Carbon
Backpacking Experience
One previous two night trip
Training
Didn't train (broke in shoes a little). Would do a lot more
Start
Started at Stehekin headed south with 1 friend - July 10th
Reached So. Kennedy Meadows
Oct 8th
Hike Result
Made it to US/Mexico border
LIFE NARRATIVE
Carbon and his friend The Greek has just finished up their PhD programs in Computational Chemistry and decided to attempt a thru-hike. He thought the hike would be a fun and relaxing way to celebrate the PhD. Instead he wanted to quit on the first day of hiking, and the second, and for almost all of Washington. What kept him going was when he started to believe, “I’m here because I chose to be and I can do it.” After Snoqualmie Pass the trail got easier and he felt confident from having done one of the hardest parts of the trail.
“The first day, even just going 7 miles, I quickly learned it wasn’t going to be all fun and games. I hadn’t even tested out my tent so it took me two hours to set up my tent. Very quickly I realized that this was going to be really hard.”
“ I wanted to quit a lot, constantly. And I just kept not quitting. That’s Washington for me. Wanting to quit and not quitting.”
LOSING A HIKING PARTNER
"The Greek and I had hiked over 1,200 miles together, and had both gone through the grief of adapting to trail life. We both knew that he was going to leave the trail to meet up with his girlfriend from Germany for a couple of weeks in September, but we had initially thought that he would return to the trail after that was over. He decided not to return in the end and stopped in Chester, CA. He had to catch a bus there on September 13th to get to Quincy and then San Francisco by the 15th, so we had to rush for nine days to make it on time. This entailed a lot of night hiking and anxiety. We made it, but The Greek and I were exhausted. After The Greek left I was not sure that I would want to continue with the trail, but after taking some rest in Chester I decided that it would to stupid to quit given that I’d made it halfway. The Greek was a lot tougher than me at first and pushed me harder that I wanted to go. I have come to appreciate that and the toughness that first half of the trek gave me made the Sierra and So Cal much more enjoyable."
HIS TRAIL ADVICE...
“Research a lot about gear and trail conditions. Talk to people if you can about the difficulty”
“Prepare your body and test you gear”
“Get trekking poles!”