For a summer vacation, we hiked 2,650 miles

Summer getaways are merely vacations for most of us. Katherine Cook and Rob Robicheaux of Nine Mile Falls made their 2005 summer trip into a lifestyle.

“We still travel light, and even today we weigh out our cheese and stuff at home to make sure the other one doesn’t get a tenth of an ounce more per meal,” said Robicheaux, who walked into a Spokane eatery wearing the type of off-trail sandals he’d created while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

“They’re made from a shoelace and the insole from a trail running shoe,” he said. “They’re almost weightless.”

Cook, 23, and Robicheaux, 28, met at Evergreen College. Even though they survived the stress test of hiking together for 4 1/2 months from Mexico to Canada, sleeping under the same tarp and eating out of the same cook pot (no bowls to save weight), they don’t even carry much baggage in their relationship.

“We’re just friends,” Cook said, noting that they share a place and they both work at Mountain Gear.

Unlike most through-hikers seeking to complete the entire PCT through California, Oregon and Washington, Cook and Robicheaux did not assume individual trail names. “We became known as The Goat People,” Cook said. “It wasn’t as though there were two of us. We were just the hikers with the goat.”

Sid, a pygmy goat, defined more than their name.

“Sometimes early in the trip through the Mojave Desert, we had to carry two or three gallons of water to make it 30 miles to the next water source,” Robicheaux said, noting that water weighs 8 pounds a gallon. They’d often carry gallon jugs of water in their hands, since their ultra-light packs were too small and flimsy to handle the extra load.

“We had to have enough water for Sid to drink as well as water to wet him down to survive the heat,” Cook said.

Ironically, their saddest moment on the trail quickly transformed into freedom and relief.

Even though Cook had obtained a PCT stock permit before the trip, a ranger refused to let them pass through Sequoia National Park, noting that the Park Service doesn’t officially consider goats to be stock.

They hiked out of the Sierras, called Cook’s mom, who drove 1,300 miles from Spokane to fetch the goat in Lone Pine, Calif.

After the goat was on his way back to a cushier life in Janet Cook’s backyard, the two hikers realized his departure was a blessing.

“Pygmy goats just aren’t made for that kind of trip,” Cook said. “They have to eat, ruminate and sleep and they don’t do any of it at the same time, nor do they do it while they walk. We were pushing him too hard. Every time we sat down to relax, Rob was sewing up nylon booties to try to protect his splitting hooves.

“But he was a trooper. He made it 800 miles, and he was a celebrity on the trail.”

Sans Sid, The Goat People (they didn’t get rid of the name) found themselves cruising with packs that weighed about 11 pounds before food and water, and easily averaging 25 miles a hiking day.

Their routine boiled down to walking, eating and sleeping. They even brushed their teeth while they walked.

From their May 21 start at the Mexico border to their Oct. 2 finish in Canada’s Manning Provincial Park, they crossed 40 wilderness areas, 24 national forests, 7 national parks, 3 state parks, 19 major canyons and 57 mountain passes.

The PCT reaches from near sea level at the Mexico border to 13,200 feet at Forester Pass near Mount Whitney where they walked in the shadow of the highest peak in the lower 48 states.

And that’s only one example of the route’s highs and lows.

Relationship test: “The hike was way more stress to our friendship than we ever expected,” Cook said. “We had to be in company of the same person 24/7, every day and every night because we shared gear like our stove, pot and tarp (shelter).”

Consumed by food: “You develop a profound and intimate relationship with food,” said Cook, noting that they were burning about 6,000 calories a day. “You transcend from eating for taste and pleasure to simply eating what it takes to fuel your body so you can keep trekking.”

The bulk of their nutrition came from pasta, nuts and dried fruits. When her body was starved for calories, Cook occasionally sloshed down straight swigs of olive oil.

Despite meticulous food preparation and planning for food re-supply along the trail, the peanuts in their nut mix eventually went rancid and the organic dried fruits were harboring maggots. “We ate them that way for the last few hundred miles,” Cook said.

Their tastes changed along the route, gradually falling in line with most through-hikers as they relied more on concentrated calories they could find in gas stations and other places where the trail crossed major roads.

