Going the distance

Feature Correspondent

SANDPOINT — Descriptions of the trips Fred Gaudet favors won’t be found in your average travel guide. One he completed a couple of years ago, for instance, is advertised as offering severe weather, hypothermia, lightning, avalanche, dehydration, bears and mountain lions.

That was a hike along the Continental Divide Trail — more than 3,000 miles of backpacking that took him from Mexico to the Canadian border, encountering elevations that ran from a few thousand feet above sea level in New Mexico to nearly 14,300 feet at the top of Grays Peak in Colorado.

This summer, Gaudet added the Pacific Crest Trail to the list of extreme hikes he has finished. Once again, he started at the Mexican border and hiked north until he ran into Canada, racking up a total of about 2,600 miles along the way.

The lengthy outings started back in 2002, when he retired from working at a community college near Phoenix and decided to hike the then-fledgling Arizona Trail.

“It was my transition away from being a workaholic to becoming a hike-a-holic,” Gaudet said. “By the time I got done, I couldn’t even remember where I had worked. I became hooked on it — almost addicted.”

The Arizona Trail, which covers a little more than 800 miles from Mexico to the Arizona-Utah border, marked the longest trek the hiker had taken until that point. The following year, he dove headlong into a much tougher goal — walking the entire length of the Continental Divide Trail.

It took Gaudet four summers to chalk that one up, partly due to setbacks that included snowstorms that nearly trapped him at 13,000 feet one season and a debilitating case of giardia in another. Mostly, however, it was the demands of hiking great distances over extended periods of time that set the parameters for how much trail he could cover in a summer.

“I thought I could be a through-hiker,” said Gaudet, who turns 70 in December, “but then I realized that my body can take about six to eight weeks of hiking before I have to stop.”

Most days on the trail started before 6 a.m. and lasted until 6 or 7 that evening. In that time, the hiker would cover about of 20-25 miles, depending on the terrain. Because most of the country he passed through was rugged and far removed from civilization, he met only one or two other people a day. The solitude was pleasant, Gaudet said, but he never found himself falling into a meditative state or ruminating over the meaning of life. On the contrary, he was content to simply wend his way along the trail, letting his brain relax as his feet picked up the workload.

“I don’t think a lot when I’m hiking,” he said. “I’m not trying to solve the problems of the world. The issues at hand are: Where’s the next water?  Where am I going to camp?

“Basically, I just zone out.”

Not that there aren’t recurring themes that play like movie reels in his head as he puts one foot in front of the other. Gaudet uses mental motivators — images he holds out before him that make it possible to grind his way to the top of the next ridgeline or make it across one more mountain pass before the end of the day.

“I have thoughts like, ‘I wonder if the next town will have a big slice of apple pie with ice cream?  Or a double hamburger with bacon?’” Gaudet said.

These are luxuries that, for obvious reasons, don’t make it into his backpack; an outfit that has a base weight of about 14 pounds, plus the added weight of approximately two pounds of food and six pounds of water a day. Gaudet is able to keep his rig at that manageable level by boxing up provisions at home and having his wife ship them to him to be retrieved at predetermined points on the trail.

He also keeps himself supplied with necessities by using what long-distance hikers call a “drift box” or “bounce box” that is picked up at each restocking point and then shipped ahead to the next expected stop after being stuffed with things such as extra Band-aids, fresh batteries, water purification tablets and matches.

Even with approximately 7,000 miles of trail behind him since retirement, Gaudet never felt as if he had become lost or disoriented to the point of being in danger.

“The trail would get lost sometimes,” he said. “But, eventually, it always found itself again.”

Gaudet has wandered through parts of the country that most of us only see in coffee table books and Sierra Club calendars. His hikes have taken him through the harsh beauty of deserts in Arizona and New Mexico, scree-covered peaks in the High Sierras, over mountain passes that strafe the clouds in the Rockies and through the mists of fern shrouded glens in the forests of Washington State. His favorite terrain has been in the high country, where the agonies of humping a backpack uphill are paid off with views that roll out like a topographical carpet, unencumbered in every direction.

“When you’re up on the high ridges, you can see for miles,” Gaudet said. “On the Pacific Crest Trail, once you get up there, you’re up for a long time. Sometimes you hike for days along the ridgeline.”

At times, the terrain changed so dramatically that Gaudet was nearly convinced that his weeks of hiking had carried him to another planet altogether. He had that impression as he crested the Sonora Pass in California’s Sierra Nevada range. Behind him were the mighty, rounded shoulders of the High Sierras and, spread out before him was a kingdom of basalt towers rising out of the sand dunes.

“You leave the white granite domes and you come up to this lava rock with the sand blown up against it,” Gaudet said. “It’s almost surreal.”

One of his favorite stretches of trail was covered this past summer near the end of his Pacific Crest Trail hike, as he passed through the Goat Rocks Wilderness in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

“I like the starkness of those mountains, the sheer peaks and cliffs of the North Cascades,” Gaudet said. “The trail runs right along the ridgeline and looks like it drops straight down on either side.”

Fred Gaudet has joined a somewhat exclusive club by hiking three of the longest continuous trails in the country. In 2002, he was the only person to complete the Arizona Trail, after fires prohibited others who made the attempt from making it to the end. Each year, more than 300 potential through-hikers — known as “the herd” — gather at the Mexican border to tackle the Pacific Crest Trail. Roughly half of them drop out, bested by loneliness, lack of preparation, exhaustion, or a combination of all three. 

But for those who go the distance, the trail offers the majesty that comes with hiking on top of the world, as well as other secret gifts that are tucked away in the valleys and draws.

“One of the most surprising places I came across was along Mt. Adams in the Cascade Range, where there were fields of lupines,” Gaudet said. “Miles upon miles of flowers — in front of you, behind you and on both sides of you for as far as you could see. As you’re walking through the middle of them, you brush up against the flowers and smell their scent. That was a delightful way to spend a day.”

Gaudet now is considering a hike along the Appalachian Trail, a 2,100-mile journey that runs from Georgia to Maine. Adding that trip to his existing experience would put him in the rare company of those who have completed the “Triple Crown” of long-distance hikes in the United States.

“I’ve been hiking about 1,000 miles a summer and I’m not sure what’s next,” he said. “I’ve got all winter to recuperate and think about it. And to start planning, because the planning is almost as fun as the trip itself.”