[pct-l] "WILD"...You "ain't" seen nothing yet

[Betty Wheeler]

I would love to see "grandma can do it" replaced with a different way to
express "it's easy."  I'm willing to bet there are quite a few grandmas on
the PCT who are among the more experienced hikers out there. Same with the
grandpas.

With 1,044 thru-permits this year, plus 822 for people hiking 500+ miles,
that's a record high, and some of that bump was probably Wild-induced, Were
the number of SAR calls this year disproportionately higher than in prior
years? It would be informative to see some metrics -- not just the total
number of SAR calls for thru-hikers over a period of years, but also how
that compares to the number of permits issued in those years, so that
year-to-year comparisons could be made.

Finally, no one who actually reads "Wild" is likely to come away with the
impression that "it's a piece of cake."The author makes the experience
sound painful and grueling, and she gives a pretty accurate accounting of
the many ways she paid for all her novice mistakes. As Donna Saufley says
in the NYT article, "Her book is really how not to do it," and I think most
people would come away from the book with a greater appreciation of the
kind of knowledge and skills they would need (and that Strayed did not
have) in order to have a good experience on the PCT.

Betty