Screenwriter Nonny Okwelogu struggles to find diplomatic words to describe the scent of people who have spent months backpacking the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail. The body odor is “robust, multilayered, pervasive,” she says, before shrugging. “By now, we no longer smell it.”
She would know. Okwelogu, 29, of Los Angeles, is one of thousands of intrepid Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) thru-hikers entering Oregon this summer, halfway through their 2,663-mile, northbound quest to walk from the U.S. border at Mexico to Canada.
Since they departed Campo, 1,720 miles away at the bottom of California, they’ve endured wet, windy, snowy and hot dirt trails. And, fueled by peanut butter, jerky and dried fruit, they have grown leaner, more muscular.
By now, it’s clear, from their worn hiking shoes to the sun-blocking hoodies over their messy moptops, that thru-hikers look, eat and, they’ll admit, smell different than anyone else.
Portland author Cheryl Strayed, who solo hiked the PCT through northern California and Oregon and wrote the best-selling memoir, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” describes her hair during the journey as “coarser and strangely double in thickness, sprung alive by layers of dried sweat and trail dust.”
Okwelogu’s hiking partner, Eddie Arriola, 40, of Tucson, Arizona, confesses he didn’t make up the term “hiker trash glow up,” but months in, he embraces it.
“It’s when you’re feeling good and have a glow after you have gone feral, separated from civilization, and you just let it all go,” says Arriola, who posts stories and photographs at pct.edwardarriola.net.
Arriola, with a shaggy head of hair and a thick mustache and beard, holds up his hands to show his nails are painted Barbie pink and purple. He says random nail polish is a trend this year, but “shaving is still not.”
On Saturday, July 22, Okwelogu and Arriola arrived at Callahan’s Mountain Lodge, the legendary Mount Ashland respite for PCT hikers eager to leave behind the travails of California’s sun-blasted Mojave Desert and snow-packed Sierra Nevada mountain range to cross into Oregon’s so-called green tunnel.
Callahan’s’ restaurant staff knows to dash over with tumblers of ice water when they see dusty hikers dropping fat backpacks to the ground.
“It’s so nice to drink water you didn’t have to carry,” says Okwelogu.
Or first filter out bacteria, viruses or parasites, replies Arriola, a travel physical therapist assistant in between assignments. His trail name is “Minstrel,” since he’s known to suddenly burst into song.
Okwelogu is a member of the Writers Guild of America and has been on strike since May. In Hollywood, she’s known for her independent films and her contract with Universal Studios.
On the PCT, people call her “Ketchup,” the trail name bestowed on her after a mishap with an exploding bottle at a diner. She says the trail name is fitting because she hikes slowly at first, but by the end of the day, “I catch up.”
This year, PCT hikers have been thwarted by dangerously high snowpack and streams in the Sierra Nevada and backpackers without serious mountaineering and wilderness travel skills are being told not to go by Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park rangers.
A majority of trekkers hitchhiked past the deep snow (called a “flip-flop”), some with the intention to backtrack at the end of their journey, according to the Pacific Crest Trail Association. The 46-year-old nonprofit issues long-distance permits, up to 8,000 a year, on behalf of the U.S. Forest Service.
Last year, PCT hikers were forced off the trail by the 57,500-acre McKinney Fire in California’s northern Siskiyou County. Many were shuttled to Ashland in buses or by police driving vans, or in the back of cars driven by volunteers called trail angels.
PCT hikers in Oregon will see Crater Lake National Park and eventually, the Port of Cascade Locks, the site of the free Pacific Crest Trail Days festival (”PCT Days”) on Aug. 18-19. They will then cross the Columbia River on the steel Bridge of the Gods into Washington to complete their end-to-end walk to Canada.
The number of calories PCT hikers consume is as legendary as the nine-pound pancake eating challenge at the Seiad Cafe in Northern California. Hiking 20 miles or more a day, consistently, means they can wipe out an all-you-can-eat buffet and still nonchalantly use a spoon to consume a jar of mayonnaise for extra calories.
