Mexico (nearest to Campo, CA) up through the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, the Cascades Mountain range of Oregon and Washington, and ending at the Canadian border near Manning Park, BC. Here’s a Google map of the trail. There are two groups that tend to hike the PCT: thru-hikers and section hikers. Thru hikers are those who attempt to hike the entire 2,650-mile trail in one season (usually April-October). Section hikers spend years (sometimes decades) hiking sections of the trail when they can, with the aim to hike all of it eventually. Every year, there are about 500 thru-hikers who attempt the route, either starting from the Canadian terminus and hiking south (commonly known as “SOBO thru-hikers”) or starting from the Mexican border and hiking north. Most thru-hikers start from the south and hike towards Canada, completing the desert section in the Spring before it gets too hot. Of those who set out to thru hike the PCT, only about 45% complete the task. Some statistics show that up to 20% call it quits within the first few weeks! Since there isn’t an official sign-up sheet, it is hard to give any reasonably-accurate statistics. This year, 239 thru-hikers have signed up for the Kick-off party. I suppose I should explain what that is, too, eh?

The Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kick-Off (ADZPCTKO) is held every year at the Lake Morena Campground, about 20 miles from the southern terminal of the PCT. I signed up in March as a spectator, hoping to gather some 411 from the 600+ other attendants, which consists of thru-hikers, section hikers, previous hikers, groupies, trail angels, and staff. Now that I’m a thru-hiker, I’m happy that I reserved a campsite.

I found the following questions on the blog of thru-hikers Chris and Hillary and thought it would be helpful for my readers.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Will you be walking the whole way?
I hope to walk the entire 2,650 miles on the trail, but I imagine I’ll be taking breaks (called “zero days”) in small towns near the trail. For these recesses, I imagine that I’ll be using my thumb for short lifts to and from town. Maybe I’ll get a lift into town from a trail angel.

Is the trail easy to follow?
I’ve heard that it is so easy to follow that some thru-hikers do not bring any maps. The PCT is marked quite well along the entire route, but snow levels can make it difficult to stick to the path. I’m bringing my faithful Garmin 60CSx, which I’ve had for over 7 years, as well as printed TOPO maps, courtesy of postholer.com. There are also a few sections of the trail that are closed (mainly due to recent forest fires), so having a map to navigate around these sections is important.

What is a “trail angel”?
A trail angel are volunteers who help thru-hikers. They have been known to provide water caches along dry sections of the trail, a place to rest and put your feet up, and even a place to get a comfortable night’s sleep. Some trail angels were once thru-hikers themselves, but some do it just out of the kindness of their hearts and expect nothing in return.

Will you be walking on the beach a lot?
Only beaches of lakes! The PCT does not run near the ocean but follows the mountain ranges that cover the center of California, Oregon, and Washington. The closest I will get to the ocean is mile #502, near Agua Dulce, CA. Even then, I’ll be over 50 miles from the ocean.

What will you eat?
A good portion of my meals will be stuff I can cook simply by adding hot water, like noodles, mac & cheese, oatmeal, couscous, and veggies. I’ll also have dried fruits, Pop Tarts, tuna, peanut butter, candy bars. There will be many little stores (and big stores) along the way for me to resupply.

Will you be bringing a gun?
No way! There’s no need for weapons. The animals which live where I’ll be hiking tend to stay away from humans. In fact, bears and mountain lions would rather have nothing to do with us.

You’re going to be starting at the Mexican border. What about illegals?
I plan on hiking the first 20+ miles of trail from the border with other thru-hikers. Every morning at 6am during the Kick-off party, thru-hikers are shuttled down to the start of the trail and hike back to the campsite, where over 600 kick-off folk are camping. I might see a border control officer or even one of the ‘Minutemen,’ but I don’t plan on being anywhere near the border at night, when illegal immigration is most likely to occur.

Will you have a cell phone?
Yes, I’ll be carrying a iPhone 3G with AT&T service. From what I’ve read, AT&T has the best service on the PCT. I’ll be using it when I can to keep in touch with friends and family, as well as update this blog.

