Sure we know about the record breakers and celebrities, but what about the stories of everyday people who take on long distance thru trails? Meet Gail and Porter Storey.
“If I ever think of doing something like this again, remember: too long, too hard, too much pain, I miss Gail,” Porter Storey wrote from his mosquito-infested camp in California’s Desolation Wilderness. Porter scribbled this warning on his thru-hike of the 2,663 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail in 2004.
Now, he’s ignoring his own advice. In March, Porter, 63, retired from his career in hospice and palliative medicine and began the longer, harder Mexico to Canada hike: the 3,100-mile Continental Divide Trail. “There’s something wonderful about being away from everything at life’s big transitions,” he says.
He plans to reach Canada before snow buries Glacier National Park, but he won’t be able to say he walked the whole way, because he’s not pushing to achieve the end goal at all costs. His first weeks on trail taught him to surrender—an unspectacular lesson often forgotten by adventurers set on pushing past pain to accomplish a goal. “We don’t value enough the wisdom of saying uncle and retreating in peace,” he says.
In northern New Mexico, a storm buried Porter and his tarp in a foot of snow at 10,000 feet on the side of Mt. Taylor. He woke up wet and decided to backtrack 15 miles to the nearest trailhead. Two hundred miles north of Mt. Taylor, Porter encountered a search and rescue team looking for a missing hiker. “It was hard. I turned back, and I’m here to tell the tale. A rescue team isn’t looking for me,” he says.
Updates from Colorado presented an even more troubling tale for a thru-hiker with ultra-light gear and plans to complete the trail by mid-September. Spring storms left the trail through the state buried. Photos showed road signs disappearing beneath the blowing snow. He decided to skip the state because of the deep snowpack. He bailed about 60 miles from the state’s southern border and picked up the trail in Wyoming. When he jumped ahead, he hoped to complete Colorado after wrapping up the rest of the journey this September, but with many miles still ahead, he will put it off until another year.
His wife, Gail Storey, meets him at remote trailheads or where the road meanders near or crosses the trail and drives him to neighboring towns for rest and resupply.
Like Porter, she has learned and respected the limits the trail sets. Over a decade ago, Gail, 67, hiked 900 miles of the PCT with Porter before significant weight loss forced her off the trail. She’s traveling most of the CDT’s distance by vehicle, but she still embraces the adaptability nature forces on travelers: “I love living in the don’t know,” she says. “Which of us knows what next week is going to look like?”
Porter began planning and training for the trip a year ago. He stitched his own lightweight gear—stuff sacks, rain shorts, pack cover and rain coat out of the ultra-lightweight cuben fiber. He hiked, biked and cross-country skied to prepare for the challenging miles. The lack of a defined trail makes navigation a great challenge that he did not encounter on the PCT. He uses the GPS app Guthook’s Guide to find his way. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done but so rewarding,” he told us from Rawlings, Wyoming.
—Photo by Gail and Porter Storey
