Wilderness, transformation, and the gear you'll need
Hiking the 2,663-mile Pacific Crest Trail,
Porter and I were shaken to the core by how everything is in constant flux–
weather, terrain, our bodies, feelings, thoughts, the trail itself.
Later, paragliding in New Zealand,
we gave ourselves over to the winds of change.
See how in our video:
Comedy camping with Gail and Porter Storey:
“No such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes,” my husband, Porter, says.
Porter in the High Sierra
Since we hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, we’re often asked how to hike in snow and cold. You probably know about layering (silk or soft wool next to the skin to wick away moisture, a middle layer like fleece, a waterproof down-filled or synthetic jacket with a hood, and warm, waterproof pants). With a few additions, you can hike comfortably even in below-zero temperatures.
A balaclava (not to be confused with the pastry, baklava!) and goggles keep you from freezing your face off. Porter likes gloves but I like mittens so my fingers warm up one another. Gaiters over my pants keep deep snow out of my boots. Trekking poles (or Nordic walking poles) are great for balance on slippery patches, and add to warmth with an upper-body workout.
Gail hikes at 12 degrees below zero
Hand warmers inside my mitts and toe warmers inside my boots complete my ensemble. I love that they call these Little Hotties!
Hotties
For serious traction on snow, ice, and slush, we prefer Kahtoola MICROspikes. They’re easy to slip on and off, lightweight, and their teeth-and-chain bottoms don’t pick up mud.
Above is the How. Here’s the Why:
Why
Got winter hiking tips to share?
Porter did all the cooking on our 2,663-mile hike of the Pacific Crest Trail: hot mocha and oatmeal for breakfast, and gourmet dinners like ratatouille au rehydrated tofu, boeuf jerky stroganoff, and pan-seared wild salmon over udon in an Asian fusion sauce. (I carried the peanut butter and crackers for lunch.) Each evening, after our twenty-plus miles of hiking, he set up his wilderness kitchen of stove, ingredients, and spice kit and went to work. In this photo in the Sierras, he’s unpacked our food from our bear-proof canister (lower right) and wears a head-net because of the mosquitos:
Porter auditions for America's Top (Wilderness) Chef
My job as sous-chef was to stand by with water in case he set his pants on fire (happened twice). At home I do all the cooking, and his job is to decant the Malbec and watch it breathe.
Nevertheless. When he wants to cook, we have to go backpacking so he can try out his latest modifications to his latest ultralight stove. Here’s his 8 oz. stove kit, including a 1 qt. titanium pot, windscreen and stainless steel rods to hold the pot above the burner, his titanium ground protector (so as not to scorch the earth), ThermoJet alcohol burner on top of protector, and spoon to stir (the rods fit into the back of the spoon for storage):
8 oz. stove kit
Porter eats with his stirring spoon, and I have a plastic spork–a spoon with a jagged end for fork-like purposes. Mine is red lest I lose it in the dirt. But on our recent backpacking trip, I was dismayed to find my spork denuded of its jagged tines.
“I sanded them off to fit in the stove kit,” he said.
“?!”
Gail attempts spaghetti with fork-less spork
Whatever, it was delicious. Porter cooked it from a pasta recipe from Backpacker Magazine, except he made substitutions for thirteen of the fourteen ingredients. He did use pasta, though. The recipe also said to “drain the pasta,” but carry a colander? Fuggedaboudit. In any case, Porter used his highly insulated pot-cozy to retain heat and cook faster at high altitudes.
Porter in his man-cave making his pot-cozy
A Top Chef who makes his own cooking accoutrements? I’d vote for him, wouldn’t you?
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My mind can make a problem out of anything. So for a backpacking trip up Colorado’s Buchanan Pass Trail, I turn a peaceful getaway into a problem to be solved. It’s a do-over, actually, of our previous hike when we missed that trail and slogged up a boulder-strewn jeep road. It was sleeting, I was crying, my husband, Porter, had forgotten his jacket, two feet of snow dumped on us overnight, and our struggle out the next day included my sinking hip-deep into quicksand. More about that another time.
“How could we have missed this before?” I ask now at the well-marked trailhead.
He doesn’t answer. He’s deep in a thicket of thoughts.
Porter in the thicket of his thoughts
We continue up the trail. Some preoccupations fall off, others grow louder in the stillness: Did we lock the car? Should I be home working? Will we get to camp before dark? We’re in our thoughts, but want really to be in this lush green forest of aspen and spruce, fragrant with pine and dust. My mind–inside; nature–outside, and the bridge between the two feels broken.
The broken bridge
But the trail is more continuous than we think, over St. Vrain Creek, through bluebells, paintbrush, sunflowers, daisies and black-eyed Susans.
Climbing higher into the Indian Peaks Wilderness, we reach Red Deer Lake at dusk.
Red Deer Lake, 10,372 feet
No thoughts disturb its surface. Brook and brown trout swim in its deep blue. We sleep.
Dawn
This fir-scented dawn is both dark and light.
Morning, we climb rocky trail across alpine tundra to see what grows above treeline.
What grows
We reach the summit of Buchanan Pass, 11,837 feet.
The summit of love!
Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to be.
Just rest.