How heavy is your pack?
Fully loaded with 5-6 days of food and 3 liters of water, I hope to keep my pack under 40 pounds. I’m sure that for any thru-hikers reading this, their jaw just dropped. 40 pounds is ridiculously heavy (twice as heavy, in fact) compared to most. But I’m much bigger and heavier than most thru-hikers. I’ve backpacked before with much heavier packs and I tend to stick with the general rule of thumb of keeping the back less than 15-20% my body weight.

Where will you sleep?
I plan on mostly sleeping in a North Face Vector 22 Tent, my home away from home. I might be lucky enough to be offered a bed by a trail angel or indulge in a small motel/hostel, but for most of the time, I’ll be sleeping on the ground.

Are you crazy?
I suppose anyone attempting to hike for six months straight might be a little crazy, or maybe they’re just more in touch with the planet.

Can I come?
You can certainly join me on the trail anytime you’d like! I’ll be using my satellite beacon to let visitors to my site know where I am. I’d love it if you could meet me on the trail, even if just to say “hi.” If you want to see me in a chipper mood, bring freshly backed chocolate chip cookies (w/o nuts)! You can also contact me about possibly meeting me on the trail by going to my Facebook Group: Where’s Kolby??

Why do you want to do this?
There are many personal reasons why I want to do this: to loose weight, to get more in shape, to complete a challenging goal. But I really hope to raise awareness and funds for a charity called Soles4Souls. They help find shoes for those who haven’t any – who might have never owned shoes. If you would like to make a donation, please visit my donation page.

Two weeks ago, while attending a live performance of Radiolab at UCLA, I lost my hiking journal. In the journal was all of my notes, maps, ideas, and thoughts about my 2011 resolution to hike Mt. Whitney. I was a bit devastated, admittedly. During the week of the lost journal, I started loosing hope that my hiking partner, Michael, and I wouldn’t get our permit to climb the mountain. I heard report after report of potential climbers getting rejection letters from the permit office. Last weekend, in fact, Michael and I ran into a pair of hikers who were also hoping to climb Whitney in September, but all of their dates were taken. Over 7,000 climbers submitted applications this year and only a handful would get a chance to climb to the top of the continental United States.

I began thinking about other options. I started looking into a replacement resolution if our permit was denied. It was around this time when I saw a National Geographic program on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). It wasn’t the first time I had heard of the 2,650-mile trail that runs from the border of Mexico to the border of Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington, but it was only until I saw the hour-long program did I start dreaming of hiking the entire trail in one season (called “thru hiking”). Since most thru hikers start in April and end in September, it wouldn’t be feasible to do this year. But next year… Yes, next year I’d do it. I ordered a few books online on the subject of the PCT and signed up as a spectator to attend the Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kick Off (ADZPCTKO), which would be held on April 28-30 this year.

Then came Thursday, March 31st. I had received a call from UCLA that they had found my journal! Great news and completely unexpected. Also, I was laid off from my employer of six years. Also completely unexpected. While driving over to campus to retrieve my journal, I thought about what a great opportunity my employer ex-employer had now given me. The problem with doing the Pacific Crest Trail in one season is finding the time, money, and energy to do it. Well, thanks to my previous employer, I’ve found my window of opportunity… and I’m grabbing the bull by the horns!

On April 28th, 2011, I will depart for Campo, California, a small town near the border of Mexico, and start the six-month long trek northwards. Before then, I have only a few weeks to move all of my belongings into storage, make sure I have all the gear and supplies, tie up loose ends, and say farewell to my friends. More now than ever before, I don’t know what my future holds, but I am fairly certain that by the end of the month, my time as a resident of Southern California will come to an end. It is my intention to find a job in the Pacific Northwest (my birthplace) after completing the hike in September/October.

Among the reasons I’m doing the hike is to raise money and awareness for Soles4Souls, a charity that finds shoes for those in need. As a hiker, I’ve learned to appreciate a good pair of shoes. As a world traveler, I’ve learned that not everyone has them. Soles4Souls has made it a mission to give shoes to those who need them.

You can make a donation to Soles4Souls here: http://www.soles4soulsfundraising.org/kolby_kirk

You can follow my progress online as I aim to complete the entire Pacific Coast Trail within the next six months. Check it out here: http://pct.thehikeguy.com/