[pct-l] water stashes

[KBerger466@aol.com]

I'm writing this with some reluctance, but the good folks who provided the 
water stashes have asked for a little feedback, and I wanted to share just 
one person's thoughts.

I appreciate what you're doing. God knows, in '97, a few of you (or people 
like you) were out there (althought not publicized) leaving water here and 
there. Dan and I were surprised to come across a few gallons of water in the 
middle of nowhere left for hikers to take. Not having expected this, we were 
carrying what we needed, but the extra little bit of water made the 
difference between borderline dehydration and almost thirst-quenched. I 
appreciated that little bit of trail magic.

I think your efforts to formalize this sort of support are well-intentioned 
and much appreciated; however, as you've seen, as with almost any human 
undertaking, they can be abused (As in hikers taking 2 gallons of water for 
themselves). 

A PCT thru-hike poses many challenges, and hikers will need to learn to deal 
with them without the help of support crews. The achievement of hiking a 
trail like the PCT includes learning to cope with its harsh environments. 
Knowing that you can, in fact, go 25 or 30 miles without a water source gives 
you confidence and builds your skills -- more than depending on a water cache 
does. 

Don't misunderstand me -- I'd sip from a water cache, too, and thank the 
people who provided it. But I tend to think that the best way to help hikers 
is to educate them about the terrain and conditions, not to try to minimize 
the challenges for them. 

The fact is, any reasonably healthy hiker who is responsible and respectful 
of both the environment and human limitations can make it across southern 
Cal's waterless stretches. I was in terrible shape at the start of the PCT -- 
overweight, flabby, unacclimated to the heat, and if I survived with no 
problems, I think anyone can. The difference between me and the ultra-fit 
20-year olds who collapsed from dehydration was that I respected the 
environment (I admit, it helped that I'd had quite a bit of hot weather 
experience, so I knew first hand what it's like to walk in 90 degree heat 
with no shade while rationing water...)   

But you don't need to learn from your own experinece -- there's a lot of info 
about desert hiking available. The people who get into trouble at the 
beginning of the PCT (and there are often many of them) are those who insist 
on learning from their own mistakes -- going too fast too soon, not taking 
enough water, disregarding signs of heat exhaustion and dehydration, etc. 
Please don't misread this: I don't mean it to sound Darwinian. But I really 
believe that if you're going to hike across a desert, then you should be 
prepared to do what it takes, including carrying the water you'll need to 
cross certain stretches. And if the only way you can can learn why that 's 
important is to be dehydrated and sick and miserable for a few hours, then 
maybe that's what you have to go through to learn that lesson. Personally, 
I'd rather learn it from someone else's experience or a book, but that's just 
me. 

I know that you guys on the water patrol never intended the supplemental 
water to be a primary water source, and I think that you made that crystal 
clear. I think you did an incredible job, and that your message that you were 
providing a sort of emergency relief service (not an unlimited supply of 
water) was on target. But we humans sometimes hear what we want to hear. Once 
they knew that water would be available, I think some of the thru-hikers 
(especially those with little hot weather experience) ignored the warnings 
that it was supplemental and unreliable, and they didn't pay as much 
attention to water (and didn't carry as much) as they should have. 

I, for one, thank you for your concern for our fellow hikers -- but I would 
support you in your decision to seriously scale back the "operation" in 
future years. Part of the joy of thru-hiking (as almost any thru-hiker will 
tell you) is being self reliant. That self reliance doesn't just mean walking 
from, festival to festival on the AT -- it should include crossing the PCT's 
deserts, too. 

Karen Berger
* From the PCT-L |  Need help? http://www.backcountry.net/faq.html  *

==============================================================================