Ensuring Future Generations Can Experience the PCT

By Henry Shires
PCTA Legacy Society member and founder of Tarptent

I have been mesmerized by wild places for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a very urban area (Cambridge/Boston, Massachusetts), but had the good fortune to drive to California every summer with my parents. I still have vivid memories of traveling through miles of forest and farmland and then, to my great anticipation, reaching the Wyoming border and the mountains of the West. I would scan the vistas and imagine what it was like high up on the ridges and begged my parents to stop at areas along the interstate where I could quickly access a snowfield. As an 11-year-old, I had my first backpacking experience—in Yosemite, hiking from Tuolumne Meadows to Young Lakes—and I remember the heavy load and crying all the way up the trail. When I reached the destination, however, I fell in love with the land, the lakes, the snowfields and the stars. A half century later the love is still there, and I have been fortunate to walk in wild places on other continents during the intervening years.

I'm fortunate to live an hour's drive from the trail and to be involved in making tent products used by many other trail users. We have the Pacific Crest Trail map up on the office wall and I look at it every day. My PCT thru-hike left an indelible mark on my work ethic, my appreciation for my wife and Tarptent co-owner Cynthia, and my awe at what's possible to achieve with vision, commitment and community.

Besides tent design, I have a passion for teaching (including an MA in teaching of physics from Stanford) and I like to think that my love for the PCT and the experience of long-distance hiking is something which can and should be taught to others. When teaching a subject, the goal is to continually build on things that students already know as a bridge to the things they have yet to learn. For thru-hiking the PCT, the solution is to find the fortitude and formula to get from where you stand to the place you have yet to reach. To stand at the Mexican border and think seriously about walking to the Canadian border is an overwhelming feeling. I learned along the way that the solution to that large and seemingly impossible problem was to break it down into a series of smaller, more manageable ones. For a thru-hike, that became the sequencing of multiday journeys from one resupply to the next, aided and abetted by months of food prep and the tireless work of Cynthia to mailboxes on the appointed days. I reached the border both humbled by the experience and deeply strengthened in my knowledge that, having done that, I could do anything. I want to pass that knowledge on to others—that large problems are solvable with deep commitment and group effort.

My 1999 PCT thru-hike profoundly changed my life and I want to be able to help bring that experience to others. We, in the United States and especially the West, are unbelievably fortunate to have access to so much public land. To be able to walk from Mexico to Canada on wild land and through such a range of ecosystems is a priceless gift to all who partake of it. That gift, however, can only be made ongoing through the hard work of a lot of people working on trail maintenance and protection. Through the tireless effort of PCTA staff and volunteers, my experience lives on for others and I want to do everything I can to pay it back.

Your commitment to preserving the Pacific Crest Trail for future trail-lovers can continue after your lifetime with a planned gift. Learn more about the different options available to you by contacting Angie Williamson at 916-285-1849 and awilliamson@pcta.org.