Finding My Way on the Pacific Northwest Trail Story and photos by Alex Maier
I
t has been five years since my thru-hike on the Pacific Northwest Trail and I’m still trying to figure out how to talk about it. People say things like, “Wow, that must have been fun” or “I wish I had time to do that.” They look confused when I can’t give them a simple explanation of what it was like. After all it was just a really long hike—how hard can that be to talk about? It turns out that hiking was only a small part of the experience on the 1,200-mile long trail. I wish I could parse it down into a quick conversation but a lot can happen in three months. I had just graduated college with a degree in digital cinema. I knew I wanted to make outdoor films for a living but I had no idea how to actually turn my dream into a career. I decided I needed to test myself, to figure out if I had what it takes to pursue that dream. I would thru-hike a long trail and make a film about it—that seemed like a good test. Just to be sure, I chose a trail that would be extremely remote, untamed and secluded. I wasn’t looking for a well12
The heartbeat of Cascadia
defined path with plenty of help along the way, so I chose the Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT). Unlike its fellow National Scenic Trails like the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and the Appalachian trail (AT), the PNT is still young in its development. While the popular thru-hikes on the more established trails see thousands of thru-hikers every year, the PNT was only seeing a few dozen. While the more established thru-hikes were well-maintained and blazed the entire way, the PNT was still wild and hard to navigate. The trail extends for 1,200 miles from the Continental Divide in Glacier National Park to the Pacific Ocean in Olympic National Park. It provided the opportunity to learn exactly what I needed to know—once and for all—if I should take myself seriously as an outdoor filmmaker or if I should give up on that dream and find a “real job.” The scale of the undertaking didn’t really hit me until the car ride to the train station in Milwaukee. My excitement had been building over the final weeks of preparation. I had been consumed by the granular details and now
that the time of preparation was over and it was really happening, the big picture of what I was actually about to do began to sink in. Excitement had been replaced by panic. All I could think about was being hopelessly lost in the mountains. Who was I to think that I could take on the PNT? People don’t recommend doing that trail as a first-time thru-hiker. Most PNT hikers had already cut their teeth on a five-month 2,000+ mile trail like the AT or PCT. Even then, they tended to struggle with the challenges to be found on the PNT. I had never even hiked in the mountains before. My longest hike to date had only been 18 miles and it had taken me three days. On the PNT I’d have to be covering 20 miles a day. Not only that, I was carrying a bunch of extra weight in the form of camera gear. The self-doubt was almost crippling, but things were already in motion and quitting before I even started wasn’t an option, so I got on that train. I had arranged through the PNT Facebook page to meet a few other hikers on the train, and I found them as we de>>> Go to AdventuresNW.com
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