keeping this book in print.
– Jeffrey P. Schaffer
March 2003
The Statue (left), stands above Statue Lake (not seen here), Section P
About this Book
Wilderness Press first published its book on the Pacific Crest Trail in June 1973, over 30 years ago. Since then, the book has sold nearly 100,000 copies, or roughly 3,000 a year, and has earned the reputation as “the PCT Bible” from backpackers and through-hikers on the trail. It is the most essential resource available to anyone who is planning a PCT trek, and its importance to those who are dreaming of hiking the PCT became all too clear the summer of 2002 when we let the old edition go out of print as we updated, corrected, and digitized the new edition. We received numerous phone calls and emails from folks who needed the book, and, to them, we do apologize. At last report, the old edition of The Pacific Crest Trail was being auctioned on eBay for over $75 a copy. Of such things, are legends made.
We made the decision in 2001 to split the large one-volume Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California book into two separate volumes, and to take the time to bring the book into the modern age. Times had changed and the way books and maps are produced for print media has undergone a tremendous revolution. Many of Wilderness Press’ books have needed to be transformed through the alchemical process of turning old mechanicals (the original three-dimensional maps, art work and pasted-up boards) into digital files. For years we could get by doing things the old way, but few printers can accommodate mechanically-prepared books: it’s all disk-to-plate and that requires, in essence, a complete republishing of the book.
We now present the PCT book in two volumes. By splitting the original book, we were able to redesign it in order to enhance readability and make it a bit more portable. We also added new photos and improved the quality of the old ones. Most of the maps in this volume are the original reliable maps that were updated as each new edition of the old single-volume book went into production. However, there were enough new changes for a number of the maps that we commissioned cartographer Ben Pease to take several of the old ‘mechanical’ maps and create new ones, adding corrections and new data. As most readers know, the PCT maps in Wilderness Press’ books are the most detailed and current available.
Formerly published as The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California; now the California section of the PCT is covered by two books: Pacific Crest Trail: Southern California (From the Mexican border to Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows) and Pacific Crest Trail: Northern California (From Tuolumne Meadows to the Oregon Border). A third book, The Pacific Crest Trail, Oregon & Washington (6th edition, August 2000) is also published by Wilderness Press; it covers the Northwestern part of the PCT and is authored by Jeffrey P. Schaffer and Andy Selters. Since only a few users of the Pacific Crest Trail are complete through-hikers, the division of these texts should make it easier for planning the kind of shorter two-to-three week treks that most folks do.
As Wilderness Press enters its 36th year of publishing, it intends to keep alive some of its classic older volumes, which means we are investing in the new technology and redesigning many of our older books. We would love to hear your comments or suggestions on how our books can be improved. Contact me at [email protected], or write to Managing Editor, Wilderness Press, 1200 5th Street, Berkeley, CA 94710.
Thank you for buying and using this book. We hope it serves you well as you prepare for and set off on an incredible trip along the Pacific Crest Trail.
– Jannie M. Dresser, Managing Editor, Wilderness Press
Pacific Crest Trail in California
Letters I-R on this map refer trail chapters in this book. Letters A-H are covered in Pacific Crest Trail: Southern California.
Chapter 1
The PCT, Its History and Use
During the 1800s, Americans traveling west toward the Pacific States were confronted with mountain barriers such as the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada. The idea of making a recreational trek along the crest of these ranges probably never entered anyone’s mind, and probably did not occur until the 1890s, if that. However, relatively early in the 1900s, a party did make a recreational multi-day crest traverse of a part of the Sierra Nevada. From July 8-25, 1913, Charles Booth, accompanied by his wife, Nora, and two friends, Howard Bliss and Elmer Roberts, made a pack trip from Tuolumne Meadows north to Lake Tahoe. Today’s Pacific Crest Trail closely follows much of their trek.
Conception of the PCT
The first proposal for the creation of a Pacific Crest Trail that we have been able to discover is contained in the book Pacific Crest Trails, by Joseph T. Hazard (Superior Publishing Co.). He says that in 1926 a Catherine Montgomery at the Western Washington College of Education in Bellingham suggested to him that there should be:
“A high trail winding down the heights of our western mountains with mile markers and shelter huts—like those pictures I’ll show you of the ‘Long Trail of the Appalachians’—from the Canadian Border to the Mexican Boundary Line!”
To go back six years in time, the Forest Service had by 1920 routed and posted a trail from Mt. Hood to Crater Lake in Oregon, named the Oregon Skyline Trail, and with hindsight we can say that it was the first link in the PCT. (For brevity in this book, we refer to the Pacific Crest Trail as the “PCT.” Technically the official name is the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, abbreviated as the PCNST. However, this abbreviation is more cumbersome, and essentially no one uses it.)
Hazard says that on that very night, he conveyed Miss Montgomery’s suggestion to the Mt. Baker Club of Bellingham, which was enthusiastic about it. He says that soon a number of other mountain clubs and outdoor organizations in the Pacific Northwest adopted the idea and set about promoting it. Then, in 1928, Fred W. Cleator became Supervisor of Recreation for Region 6 (Oregon and Washington) of the US Forest Service. Cleator proclaimed and began to develop the Cascade Crest Trail, a route down the spine of Washington from Canada to the Columbia River. Later, he extended the Oregon Skyline Trail at both ends so that it too traversed a whole state. In 1937 Region 6 of the Forest Service developed a design for PCT trail markers and posted them from the Canadian border to the California border.
But the Forest Service’s Region 5 (California) did not follow this lead, and it remained for a private person to provide the real spark not only for a California segment of the PCT but indeed for the PCT itself. In the early 1930s the idea of a Pacific Crest Trail entered the mind of Clinton C. Clarke of Pasadena, California, who was then chairman of the Executive Committee of the Mountain League of Los Angeles County. “In March 1932,” wrote Clarke in The Pacific Crest Trailway, he “proposed to the United States Forest and National Park services the project of a continuous wilderness trail across the United States from Canada to Mexico….The plan was to build a trail along the summit divides of the mountain ranges of these states, traversing the best scenic areas and maintaining an absolute wilderness character.”
The proposal included formation of additional Mountain Leagues in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco by representatives of youth organizations and hiking and mountaineering clubs similar to the one in Los Angeles. These Mountain Leagues would then take the lead in promoting the extension of the John Muir Trail northward and southward to complete a pathway from border to border. When it became evident that more than Mountain Leagues were needed for such a major undertaking, Clarke took the lead in forming the Pacific Crest Trail System Conference, with representatives from the three Pacific Coast states. He served as its President for 25 years.
As early as January 1935 Clarke published a handbook-guide to the PCT giving the route in rather sketchy terms (“the Trail goes east of Heart Lake, then south across granite fields to the junction of Piute and Evolution