QUESTIONING MY DECISION TO HIKE THE SIERRA

When we met in a coffee shop in the Northern California town of Truckee, it had been a month since I had seen my friend Mandy. She, along with most other thru-hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2017, all of those who hadn't already quit, skipped north and avoided the Sierra section and its record snow levels and rapid waters. I was one of the few who had gone straight through, and had just a couple days earlier finished the section. Immediately, she said she noticed something different about me. My body was gaunt. I had lost 30 pounds. My arms and legs were scarred, some wounds still healing. My beard was longer, scraggly and uneven. She didn't mention any of those ways I had changed since we parted ways in Bishop, a staging ground for the northerly movement of hikers and soapbox for the fear-mongering Cassandras warning of imminent doom up the mountains. But she had noticed something else: my eyes. She could see the Sierra in my eyes, she told me. I had grown older in the last month, worn down, "a little dead inside," she said. And I knew what she meant. I felt hardened and cold. It was the highest snowfall year on record in the Sierra Nevada Mountains—more than 700 inches, according to estimates . That snow shown in my eyes—more than a dozen steep, slippery snow-capped mountain passes above 10,000 feet; miles of snowfields that looked like the moon, cratered with ankle-breaking sun cups; and the snowmelt, which turned creeks into raging rapids that could sweep away the strongest person. But even more, it was the many times I felt that I was close to a tragic end, either by an ill-timed slip or stumble. For the first time in my life, I had been in actual fear for my life. An Illinois-born kid, a flatlander with no real mountaineering training, save for a few YouTube videos and blog posts, and brief snowless backpacking trips to Yosemite and the Canadian Rockies in previous years, equipped with an ice axe and crampons to face off against 400 miles of treacherous, high-altitude wintry wilderness. I think back to things that scared me before this hike: getting stuck in the subway under a river, the eventual explosion of the Yellowstone caldera, kissing a woman on a first date, and now realize I never truly knew fear. I ignored warnings from the Pacific Crest Trail Association and from countless friends, outfitters, and passersby that someone could die up there. I wanted a true south-to-north hike, with no flipping. Was I brave for going into the Sierra or just stupid? As outdoorsmen and women, we strive for adventure—the mountain to climb, the trail to complete, the natural wonders to behold. But when does that adventure become too much? When does ignoring the dangers become perilous? And after we ignored the warnings and accomplished the near-impossible, is it OK to hold onto regrets and question our decision to go into those dangerous situations? These questions will stay with me as I hike toward Canada. When I saw Mandy in Truckee, she was heading south back toward the Sierra, now melted and tamer. The section had changed since she took a bus from Bishop to Belden in June, having seen enough of the Sierra then. For a week, our trail family experienced the spectacular wonders of the region: climbing Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous 48 states; conquering Forester Pass, the tallest point on the PCT, and its sheer ice chute; walking through groves of Sequoia trees, some older than the Roman Empire. But we also experienced the dark truth of the Sierra: it can really hurt you. The morning before we ascended Forester Pass and descended into Kings Canyon National Park, we had a stream crossing. The words "creek" and "stream" don't carry the same meaning as they do back in the Midwest. Those words should be replaced with "pray for a snow-bridge or log because you're about to get wet." Until then, we had a couple small crossings: one which tested our balance on a 20-foot log over pretty hairy rapids and another shallow but frigid one at sunset that left us shivering and desperate for a campfire. Oft-shared advice says to cross creeks in the morning, hoping water levels are lower and less swift. When we came across Wright Creek at 6 a.m., it had whitecaps and no natural bridges, either by fallen trees or unmelted snow. The water was deep at the trail. We had to look upstream. After a half-mile of navigating the craters of snow that form around trees in the spring, and having found no easy way across, we eyed a spot 30 feet wide, half shallow and calm, the other half fast and stomach-deep. It was our best option. Three of us went for it: Alex, my hiking buddy of five years and former coworker at a magazine in Washington, D.C., was in front, linking arms with Mandy, a petite media consultant from Brooklyn, who linked her right arm with my left. We faced the current, as the near-frozen water pounded our midsection, sidestepping slowly. Communication was abysmal. We were rookies who had no clue what we were doing. Alex was a few feet from the snowy bank of the creek when his foot slipped on a rock. Fearing he might fall backward and drift downstream, he lunged toward the shore, losing his grip of Mandy. The water lifted her. She had no footing. I was her anchor. I pulled her down with my left arm, flexing every muscle in my body to keep her steady and my feet planted. "I got you," I yelled, trembling and cold. She regained her composure, shuffled a few more feet, and Alex lifted her out of the water. I followed seconds later, hustling to a dry spot of dirt to shed my soaked socks and shoes, dry off, and regain feeling of my lower half under my sleeping bag. Pulling the bag over my head, I cried for five seconds—a release of adrenaline after a harrowing few minutes. When I came back to the world I left for a brief moment, I looked at a shaken Mandy. "For just 24 hours," she said to me, "I don't want to be in fear for my life." Two days later, we were in Bishop and Mandy's time in the Sierra was over. I decided to stick with it. I would question that decision every day after we parted ways. Before we met up later in July, as I slowly descended from dramatic white mountains to the lush green meadows that led to Lake Tahoe, the official end of the Sierra, I wondered: yes, I went through the section and completed it successfully, but should I have even been out there in the first place? It's easy to look back in retrospect and