Go to the conquest of the American West on foot from Mexico to Canada, on the PCT you like?
This is the incredible challenge that Julien Haass set himself in 2019 by walking independently for 5 months on Pacific Crest Trail , in short PCT (Chemin des crêtes du Pacifique in French).
This 4,240 km western United States hiking trail starts at the Mexican border and ends at the Canadian border. It crosses three American states (California, Oregon and Washington State) and very varied natural spaces ranging from desert to immense forests, passing by the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada and by very beautiful national parks such as Yosemite or Crater Lake .... It must be said that the PCT is one of the three largest trails in the United States. Each year, approximately 4,500 hikers attempt to hike it. They are called "thru-hikers". In the end, very few arrive at their destination and they generally take 4 to 6 months to complete all the stages. Most thru-hikers start at the Mexican border and end at the Canadian border.
Julien Haass also decided to travel the PCT from South to North, doing it entirely and only on foot. It's his first adventure of this kind, it's his first thru-hike, as we say there (long distance hike in French). Passionate about nature for a very long time, Julien had a good experience of walking before, but never on such a long route. It is quite exceptional to be able to follow such a trail with very little road and the possibility of sleeping all over nature.
Julien Haass card
Photo credit: Julien Haass
The best time to travel the trail from South to North is the end of April to end around the end of September, thus avoiding the hot summer heat of Southern California and especially the onset of winter in the American Northwest. The problem is that in these mountains the weather remains unpredictable and that you can fall, like Julien, in a year with snow. His start was quite complicated especially in the part of central California in the Sierra. Given the extreme and exceptional conditions for the month of June, many people preferred to go around the summits, but not Julien. He decided with a small group of hikers to venture there anyway, despite the pristine snowy trails with no trace to find their way around, with many swollen rivers. He decided to let himself be carried away by his intuition. Without being a purist, he did not want to deviate from what he had planned in his program. His goal was to walk from Mexico to Canada and his project was essentially limited to walking. He knew that if he started to move forward in another way or to delete parts of the route here or there in case of difficulty, then it would be difficult for him to hold out afterwards when his mind was strained.
But before he could leave he was confronted with some administrative difficulties. It should first be remembered that to live 6 months in the United States, you need a visa and to sleep in national parks, you must also obtain a permit. These drip-distilled authorizations are issued by the Pacific Crest Trail association once a year, with a draw in November and January. You then have to find the right weather window in terms of dates, the right timing to make the expedition to avoid not having too much snow in certain places and technical passages. In the first draw in November 2018, he was 3,300th on the waiting list. As a result, he was unable to obtain his initially scheduled departure date. However, luck changed during the January session. This time, he was drawn in 22nd place which fixed the beginning of his adventure on April 7, 2019. Then, all he had to do was go to the embassy to obtain a visa for the tourism after having passed an interview. He had to show his real motivations, say why he wanted to go to the United States and prove that he will return to France or in any case that he will leave their territory after the trip. Then he had only 3 months of preparation before the big departure. In fact, he didn't really have time for a good physical preparation. Perhaps going for a run and a few walks would have had an impact on the success of his expedition, but the experience of long distance hiking has nothing to do with bivouacing for a few days. He had to adopt a whole new philosophy. He decided to take his adventure as just a workout, listening to his body at first and taking it slow. His first intention was to walk gradually for the first few days, to feel his body. He knew that this experience would not be a race, nor a competition. Besides, he never looked for performance and anyway it would have been very difficult to anticipate what was going to happen and what he was going to experience.
We may wonder how he got this crazy idea to go so far?
This project germinated in his mind long before his big departure, three or four years ago. At the time, he was looking for ideas for reading and he stumbled upon "Wild", the book by Cheryl Strayed. It is the gripping story of a woman who set off on a whim for a 1,700 km hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. He had loved this book and it was also at that time that he learned of the existence of the trail. At the time, he had not found the story so crazy, nor unrealizable. Without realizing it, the idea of embarking on the adventure of this long-distance walk was immediately anchored in his head. It was in August 2018, that it all started, while he was having a drink with a friend, he told her again about this dream which was still only at the stage of the fantasy. Curious by nature, she pushed him to tell her more. She told him that this project would be incredible, that this kind of adventure resembled her so much. Little by little the idea gained ground and he said to himself that it was possible, that everything he had dreamed of, finally he could one day achieve it. It's just a matter of choice . The next day this friend sent him a message on her smartphone which said in a very short but powerful sentence: "if a call keeps making noise, no other choice but to listen to it". He then said to himself "come on, why not me" and 6 months later he was walking on the PCT. Before leaving, he still wondered if he was really able to walk so far and for so long? The only way to find out was to do it. He had this selfish desire for a solitary adventure, to seek his physical and mental limits, to live in a minimalist way. It's really something he had inside of him.
