[pct-l] Trail names!

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good morning, Diane,

Diane said, “I'm only 5'3" tall, blond hair, female and I have a body more
advantageous for long distance hiking and weight lifting, not running,
ballet or gymnastics.”

The descriptive term for that morphology is “robust” as opposed to
“gracile”.

Steel-Eye

-Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965

http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye
http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09/

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:01 PM, Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes <
diane at santabarbarahikes.com> wrote:

> Trail names are a little silly in some ways.
>
> My first trail name was "Little Albino Girl." This is because the
> first time I led a Sierra Club Hike I was trying to impress upon the
> large group of obviously out-of-shape beginner hikers that this was a
> very strenuous hike, probably the hardest one in the area. I'm only
> 5'3" tall, blond hair, female and I have a body more advantageous for
> long distance hiking and weight lifting, not running, ballet or
> gymnastics. Anyway, as I was really trying to make the hike sound
> scary, these two women were overheard say "If that little albino girl
> can do it, how hard can it be?" 50% of the hikers on that hike turned
> around in the first hour or so and I was teased forever for what
> those two women called me. They were among the 50%.
>
> For the PCT I didn't know what to do. I met people at first when
> nobody had trail names yet and said that my trail name at home was
> Little Albino Girl. Nobody wanted to use that name and I didn't sound
> all that fond of it anyway. To avoid getting a name that might
> embarrass me, I decided I would just call myself Piper because I play
> an Irish whistle and I like birds and a Piper is both. So I started
> telling people that was my name.
>
> On my 2nd PCT hike, I hiked way in front of the pack. I started to
> not like having a trail name. Real life is out on the trail. Why
> can't the real me be there too? I should have a fake work name instead.
>
> These days I'm more likely to just tell people my real name,
> especially after spending some time on the CDT and getting used to
> how most people don't use trail names there. Makes more sense to me.
>
> Diane
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