When they wake up broke, broken, and far from home, how do thru-hikers find the will to go another mile?

We usually focus on the pleasures of a long-distance hike. We tell ourselves the pain will dissolve into a march of panoramas from Mexico to Canada. But the truth of thru-hiking is that it is brutally physical.

This excerpt from recently published Journeys North by Triple Crowner and PCT trail angel Barney “Scout” Mann follows his northbound Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike in 2007, tracking his experience and those of fellow thru-hikers Blazer, Dalton, Ladybug, and 30-30.

Their stories map the glory of the trail but don’t look away from the fear, money issues, and injury that underwrite the experience. And any hiker will recognize the ties that bind this group of travelers.

Those considering a long-distance trek ought to know that to travel thousands of miles by foot is to race both the season and the body’s unfolding demise. Every mile has to be earned until, eventually and reliably, something in the body or mind gives. But it’s what hikers do next that defines their hikes—and themselves.

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The nonprofit that helps organize long-distance hiking trips on the Pacific Crest Trail announced that applications for the 2021 permitting cycle will not open as planned this October.

Organizers with the Pacific Crest Trail Association wrote on their website that because of the ongoing pandemic and continuing spread of the coronavirus they’re not opening permits in October. Instead they’ll be monitoring the situation for next year and will reevaluate 2021 permits by mid-January.

They cited the fact that, so far, more than 14,000 people have died from COVID-19 in California, Oregon and Washington, and that there have been nearly half-a-million coronavirus cases in the counties the trail passes through on the way from Mexico to Canada.

The nonprofit first discouraged travel on the 2,600-mile hiking trail last March as cases of the coronavirus were increasing all along the West Coast. Still, they can’t legally close the trail. That’s because it passes through numerous types of federally managed public lands that don’t have travel restrictions. That’s led some hikers to ignore the advice.

On October 1, 2019, the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA) announced a new permitting system that will affect all of the trail’s prospective thru-hikers starting in the 2020 season. Stricter regulations have been added to both north- and southbound hikes to more evenly distrubute crowds in both directions. The changes are intended to combat the significant increase in long-distance trail use over the past five years.

Perhaps the most surprising change for the incoming class of PCT hikers is the addition of a required southbound hiking permit. Previously, only northbound hikers needed one, but now, so will those who wish to hike 500 or more continuous miles starting anywhere from Canadian border through Stehekin, Washington.

A minor tweak to the northbound permitting season has also been made: in addition to the 50-hikers-per-day quota that was first implemented in 2013, all thru-hikers starting at or near the Mexican border between March 1 and May 31 will need a designated permit.

But hands down, the biggest change to hit the PCT next year will be the requirement that all hikers travel the 250-plus miles between California’s Kennedy Meadows South and Sonora Pass in one continuous trip. In other words, hikers can no longer skip the Sierra Nevada due to high snow or bad weather, fly north to hike in Oregon or Washington, and then zip back down south to finish the Sierra in late summer, when conditions are more favorable.

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There are 11 designated national scenic trails stretching across nearly 18,000 miles in the U.S. But there are more than 4,000 miles of privately owned “gaps” in the system that leave routes vulnerable to a change in ownership or a landowner’s whims.

Typically, the government or nonprofit trail associations work to fill such gaps by purchasing land from willing sellers. But Jim Kern, founder of a new advocacy group called Hiking Trails for America, says the only way to protect every mile of those trails forever is through the use of eminent domain.

A power granted by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, eminent domain allows federal, state, and local governments to acquire private land for public use in exchange for “just compensation.”

The Appalachian Trail is the only national scenic trail owned entirely by the public and the only one for which the U.S. government has invoked eminent domain. The National Park Service says it acquired 15,266 acres along the trail via compulsory purchase, mostly between 1986 and 1997, out of nearly 150,000 total acres acquired to complete federal ownership of the land.

The other ten trails, like the Pacific Crest Trail, rely partly on agreements with private landowners, which guarantee rights of passage for hikers. But if lands are sold, or if an owner decides against allowing hikers on their property, it could force a trail to reroute or run alongside developed land instead of the wilderness. “It leaves a lot of uncertainty as to what might happen.”

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One of the big decisions PCT thru-hikers have to make before choosing a start date is which direction they want to travel along the trail in. PCT thru-hikers are known as either a NoBo or SoBo hiker.

“NoBo” is short for northbound. A northbound PCT thru-hiker will start from the southern terminus at Campo, California along the US/Mexico border and hike north towards Canada. On the AT, NoBo hikers travel from Georgia to Maine.

“SoBo” is short for southbound. A southbound PCT thru-hiker will start from the northern terminus at the US/Canadian border in Washington and hike south towards Mexico. On the AT, SoBo hikers travel from Maine to Georgia.

The direction in which a thru-hiker travels along the PCT all depends on the type of hike they want to have. If a hiker is looking for a more traditional and social hike, they’ll want to travel as a NoBo hiker. If the hiker wants to escape the crowds and have a more solitary experience, they’ll often choose to travel SoBo.

There are many factors to take into consideration when a hiker is choosing the direction of their travel along the PCT. Hikers have to consider things like their desired start and finish date, weather, their hiking skill level, water availability along the trail, resupply stops and access to the Canadian border.

