By Stowell P. Watters
Staff Writer
    The Pacific Coast Trail (PCT) is 2,650 miles long, a backpacking foray that can take more than seven months of hiking and climbing over glacier-flanked mountains, deserts, meadows and forests; but the real test, according to Rachel Pelletier and Jack Richardson, formerly of Kennebunkport, is in the preparation.
    “You have to be thorough, you cannot just wing something like this,” Pelletier said, sitting in the couple’s Lyman home.
    In preparation she divided the trip into sections so that she and her husband could visualize, categorize and easily comprehend each leg of the trip. The first stretch; 648 miles of pure, Mojave Desert.
    The PCT starts on the Mexican border, most adventurers choose to travel north to avoid the desert in the peak of the summer, ending the trip in Northern Washington. Richardson and Pelletier began their trip in April 2007, at 4:30 a.m.
    “We wore desert clothes to start with, lose fitting clothing that protected our eyes from the light and our skin from the sun,” Richardson said. “In the desert it is anywhere from 80 to 120 degrees , and you have to put your boots and pack inside your tent at night for fear of scorpions and rattlers.”
    With limited packing space (their bags weighed about 40 pounds), the couple used a network of family and friends to keep them supplied every step of the way. They stopped at post offices in towns near the trail where they would have waiting for them a new set of gear, and plenty of prepared trail-food, mailed by their trusted friends. Prior to the trip, Richardson and Pelletier made dehydrated vegetarian meals such as chili, rice, spaghetti with marinara, hummus and even some dessert.
    “We bought about 500 Snickers bars and we made 150 pounds of GORP (Good Old Raisins and Peanuts),” Richardson said.
    To heat the food they carried a small stove. But the word “small” doesn’t really describe the fist-sized alcohol stove Richardson built for the trip.
    “This is our kitchen,” he said, unveiling the apparatus.
    It consists of an aluminum container that Richardson would fill with denatured alcohol and a small bit of wire that would secure a pot over the burning medium. The couple used common, aluminum backed mailer bags to steep the food in water boiled on the alcohol stove.
    “It works amazingly well, hot food after a day of hiking, you cant beat that,” Richardson said. He estimated the stove could heat two cups of water in about six minutes, beneficial considering he and his wife each needed 6,000 to 8,000 calories a day.
    Previously the couple had hiked the Appalachian Trail (AT), no small feat in itself consisting of a 2,168 mile hike spanning the east coast of the United States. They actually met at a hiker hostel on that trip, and spent five of the seven months together on the mountains and in the meadows. Richardson turned 60-years-old on the AT.
    “It was my dream for 30 years to do the AT, I had read and read and read about it and my friends thought I was crazy, but I needed to do it. I am not an athlete, I never thought I could do it and I had to wait for my son to grow up because I couldn’t leave him alone,” Pelletier said.
    She gave away clients from her Reiki and Reflexology practice in Kennebunk, Healing Ways, where she is a teacher, Reiki master and massage therapist. Pelletier is just now starting to build her practice once again.
    The couple, after meeting on the trail, decided to get married in 2004. Richardson, retired, joined the Kennebunk Emergency Medical Services (KEMS) as an EMT, and worked there for the year the couple lived in Kennebunkport.
   On the AT the two were afforded comfort in the form of lean-tos and hiker hostels; this was not the case on the PCT. The PCT, Richardson said, is a lot more extreme than the AT. Three thousand hikers start the AT yearly on average; 300 start the PCT.
   “There are no more than five stations along the way for hikers to stop on the PCT, so you carry your world with you on your back,” Pelletier said.
   Their sleeping arrangement was comprised of a lightweight tent and two extremely thin bed rolls. In the desert they would seek out large Joshua Trees and nap under them during the day, when the sun was too hot for hiking. At night, Richardson said, the coyotes and the stars would come alive.
   “We were not looking at nature, we were in it. We were completely immersed in a stunning, amazing world every day,” he said. “We just began running out of superlatives and had to suffice for letting our jaws just dangle in the wind.”
   For 10 hours a day they hiked north, through the High Sierra Mountains in California. At 14,000 feet, the air was thin and the couple saw many hikers sick on the trail.
    “It is the nature of the trip to help other people, sometimes you even run into a trail angel,” Pelletier said.
    A trail angel, she said, is a phenomenon in the form of an altruistic helper who saves the day at just the right moment.
    As it turns out, she herself would need the help of a trail angel as her feet began to seriously bother her during this leg of the trip. The heat from the desert literally cooked the soles of her feet, causing the skin to come off.
    “A bird watcher in the Lake Arrowhead Area (California) was my trail angel. He helped us get to a hospital where I could be treated, it was bad, I could barely walk,” Pelletier said. After her foot swelled two sizes and she laid in rest at the hospital for a week or so, the couple hit the trail again, with plenty of bandages to keep Pelletier’s feet wrapped.
    From Mt. Washington in Oregon they watched the Black Butte forest fire rip across the countryside in the dark, which destroyed some 30,000 acres.
    “The fire was within a mile of us, we got pretty nervous, called 9-1-1, but everything turned out fine,” Richardson said. The biggest danger, he said, was fording the countless rivers along the way. “The water you are crossing comes from melting glaciers, it is freezing and can be very swift.”
    Pelletier said she was disappointed to see very few glaciers, and the ones that she did see were smaller than she had imagined.
    “Global warming,” she speculated.
    In California Richardson twisted his knee while walking over lava rocks. The uneven surface, coupled by sharp, grippy lava rocks, brought disaster to the trip.
    “We had to stop, I couldn’t walk that well anymore,” Richardson said. He had a doctor look at his leg, and took two weeks off from the hike. During this time the couple cruised around, seeing Mt. St. Helena and Mt. Renier through the glass windows of a rental car.
    They resumed the trip in Washington and hiked a while longer, but still the pain followed Richardson and in September 2007 they stopped, with less than 1,000 miles left on the PCT.
     “We will go back. We will finish what we started. For now we just need to settle in and get back to life on the lake,” Pelletier said, gesturing toward the lakeside view at the couple’s Lyman home.
   The two saw so much that it can hardly be contained by a single article. To review their travels you can visit www.trailjournals.com and search for the user “tumbleweed2001AT” or “tumbleweed2001PCT,” Richardson’s journals.
    “The introspection I gained was amazing. You have to get away from this ‘normal life’ and obtain some simplicity. I know what is important, I found it when I was sleeping on the ground, living next to the animals,” Richardson said.
    “Nature has healing powers, it guides people, guided me to listen to my heart. It helps us find the wisdom and power within to do what is needed, it was truly a sacred journey,” Pelletier said.