“Peanut butter is always good and Fritos are a great source of salt and calories,” Robicheaux said.

“Snickers bars might be the most popular food with through-hikers,” Cook said. “For 60 cents you get 240 lightweight, compact calories. After a few weeks on the trail, that’s what it all comes down to: Calories-to-weight ratio, and cost.”

Eat it and beat it: “We’d planned to cook two meals a day, but there just wasn’t time to cook in the morning. We tended to eat while we were walking, stuffing nuts and stuff in our mouths.”

Favorite stretch: “There’s just so much beautiful country to be specific,” Cook said.

“We loved the wild and serene stretches through the 700 miles of desert,” Robicheaux said, “even though we hit a heat wave and the temperatures went over 100 degrees.”

“But Southern California has a schizoid personality,” Cook said. “Some of the trail is along railroads and really weird trailer parks.”

The high Sierras are stunning, they agreed. But pressed for their favorite section, they singled out the PCT through the North Cascades north of Snoqualmie Pass.

Least favorite stretch: “Ironically, one of the worst parts of the trail is just south of Snoqualmie Pass, where you have to hike about 50 miles through huge ugly clearcuts,” Robicheaux said.

Gutsiest day: Post-holing through deep snow for nine miles over Mirror Pass in the Sierras.

Toughest day: Hiking the razor-edge route along the spine of Washington’s Goat Rocks Wilderness, where on a different day they would have enjoyed miles of sweeping views including Mount Adams, St. Helens and Rainier.

“We were in a storm and we really couldn’t see anything,” Cook said. “We went 35 miles that day trying to find a campsite. The winds were really bad. There’s not a tree and you’re totally exposed to the elements.”

Gear strategies: Mail stops along the way allowed them to restock on food and change gear for the terrain. They used umbrellas for shade from the sun in the desert. Robicheaux sent his home in the Sierras while Cook kept hers as rain gear for most of the hike. “It works fine unless you have a lot of wind,” she said.

They carried full rain shells through the North Cascades.

Warm clothing was among the things they found they could do without for most of the trip.

“We used fleece tops in the Sierras and then sent them home,” Cook said. Their wardrobes consisted of ultralight nylon running shorts, homemade nylon wind pants and tops, two pairs of socks and a shirt — Robicheaux chose a Capilene shirt while Cook wore a polyester blouse with puffy sleeves that she’d bought at Value Village for $3.

“If the weather gets wet or cold, you basically just keep walking and then make camp and get into your quilt,” Cook said. Each of them had made their own 2-pound “sleeping bags” for about $60 each using nylon and PrimaLoft filling. They were no lighter than more efficient modern sleeping bags, but they were a quarter of the cost.

A tarp served as their shelter. “It worked great except a few nights in Yosemite when the mosquitoes were terrible,” Cook said. “I’d sewed some bug netting on my quilt, but it would flop down on my face and the bugs would bite right through it.”

The stove was fashioned from an aluminum pop can and fueled with denatured alcohol.

“It was extremely cheap and light,” Robicheaux said. “But when you consider that it took extra fuel and a long time to boil water, I’m not sure it was an advantage over a lightweight butane stove.”

First-aid kit: Lots of Ibuprofen and Band-Aids.

Not-so-deep thoughts: Cook, who plans to go to graduate school in mathematics, liked to run numbers through her head during the hike, calculating pace in mph, minutes-to-destination, calories burned, etc.

“You’re not thinking about little things that you did or didn’t do,” she said. “I carried that baggage for quite a while. But on the trail, there’s no TV, billboards or distractions. You get really preoccupied by the present.

“The world is a lot simpler when you’re hiking. Everything is paired down to basic functions. Timing a bowel movement for good hole-digging ground and a natural source of TP is a big deal in your day.”

Worth the weight: Cook said she read a few novels, cutting up the book in advance and packing several chapters in each re-supply box.

“Reading was a luxury that was worth the extra weight,” she said.

Good timing: They completed the 2,650-mile PCT on Oct. 2 with the first snow falling lightly on them.

“We only had two campfires on the entire trip and one of them was that last night,” Cook said.