Nick's Long Walk || Pacific Crest Trail 2001

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The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin), April 19, 2001 - Walking with Nick, by Lynn Welch

WALKING WITH NICK
FOLLOW MAN'S TREK ONLINE, HELP A GOOD CAUSE

Nick Brown will hike the Pacific Crest Trail for five months this spring and summer. And he wants you to come along.

Actually, the Madison Memorial High School graduate wants more than that.

Nick will leave his daily routine -- filled with freelance Web design, painting, drawing and photography -- to hike the 2,650-mile trail from Mexico to Canada starting next Friday, April 27. He'll take the long walk in part to raise money for Bay Area Wilderness Training, a 3-year-old San Francisco nonprofit organization that trains adult youth workers to bring kids into the wilderness.

The fund-raising goal: $10 per mile. The hiking objective: 20 miles per day.

Family, friends and well-wishers in Nick's hometown and around the world can join in his journey and contribute to his cause through his Web site, www.nickslongwalk.org.

"He's talked about it for some time, has been wanting to do this, and what a very pleasant surprise for us is that he's not only doing it for himself but he's doing it for others," said Nick's dad, Senn Brown. Nick's parents, Senn and Kathy, will be following his journey online from their Madison home. His sister, Kristine, will watch online from Stoughton.

Weekly journals, photos and drawings on the site will chronicle the diverse terrain on the trail. A secure section of the site is set up to receive credit card donations to the hike.

Nick won't use a laptop computer or satellite phone to transmit text and images to his site. He's using a mobile mail tool made by Sharp, the TM-20. It's a battery-run electronic messaging device that uses a service called PocketMail to send and receive information. Information is transmitted using an analog modem when you dial the toll-free PocketMail access number and hold the device up to almost any phone.

"It's unlike anything I've seen. It's less fancy than the Palm and looks like one of those big calculators I used in high school calculus class," Nick explained. "It folds and has a small keyboard on it that you can type in messages and send and receive mail by holding it next to a phone."

Nick will transmit information from pay phones along the way. Sam Brown, Nick's cousin, will receive Nick's content and maintain the Web site throughout the hike.

This analog technology was developed for NASA. But it has become popular with a lot of hikers and outdoor enthusiasts because of the size of the device and unique capability the service offers.

And for Nick, it's the perfect way to recreate his experience on the trail and draw viewers to his site and to the fund-raising cause.

But money is only one objective.

"The primary goal is the journey and I have personal reasons for doing that," the 26-year-old 1993 Memorial graduate said from his Oakland, Calif., home. "I know of others who have done long hikes on the Pacific Crest Trail and Appalachian and some other trails and raised money for organizations and I just sort of recognized that it holds a lot of potential for that sort of thing. People get fired up for these sorts of journeys. They're interested in the journey and contributing to the cause."

Since graduating from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and moving west in 1997, Nick has wanted to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Two years ago, he did a big chunk of the trail in California with girlfriend Whitney Raish. This time he's going it alone with the added challenge of helping out BAWT, one of the organizations he connected with after his 1999 hike.

"What's compelling is how passionate Nick is about what we do and how connected what he's doing is to what we do," said Kyle Macdonald, BAWT executive director. "There are lots of people that are doing the PCT as fund-raisers. But there are very few, if any, that are hiking the trail with the purpose of getting kids to the places where Nick is hiking."

Funds raised through Nick's hike will go toward the organization's general operating expenses, everything from paying rent to buying new gear.

But to actually reach the $26,500 goal, Macdonald said corporate sponsors need to pony up or a television deal needs to come through.

Nick's journey could become the subject of the PBS show "Trailside." Talks are ongoing about the possibility of a camera crew joining Nick on the trail for several days to film the program. With up to three million viewers, the show could bring in enough individual sponsors to reach the fund-raising goal.

So far, $1,300 has been pledged for Nick's walk.

"People giving to the cause will be able to watch the fund race to keep up with Nick," Macdonald said. "We have the first 130 miles covered. But Nick's hiking 20 miles a day. He's going to cover that in six days."

To find out more or donate to Nick's hike, go to his Web site. If you don't have Internet access or wish to donate and receive information through postal mail, contact Bay Area Wilderness Training in care of the Earth Island Institute, 300 Broadway, Suite 28, San Francisco, CA 94133.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), April 18, 2001 - Summer vacations that get the heart pumping, by Dennis McCann

SUMMER VACATIONS THAT GET THE HEART PUMPING

I've spent a few days recently making summer travel plans, a process which, for me, at least begins with finding comfortable rooms in various warm places with views of cool water.