say things weren't as bad as they were. Many northbound hikers I spoke to as we finished the Sierra, cocky and proud of their accomplishment, bordering on hubristic, scoffed at the idea that what we did was incredibly challenging and dangerous. It was, despite their grandstanding, and all I could think about were the close moments where the situation could have gone horribly wrong. In daydreams, weeks later, I often caught myself thinking back to one moment. Back in Bishop, one of the workers at a gear outfitter asked me, "What are you going to do about Mather Pass?" Having never heard of the pass and generally unaware of the perils ahead, I responded with a smile, "Try to get over it, I guess." A week later, looking up at the steep, ice-covered monstrosity towering hundreds of feet above me, I shook my head at my flippant comment. The remainder of our trail family, two guys and myself, camped near the base of the pass on a small jagged rock island in the middle of a snowfield. More oft-shared advice says to climb passes in the early morning to prevent postholing, the annoying and sometimes dangerous exercise of falling knee deep in slushy, hollowed snow. Unsuccessful in finding a stream that wasn't covered by a dozen feet of snow, we melted snow using a black garbage bag in the evening sun at our 11,000-foot campsite for water. As the sun set, I looked around at the magnificent, sharp peaks that surrounded us. This is the most beautiful and most dangerous place I've ever been, I thought. In the morning, we hiked a mile, balancing and carefully stepping over sun cups until we got to the approach. Looking up, we saw two groups of hikers, one taking a path on the left and one on the right. In the deep snow, the actual trail is hidden, so people usually rely on line-of-sight and take the path of least resistance. Not wanting to get bottlenecked like we did on Glen Pass the day before—standing in delicate foot divots, leaning ice axes shoved into the slope, not minding the sheer drop to our right as the line slowly moved up—we waiting for them to make it to the top. We also wanted to see which path looked easier. Suddenly we saw one hiker, a bright orange dot colored by his puffy jacket, start shuffling on all fours across a vertical slope, digging his ice axe and crampons into the mountain and moving slowly across. The three of us said some choice words and decided to take the other route. The snow was solid in the morning chill. We used footprints from other hikers to move up and toward the pass, like following the trail of a ghost. Solid snow meant no slush, but it also meant no give in the ice. It was slippery and hard. If I fell, self-arresting by digging my ice axe into the mountain to stop my momentous slide down the slope would be nearly impossible. If I slipped, I'd fall all the way down. I couldn't let myself think what would happen. Left foot, right foot, dig the axe, I thought. Left foot, right foot, dig the axe. Rinse, wash, repeat. Don't look up. Don't look to your side. Concentrate on your feet and axe. I had a good pace when the snow thinned to reveal rocks. The path, as it often does, led to a cluster of rocks that the original trailblazer had gone to for refuge, scrambling 10 feet up the scree, and continuing up the steep snow slope to the pass. Damn you, anonymous hiker, I thought. The scree was more dangerous than the ice, unstable and loose. Now I, like the hiker in orange, would have to use my crampons to kick into the icy mountain and go straight up to the footpath that had until now served me well. I repeated my mantra: left foot, right foot, dig the axe. I gripped the handle of the axe like my life depended on it, because it actually did today. Halfway up to the path, my right foot slipped slightly and I grabbed hold of my axe and leaned my chest against its hammer. Closing my eyes for a brief moment, knees shaking, my voice cracked as I cried, "Oh man, oh man, oh man." I was alone. No one could help me. If I didn't regain my footing, knifing my crampons into the mountain, I was done. This was actually life or death. My life didn't flash before my eyes or any other cliche. My only thought was that I could never tell my mother about this moment. She'd kill me. I came back to reality, slowly making my way to the steps, and hugged the steep slope for another 20 minutes as I climbed the towering pass, sweat pouring down my face as the sun peered over one of the surrounding peaks. Moments later, I reached the top. I made it over another pass, I thought in relief. There were many more to come, I then thought soberingly. I saw hikers high-five each other in triumph, including the man in the orange coat that I saw from the bottom. I just took my water and a granola bar, sat on a rock, and reflected on what I had just done, what could have happened, and all that I had left to do. Every year on surveys, like the one the Halfway Anywhere blog puts out, hikers rank the Sierra as their favorite section of the trail. Who wouldn't on a low- or even normal-snow year? The glacier-carved granite peaks of Yosemite National Park, which inspired the life's work of conservationist John Muir, earn the ranking alone. But while I was there, all I thought about was how desperately I wanted out—away from the danger and the snow. Northern California, which usually ranks at the bottom of those surveys, quickly became my favorite section simply because it had no snow, where the mountain lakes were thawed and flowers blazed the path. As I walked north, enjoying Northern California for its beauty and reflecting on my decision, I bumped into old friends from the desert section who decided to flip north and head back to the Sierra later in the summer. Every hiker congratulated me, impressed with my choice. They told me how easy and relatively flat the trail was ahead and I gave them a sense of when the snow becomes serious. Those interactions left me confident. But how deserved is that confidence? Was I a fool for going through the Sierra, despite my eventual success? Is anything possible with enough will-power and focus? Do hikers learn along the way and gain new confidence in their abilities to get down slopes and over passes, as was my case? Was Mandy and the rest of the hoards of hikers who skipped north smart for their choice or overly cautious? There's a saying in the backpacking community: hike your own hike. I chose to hike through the Sierra, and I'll think about that decision for the rest of my life.