General News
9 November, 2023
Braving the Pacific Crest
An amazing achievement: Shawn Robbins hiked from the Mexico border to the Canadian border and met a variety of people, including his hiking friend Bones (pictured). BOORCAN resident Shawn Robbins has recently returned home from a months-long trek...
An amazing achievement: Shawn Robbins hiked from the Mexico border to the Canadian border and met a variety of people, including his hiking friend Bones (pictured).
BOORCAN resident Shawn Robbins has recently returned home from a months-long trek from the Mexico border to the Canada border.
Mr Robbins hiked the distance along the Pacific Crest Trail, which takes hikers through the American states of California, Oregon and Washington.
The Pacific Crest Trail is one of three main hiking trails that go through the United States (US), with the others being the Appalachian Trail and the Continental Divide Trail.
A dairy farmer of 30 years, Mr Robbins decided to lease out his farm and sell his livestock to give himself a break from working all the time.
He said he was then trying to find something he could do and was keen on finding something new.
“I wanted to keep active; I started going to the gym, and I made a few friends at the gym,” Mr Robbins said.
“I really enjoyed my gym sessions. I was looking for other things to do; I tried taking up cycling, but I just found that I wasn’t enjoying it much.
“I’m not really into football and cricket; I’m a bit different to most people. I like the outdoors; fishing, hunting, that sort of thing, it’s what I grew up with.
“I’ve done a bit of hiking when I was younger, and I started doing a bit around here.”
Mr Robbins has previously completed shorter hikes around Victoria and in South Australia and had been reading into hikes in the US.
“I think the Pacific Crest Trail is probably the jewel in the crown of the big hikes, so the more I read about it the more I got inspired about the idea of doing it and I started planning for it,” he said.
Mr Robbins began his journey by travelling through a desert range between Mexico and the Sierra mountain ranges.
He said every mile he travelled was worth it.
“There’s the 700 miles (1126.54km) of desert for a start, which is from Mexico right up to the Sierras, and it’s beautiful,” Mr Robbins said.
“There’s the Sierra Mountains; getting over some of the passes was a real highlight, up to 13,000ft (3.96km) and more.”
It was at the Sierras, though the Mr Robbins encountered a bit of trouble.
He said he was concerned he would struggle to sleep and was at risk of altitude sickness.
“Once you get above 9000ft (2.74km), many people, have trouble sleeping, and I was no different. I found it quite hard to sleep at that quite high 10,000ft (3.05km) to 11,000ft (3.35km) altitude,” Mr Robbins said.
“I had to learn some mountaineering skills in a hurry; I’ve done a little bit in the snow in the past, but I had my ice axe and my micro-spikes, and I had to really front up and focus on what I was doing.
“It was a real challenge going through the Sierras because it had had a record snow year. More snow than there’s been in a lifetime.
“At night it gets very cold up there, it drops down to -5 degrees Celsius.”
Mr Robbins said his fellow hikers and himself had to get up at 2am and be ready to move at 3am so they could walk on the hardened ice.
“By two in the afternoon, we’d have to stop and make camp for the night because it had got too slushy; the soft snow just sucks all the energy out of you,” he said.
“Up in the northern end of the Sierras, we struck some very high winds on the mountain tops close to 100 miles an hour (160.93 km/h) of gusts.
“That was the toughest day I have had on the whole hike.
“If you’ve never experienced wind like that, you’d wouldn’t understand, but it was so strong you could hardly even breathe, and you’d feel like the whole body was going to get blown off the mountain.”
Once he had cleared the mountains, however, Mr Robbins said they were able to restock and prepare for the next leg of the journey.
“Once we got through, that was virtually the end of the toughest part of the whole hike, getting through the Sierras, and we got through to Kennedy Meadows north, where we got to a pack station there,” he said.
“From then on, it was relatively easy compared to the Sierras.
“I remember reading that around 8000 hikers had been issued permits to start at the Sierras in the spring, and I was told only 100 of those hikers had gone through the Sierras in a clear shot; most people quit for a whole range of reasons.”
Mr Robbins went on through northern California, visiting trail towns as he continued his hike.
He said meeting all sorts of new people and making new friends was another highlight of the experience.
“I met people from all over the world, from Europe, all over Canada, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan; I probably hiked half of the time by myself, and half of the time with pother people,” he said.
“There’re three close friends I made on the trail that I hiked a lot of it with.
“The first guy I was with, he actually quit when we got to the mountains.”
Mr Robbins pressed on, trekking 1600 miles (2574.95km) through California and into Oregon.
He said he found Oregon beautiful, and was able to see various mountains in the distance such as Mount St Helens.
“Oregon was very beautiful up there, and the people up there were a little different, perhaps a bit more genteel,” he said.
“Another real highlight of the trail was crossing the Bridge of the Gods on the Columbian River, which is the border between Washington and Oregon.
“It’s a really nice area through there. It’s the lowest elevation on the trail.
“Up through Washington, it was hot and very humid as I crossed over the river, and it changed very quickly to being cold and quite chilly in the matter of two or three days.”