Nice chairs, too, rocking if possible. Contemplation in all things, I always say.

Not that I won't be a worker bee from time to time. One day I will walk the 21-mile circle path around Lake Geneva again and if I am in the area will no doubt climb Timm's Hill to survey Wisconsin from its highest point. Impressed? Don't be. The former is not the Pacific Crest Trail, and the latter is hardly the forbiddingly named Cirque of the Unclimbables, but if I'm not true to my inner self who will be?

Come to think of it, who would want to climb a peak called Unclimbable anyway?

Hiking the crest

Actually, that would be Mike Byers and Tim Molter, a pair of Wisconsin college students whose summer climbing plans make mine look like retirement home bingo.

And the guy whose summer hiking plans involve tackling the imposing Pacific Crest Trail - at 2,650 miles it is nearly 500 miles longer than the even better known Appalachian Trail - is Madison native Nick Brown, now of Oakland. He's stepping off April 27 from the trail's southern terminus on the Mexican border just east of San Diego, and if all goes as planned will reach the trail's northern tip on the Canadian border five months later.

And your summer plans involve a week at the lake? B-13, folks, and when is nap time?

What drives such grand adventures? For Brown, who is no stranger to long walks and solitude, the answer is as simple as love of the woods and as altruistic as raising money for the Bay Area Wilderness Training, an organization that works to get youth groups, and especially minority youth groups, involved in outdoor activities.

On his last long walk - he hiked 1,800 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail two summers ago - he encountered many hikers but found that everyone looked like him (except that, at 6-foot-9, he stood taller than most). Living in Oakland made him keenly aware of the need to introduce urban youth to what he calls the "transformative power of the wilderness."

Supplies along the way

"It is not my desire that everyone become a modern-day John Muir," he wrote on a Web site (www.nickslongwalk.org) that explains his purpose and will track his progress for the next five months. "But if they are not in the woods simply because they have never had the opportunity or the resources, that is problematic."

Brown will carry a pocket-sized device to post his journals and receive e-mail but otherwise will take only camping essentials - including a sleeping bag custom-ordered to accommodate his height.

He has spent weeks dehydrating fruits and vegetables that will be shipped box by box to post offices along the trail according to his schedule. Film and fuel will similarly be mailed in; Brown will buy the rest of his food from grocery stores. Beyond food, equipment, "ice cream and the occasional motel room," his expenses will be limited to shoe leather.

He looks forward to watching the cycles of the moon as he hikes, but experience has taught him the less romantic flip side of a long walk's beauty.

"The sweltering heat of the Mojave Desert," he wrote, as if reminding himself, "will give way to mosquito-infested lakes in the High Sierra and Oregon which will eventually be replaced by a cold wind, harbinger of winter, in northern Washington."

Just as I was thinking of going along.

Attempting the Unclimbable

Maybe it was going to school within eyeshot of Grandad's Bluff that inspired Byers and Molter, Ozaukee High School graduates who attend University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, to spend a summer climbing to the sky, or nearly so.

Their itinerary, Byers said, includes free climbing or aid-climbing such peaks as Pingora, Mount Moran and Devil's Tower in Wyoming, Forbidden Peak and Liberty Bell Mountain in Washington, Bugaboo Spire, Slesse Mountain and South Howser Tower in British Columbia. And of course, there will be the attempt at Cirque of the Unclimbables 350 miles east of Whitehorse in Yukon Territory, which will require a 150-mile plane ride just to reach base camp.

During down time there will be sea kayaking and glacier riding. Ah, youth. If it is not enough to expect their feet to take them to unprecedented heights, they are also counting on Molter's 1977 Dodge van to convey them from peak to peak.

"You have to be somewhat experienced," said Byers, who said he and Molter did some of their training by climbing Mississippi River bluffs. "But it's not as complicated as it might sound. The one thing me and my partner haven't done is sleep out on the ledge."

That was the first point in our conversation where I could say, "Me either."

When I told Byers, who will be graduating in May, that I might be writing about such adventurous sorts, he volunteered even more help.

"I have another friend," he said, "who's flying to Alaska and riding his bike from Alaska to Colorado."

Most impressive. Perhaps I will find a comfortable room in a warm place with a view of cool water and watch him ride by.

Contact Dennis McCann at (414) 224-2528 or e-mail dmccann@onwis.com. Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on April 18, 2001.