The choice
You always have a choice, no matter what.
You are accused of a fault committed, you have the choice to find an excuse or to assume.
A person blames you, you have the choice to think it is stupid or to ask why they think it.
The world is pessimistic, you have the choice to watch your TV or go for a walk in the world.
The planet is dying, you have the choice to make it inevitable or to help heal it.
You lose a loved one, you have the choice to complain or honor them with your joy of living.
You don't love your life, you have the choice to complain about it or to change.
You make choices, you have the choice to let others criticize them or not give a damn what they think.
You are 35 years old, you have the choice to live the life of "we must" or to do what you are.
You always have a choice.
Julien haass
Photo credit: Julien Haass
His entourage did not immediately realize. When he told his parents about it, they had hardly reacted. Out of love, they have always accepted his "follies", but they probably thought that this project was one more delirium. When they saw the first images and videos on social media, they realized it was taking a different turn and subsequently became his first fans. As for his friends, they have always supported him. Most of them understood before him that this life of adventure was made for him. It is a chance to be able to count on the support and advice of those around him. His loved ones felt he was anchored in this new life for good reasons.
Previously, Julien had a life that can be described as “classic”. He had everything to be happy, but he something was missing to really find happiness. He went to look for it in a much simpler life. 5 years ago, he decided to live a new experience and put his whole life in a bag to live on the move . At the time, he was living in Paris. He was a pharmacist and only made replacements, which allowed him to have some freedom in his schedule. He was not in a careerist vision. He already had this desire to build a personal life alongside his professional activity, in particular through his experiences in nature. Finally, his PCT adventure is just a continuation of his nomadic life experience that he has been leading for a few years now. Julien likes to be on the move, to be itinerant, to walk. He likes the slowness and the simplicity of the hike. He enjoys the genuine human relationships he can have on the way. He is inspired in such trips alone surrounded by nature.
Photo credit: Julien Haass
Julien left alone, because it's not really easy to find someone to go for a walk for 5 to 6 months and walk more than 4,000 kilometers in the great American West. At the same time, he was also drawn to loneliness and he wanted to immerse himself in it. He wanted to withdraw a little from the modern world and go to meet it. Loneliness acts on him a bit like therapy. She sweeps her life away, brings back memories, leads her to make choices, to live new experiences. Loneliness puts him in front of who he really is. He can no longer run away. There is no wi-fi, phone, TV or noise to escape. It is not always easy to face yourself, to listen to yourself and to know clearly what you want and where you want to go.
Despite this loneliness, Julien still made some great encounters. The first was done at the end of the Sierra crossing, after walking for a month in the snow. Exhausted by this first ordeal, he was greeted by a person at her home for 4 days. It happened on July 4th. She gave him a tour of the city, she took him to see a fireworks display on the lake. He even had delicious barbecues and monstrous breakfasts every morning. He also spent a month with a group of hikers in the Sierra, in particular to ensure the safety of crossings of strong rivers. At times, it is true that there could be complicated technical passages where he risked getting carried away and where he especially should not fall. Despite the perceptible danger, he always had the certainty that everything would be fine. He never really felt in danger, except maybe the one time he crossed paths with a bear and a wolf. We dread these meetings a lot, but on the other hand we hope so too! Of course, to avoid attacks, as we can be told in survival guides, he always put his food outside, never in the tent. The food was in cans specially designed so that bears in particular would not open them. He was in a wild environment that demanded a lot of humility and simplicity.
Julien was able to adapt quickly to these difficult living conditions, because he has been a follower of minimalism for many years. To follow him on social networks, I know that he doesn't really like this term which has become fashionable and suddenly too generic. According to him, it refers to a minimal notion. It's true, we keep seeing articles like "100 items maximum to own" appear in the press. Why restrict yourself to a totally random number of objects? For an experience we would understand, but for a lifetime, we can doubt it. Julien would be more attached to the concept of essentialism, which brings us back to the idea of having only the essential. However, he was not always attracted to the idea of living only with the essentials. Before in his previous life, he had a lot of things. It happened to him like everyone else to have compulsively bought books to fill his large library, already full of unread books or to have fallen for a huge corner sofa that filled the space of a good apartment. too small to contain it. But today possession no longer defines it. The experience of living only with the essentials blew up all the layers that encumbered his happiness. He considers our life to be like a bag, it has a limited capacity for beliefs and values that allows us to keep moving, to move forward, but in case of too much, it can just as easily slow us down or make us back down. . He thinks that you can enjoy things without owning them. Of course, he still has beautiful chosen objects, such as his smartphone for example. Despite everything, he likes the idea that if he loses it, all he has to do is press a button to find another identical one. It is no longer attached to the object but to its function. In short, he behaves like a landlord. Profiting without owning is its order of progress. Today, few objects seem essential to him. With her house on her back, the bag also became the symbol of her new life. The lightness makes it more free to go on the paths.