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For the last 50 years, the Pacific Crest Trail has been a testament to the natural beauty of the western United States.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the trail, the Bakersfield, CA office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will host a friendly “work weekend” at a portion of the trail near Ridgecrest to allow the public to help maintain the path in that area.

“This is a special occasion that we want to mark,” said Brie Chartier, an outdoor recreation planner at the Bureau of Land Management.

While working in the dirt may not sound like an ideal way to spend the weekend to some couch potatoes, event organizers hope to attract a disparate group of nature lovers to the trail.

“We want to make sure that everybody is aware of the opportunities we have here for recreation,” Chartier said.

The event will take place from Dec. 13-16, 2018. Work crews will operate out of a base camp located at the Walker Pass Campground along Highway 178.

The High Sierra Volunteer Trail Crew organization, a nonprofit that operates out of Fresno, will provide tools and safety equipment for the volunteers, who will be tasked with maintaining seven miles of trail near the campground.

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Hiking 2,000 miles feels like waking up tired every morning, like eating the same food again and again until it loses all meaning. It feels like wondering with amazement when 20 miles became a short day. Like pushing yourself up the last climb of the day. Going faster and faster while your legs ache and sweat runs down your face and into your eyes, but you don’t slow down, you keep pushing because you’ve become so strong that you no longer know where your limit is, where the bottom of this energy sits and it feels good to dig way down deep, to where you forget what easy is and there is only the burning left.

And suddenly. Suddenly you’re at the top of the climb and the world erupts around you and a wave of endorphins threaten to overwhelm your more human side and you laugh away the urge to open up your throat to the heavens and howl. But the urge is there, it is right below the surface.

Hiking 2,000 miles feels like the merging of what you hoped would be and what is. Where you realize that you’re now doing all of the things you’d dreamed of when you planned this hike. All of those desires which you held at arm’s length, knowing that the odds for finishing the PCT are not in your favor and it would break your heart to admit to yourself how desperately you wanted this, only to not get it.

But now you’re here and it’s nothing like what you imagined, though all the better for it. Hiking 2,000 miles feels like making it to the playoffs, the final round of the spelling bee, it feels like the moment before the hero pulls off the big heist. You’re not there yet but you are so, so close. And if you can just be smart and lucky and hold your body together for a little longer, then you’ll make it. And that will be the best worst day of this whole thing.

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They’re easy to spot this time of year in the North Cascades: lean, fast-moving hiking machines in their trail-running shoes, ultralightweight backpacks and a look in the eyes that says they have places to go.

It’s the annual migration of thousands of northbound hikers traveling the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexico border to Canada. Most of them began the journey in late spring, which means to reach their destination before the snow falls, they’ll need to average at least 18 to 22 miles per day.

Hence the look you get as they whoosh! past you on this well-traveled highway to heaven, their eyes clearly on the prize ahead.

“We call it the 10,000-yard stare,” said Katie, a spokesperson with the Skykomish Ranger Station. “And that’s kinda sad, because they’re coming into the most beautiful part of the Cascades.”

At this point, long-distance PCT travelers, or “thru-hikers” as they’re more often called, are just beginning to experience classic North Cascades hiking, with its signature glacier peaks and glistening, high-Alpine lakes.

Five years ago, 988 northbound permits were issued. In 2017 that count more than tripled to 3,496 permits.

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America’s glory is its cathedral of wilderness. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, visionary Americans like Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot fought to protect public lands for collective use.

The upshot is that today every American inherits a stunning patrimony, a piece of some of the most beautiful terrain in the world. You may not be able to afford a weekend house, but you’re already a shared landlord of spectacular wilderness. For a day at a time, my daughter and I “owned” dazzling camping spots that even Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett can never buy. On our public lands, no one can pull rank on you — except a bear.

Speaking of which, on the Pacific Crest Trail over the years we spotted: two bears, one cougar, one pine marten, one fisher, one lynx, 14 rattlesnakes, and surprisingly few humans.

Nature offers perspective. In America, we live in a world where we mostly control our environment. If we’re warm, we may adjust the thermostat by a single degree.

In contrast, the wilderness is almost always too hot or too cold. It is vast and unbending, reminding us that we are not the lords of the universe, but atoms in the firmament. We are put in our place.

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He posted photos of himself on Facebook as he hiked hundreds of miles of the vast Pacific Crest Trail, masked in a bandanna to protect his lungs from the smoke of the fires that had closed down parts of it. She told him about the inner workings of NASA, where she was a college intern in Alabama.

As the West burned a year ago, Mark Beebe, the hiker, and Tara Prevo, the intern who was then stationed more than 2,000 miles away, began getting to know one another first through a connection on Facebook, then through texts, phone calls and trailside video. He told her of his job delivering pizzas in Portland, Ore., to make ends meet, leaving long days to rove the woods. She told him about her time of homelessness, living for a monthslong stretch out of a pickup truck.

But it was the fires, they said — and the lure of the Pacific Crest Trail, which Ms. Prevo was already dreaming of trying to hike herself — that forged their relationship.

By the end of 2017, the West had suffered one of the worst fire years in decades and an area more than three times the size of Connecticut lay charred, the second-worst year since the early 1950s. East of Portland, a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail — the western counterpart to the Appalachian Trail and a place that defines for many people a kind of spirit path on which to test oneself or find meaning — burned on for three months through the steep terrain of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.

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