A 40 Year Section Hike on the Pacific Crest Trail

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

It was 105 in the shade at my brother's house near East Los Angeles. Smoke from a foothills fire browned the sky while rolling blackouts swept through the city, defeating the air conditioning, closing restaurants and bars, leaving us to swelter without benefit of even a fan. Darkened traffic lights made the already horrible traffic impossible. We left LA at dawn, escaping north on US395, heading to the southern terminus of the Sierra Nevada at Walker Pass. We had taken this road forty years ago nearly to the day. Then we were two teenage hiking punks not long out of high school, ditching our menial jobs for the grand adventure of walking the high Sierra from Lake Isabella to Lake Tahoe. We would follow the nascent Pacific Crest Trail, not yet a trail but instead an imprecise route cobbled together from logging roads, cattle driveways and a few stretches of single-track trail...

Then and now, @HappyHour details this hike on the Pacific Crest Trail - read the full story below in Issue 32:

The 40 Year Section Hike

Issue 32 Page 1

[HappyHour]

Aaron didn't include any pictures of Golden Trout in my PCT article. This is a shame, which I can remedy here:

These were caught in Rock Creek, about mile 760 on the PCT.

Here's a bit larger one caught at Cottonwood Lakes on the east side of the Sierra

And as a bonus, here is a Lahontan cutthroat caught in the upper Truckee Basin near the PCT:

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

Thanks for the photos, chasing goldens and backpacking is about as good as it gets. Hard to say if it's the fish themselves or the places you have to go to find them that makes it so great! Also helps on those days when they're nowhere to be found...at least there's always good scenery.