In his backpack, he managed to keep only the essentials. He doesn't have the goal of having the most beautiful material, the coolest bag, the most stylish pants. He doesn't want to get into this identification game. He just wants the equipment that will allow him to go to the end of the 4,200 kilometers. He spent weeks discovering the ultralight technical equipment market, meeting long-distance walking specialists, chatting with adventurers. At first, he left with 19 kg on his back (water and food included). There has been a huge evolution between the heavy burden of his departure and that of his arrival. He could really see that there was a lot of things, which he did not need although he believed them essential when preparing for his adventure. He has made a lot of compromises when it comes to personal comfort, but the most important thing is to stay comfortable while walking. He thinks that true freedom is also in lightness . However, the material really depends on each person, their approach and their needs. To find out, it is by launching into the experiment that we can really know the right formula to apply. It is not easy to anticipate all these things especially as everyone evolves differently during these months of wandering. Even if Julien spent a lot of time on internet forums looking for the right equipment, he believes that today, it is better to start with what you have and adapt your equipment as you go. after only 2 months, he had to change his tent. He started with a 60 liter bag and ended with a 38 liter bag. In the United States, they use a lot of materials in Dyneema, a very light and strong fiber, thanks to which their new tent weighed less than 500 g! On a trail like the PCT, it is always possible to order equipment and receive it in the nearest towns. In the end, he kept only the bare minimum in his backpack. When you walk for 5 months, every gram counts. He just brought something to sleep on: a foam mat and a sleeping bag, even if he most often slept under the stars When it was not possible he used his tent. He took very few clothes (a down jacket, a rain membrane, a long-sleeved t-shirt, thermal tights). He had no underpants and wore the same shorts for 5 months. Like other equipment, he had his toiletries, a portable battery plugged into a solar panel to recharge his smartphone, some utensils (headlamp, cords, etc.), his bag of food with a small jar to eat. He decided not to use a stove, for more lightness. He ate cold, often raw foods, for which he just needed water. He stopped when he was hungry, he had no schedule. He often had granola bars that he ate all day. He didn't take a lot of breaks, he didn't feel like spending an afternoon somewhere, he needed to walk until the end of the day, usually around 7 or 8 p.m. He determined his stages according to the food he could carry, that is to say on average 4 to 5 days of food reserves. The maximum was 10 days of couscous and bars to last as long as possible in the Sierra Mountains. The only times he left the route was to join a road to hitchhike and get supplies. Sometimes he would take a shower, then come back to where he left off. Every day he was looking for the next refreshment points, sometimes on the trail, most of the time off the trail. It is difficult in these conditions to predict or anticipate anything. He went through the stages one after the other. He actually knew very little about what was going to happen. Also, he realized that he always ate the same thing and that it suited him very well. It was easy!
Photo credit: Julien Haass
It's true by reading Julien's story on his Facebook account, I discovered a humble and genuine person, who does not take the lead. Yet it is an extraordinary feat, both sporting and mental, that he has just achieved! Walking 4,500 kilometers or crossing a whole range of snow-capped mountains could have been an accomplishment in itself, more than enough to say "I did it", but Julien's envy was even greater. He listened to her little inner voice which led him to this dream of nomadism taken to the extreme, in complete autonomy in the wilderness of the American West. But the PCT is not a dream but a part of his life, of his personality, of his being. To stop it, no longer moving is simply no longer living . Put your whole life in a bag, gradually separate yourself from all your material possessions, live on the move, lighter, freer. He made this choice of life in conscience.
Julien has long dreamed of living as a nomad, without real estate attachment and with the minimum of material possessions, not to become an individual on the margins of society, but to live a life in motion. Almost everyone told him that it would be impossible or that it was no longer his age. That at 35, he had to think instead of settling down and building something else. That it wasn't normal to live like this. Despite everything, he decided to go on "the adventure of the present moment". Every day, he tries to live everyday by disconnecting from almost everything in order to reconnect with himself, alone in the world. These moments are for his mind, what sleep is for his body, a way to recharge. More than a desire, it is a need. It is certainly not a leak. He walks. He wanders, aimlessly, generally in nature if he can, in any case in a quiet and quiet place and especially without a telephone. He thought for a long time that his cell phone connected him to the world, yet the more time he spends in it the more he feels outside of it.