The late endurance hiker and writer Chuck (“Steel-Eye”) Chelin, who lived outside of Sandy, Oregon, compared a thru-hiker’s metabolism to a red-hot wood stove. “That gaunt look is the reason bears hide their own food in trees when thru-hikers are in the area,” he wrote in his online trail journal.
Stephanie Dodge of Medford has been a trail angel for four years, and even though she’s slight in stature, she’s known as “Big Mama” for coming to the aid of PCT hikers. She conducts what’s called “trail magic” by setting up chairs and handing out energy bars, instant Quaker oats and drinks, often between southern Oregon’s Howard Prairie and Fish Lake.
“I am a pay-it-forward angel,” who does not charge or take donations, she says. “Hikers adhere to this and later tell me great stories of their gifts of kindness to others. These hikers are all so different and very precious to me.”
PCT hiker Julie (”Badass”) Leger of Canada, who has hiked six continents, was forced to stop her trek on the PCT in Oregon because of a foot injury. While recovering, she volunteered as a trail angel, and then Dodge drove her 280 miles to the Portland International Airport on July 19 to fly home.
At a Medford diner days before, Dodge looked admiringly at a photo she took of PCT hikers with trail names of “Bonustime,” “Diva” and “Coyote.” Dodge says, “They are amazing adventurers with interesting stories.” She and Leger then pointed out the telltale signs of endurance hikers who make it to Oregon:
Tanned legs start at the bottom of shorts and end at the top of socks. Hands are tanned except across the back of the wrists, which are sheltered from the sun by hiking pole straps.
To break through bland khaki colors, new shirts and gaiters have bright, swirling color schemes, “like a bowling shirt fever dream,” describes Arriola. With only one spare set of synthetic clothes, rinsed out along the way and dried in the sun, every piece of apparel is now faded, shabby and mismatched. Evaporated sweat has left a salt crust around collars and hats.
Hikers are hobbling with blistered feet, shin splints, knee braces. Some have missing toenails, bug bites and raw skin. Strayed compared her skin that was rubbed by the hip belt of her oversized backpack to “tree bark and plucked dead chicken flesh.”
Other characteristics: Miles to endurance hikers are like inches to most people. As Strayed wrote: “I didn’t think the words ‘only’ and ‘200 miles’ belonged in the same sentence.” Said Chelin, “‘Pretty soon’ to a thru-hiker means a walk 332 miles away to Cascade Locks, while, to a day hiker, it means 20 miles to Pilot Rock.”
People who follow the PCT-Southern Oregon/Ashland Trail Angels page were asked by The Oregonian/OregonLive to explain visual clues of a true thru-hiker.
Candy wrappers stuffed into a fanny pack and a toiletry bag attached to a backpack are giveaways to Jay Go. Also dangling from a backpack with a PCT patch are an ice axe, sleep pad, camp shoes and portable solar panel to recharge GPS navigation and communication devices to let family know they are still alive.
Gary K. Stevens jokes that he relies on the M&M’s peanut chocolate candy test. If left on the trail, a thru-hiker will pick it up and eat it. Toby Hayes posted that the distinction is best seen on their face; “it’s a mix of beleaguered exhaustion and pure joy.”
“It’s not always obvious,” says Chad Skinner. Thru-hikers could be wearing the same brand of clothes and shoes as day hikers, and they look like they’ve been beaten by weather, but so do others. There is, however, one distinguishing factor, he says: “Long-distance hikers can appear to be clean. Unless you get close.”
Arriola had COVID a month before he started on the PCT. His sense of taste returned quickly, but his sense of smell was gone for the first three weeks of his trip.
He remembers changing out of his wet shirt at the end of a long day in his tent, “and the smell hit me full force,” he says. It’s more caveman than sweaty gym guy. “At least the guy in the gym had showered in the last 24 hours and there’s still a trace of deodorant,” says Arriola. “With me, I have gone full mammal. It’s permeating, like a chemical change.”
After giving it more thought and talking with hiking partner Okwelogu, he adds, “Ketchup and I think a lot of spotting a thru-hiker comes from seeing someone disheveled and content with it. We’re not hiding or embarrassed; we’re happy to be sore and dirty, and we’re happy to be around others.”
