Journey Day 57 | PCT Day 57

Flanked by David Swanston, Jeff Sauer, near Mt. Whitney, California

6/12/85

Sleep late. Up slow. Packing when Jeff Sauer shows up. Sauer, a Cincinnati native and Bowling Green alum like me, now lives in Alaska. He’d been tailing us, hit Kennedy Meadows later the same morning we headed out. As we talked with him, up walked David Swanston, a British architectural technician.  The four of us talked, then hiked out over Rock Creek.

Up big grades. Very steep, but no problem as our day covered only eight miles. What a foursome, an architect, lawyer, engineer and journalist. One from England, one from Alaska, one from New Mexico and one from Texas.

David was immaculate. Shirtless, all his gear inside his internal frame pack. An experienced traveler. The PCT just part of a 16-month vacation to include Alaska, Vancouver, Hawaii, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, where he had been born, the son of a missionary. He said he didn’t believe in religion.

He was the first hiker I’d seen who carried Brut and deodorant. He also carried a clean set of clothing.

Jeff was as ragtag as when we’d met in the desert at Jack Waring’s. In one hand, he carried a water bottle, in the other, much of his food in a plastic grocery bag. He also carried a heavy pack, a Jansport like mine, only an older model. A Cincinnatian by birth, he’d lived for four years on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. He ate no red meat and worked as a public defender. 

David was shirtless, to maximize his perfect tan, and hatless with shorts and heavy hiking boots like those Keith and I were wearing. Jeff wore a Sherlock Holmes hat, long sleeved shirt and pants, tennis shoe hiking boots. They joined Keith and me, the two “radical hikers,” as the California Boys had named us.

We scaled one tough grade, then another as the scenery grew  more and more spectacular.  Came down into Whitney Meadow along a creek. Deer grazed as we hiked by. The amazingly beautiful scenery had me in heaven, but a fall off a log into Whitney Creek jarred me back to reality. Camera banged, boots wet, I hiked up into Crabtree Meadows. No ranger thanks to President Reagan.

We camped together, this strange foursome. Ate, bear-bagged, then crashed to be fresh for the scramble up Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states, in the morning.