On the move
It's not just movement.
The movement is above all the dream in the stillness, the return of the self or the expectation of the new.
It prolongs the lived adventure, continuing to make it exist in a sedentary daily life.
She becomes the companion to whom we tell again and again and who never gets tired.
Anachronistic, it is the return to the ordinary of a journey into the extraordinary.
It is what moves in us and what will make us move.
It is the engine of the next step. The one who will guide us once again towards the unknown, outside, elsewhere. It is the bottom of the wave that will soon shake us up. It is fantasy, illusions and allusions.
It is this fear that keeps us in the known while being the force that will make us a beginner again.
It is marvelous and the setting that gives us the eyes of children.
Julien haass
For Julien, freedom is having the choice of your life. He makes his decision every morning, it's not a single, immutable direction. For him, in his freedom there is no dependence, but a responsibility. For a long time, he defined freedom as the possibility of "doing what he wanted, when he wanted". He made mistakes, he recognizes it himself. His first instinct has often been dictated by the easy way. He belongs to a world, to a generation where everything is accessible immediately, without effort, with all these supermarkets, these fast food restaurants, e-commerce, but over time and experiences he has understood that this solution ease was not always the best option. When he was younger, he didn't realize that freedom often comes with responsibility . He understood it much later. How could he be free while being dependent? He had taken the wrong path. Today, freedom and responsibility are inseparable for him. He decides to be responsible for his life, for his choices. He no longer chooses the easy way, if it imposes dependence on him. Now he really feels free, when he feels he owes nothing to anyone. He decides to stop doing a job he doesn't like, just for the easy value of the money. In our Western countries, especially in France where the word freedom is woven on our flag, this concept is not so obvious. We live safe okay, but are we really free? How to be free if you are dependent on people, a material or a system? Learning to depend only on yourself, materially and intellectually is the first step to regaining true freedom, but this is not always the case in a country like ours. Yes, there is freedom written on our flag, but this freedom linked to human rights is very different from individual freedom. We live in a country where assistantship sometimes relieves many people of responsibility. The more helpers there are, the more control there is, too, it's a double-edged sword. There is consequently a loss of individual freedom. Julien's quest for freedom is to go against this system of assistantship which makes us dependent on a system, people or goods. Freedom is very important to him. It is his main value and the reason for most of his choices. He wins it the moment he sets foot on the PCT. When he's 100% committed to his dreams and does whatever it takes to set them in motion, then he's already on his way. His adventure begins when he closes the door to his home and not when the plane lands. Adventure ... Adventura ... means "what must happen". It's a spell, a game of fate. To do this, you just have to be outside and roll the lucky dice without knowing if the ticket is a winner. It is then necessary to change the path, find a new route, to return or leave.
For Julien, writing is a way of living and continuing the adventure. Basically, he had created his facebook page as a place to empty his brain. He feels the need to write, to share what he is going through and what is going on in his head, but he is just as hesitant to do it, to share his vulnerability and his doubts. Before his departure for the Pacific Crest Trail, he could not get out of publication. He wanted to but he couldn't. He blackened pages and pages with his ballpoint pen every day, but he lacked inspiration. He suddenly felt the need to embody what he was writing, to experience it and to feel it. But at that time, he had lost movement. He was out of the moment. There was no lack of projections and stories, however. However, they only filled white sheets. Since he made the choice to get back in motion and put his whole life in a bag, the inspiration has come back to him to share with those who follow him the idea of the moment. His Facebook page was not ultimately not just a place to give advice, share his tips, his fears, his desires or his joys. It is part of him, of the experimentation of his authentic and free being. In his website, he wanted to create a space for expression open to all. He wishes to share wandering there as he knows it and especially as he lives it. He will try to tell the story of the walk, his walk that makes you stroll, move or cross a continent. He will dive deep into everything that the on the move makes him live and think. He will also tell his personal little stories, those he lives and those he imagines in short stories.
Julien has decided to quit social networks, but we can find him on his website www.julesalabougeotte.fr
By way of conclusion, the quote from Victor Hugo is a good illustration of Julien's approach. Haass :
" anything that increases freedom increases responsibility".
To meditate...
Buen camino :-)
Lionel of Compostela
You will find on the following pages, all my long distance hikes with descriptions of the stages and photos. Coming soon... so, subscribe to the site here or on my Youtube channel. Buen camino!!! Lionel of Compostela
