Pacific Trail Firsts
Presented by Teddi Boston
January 5, 2016, 7:30 pm
Our Speaker at the January 5 chapter meeting is Teddi Boston, Volunteer Coordinator for the San Gorgonio Wilderness Association and resident of Landers. In 1976 at the age of 49, Teddi was the first female thru hiker to complete the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). Furthermore, she completed the PCT north to south, starting at the Canadian border and ending at the Mexican border. She says she did it the reverse to the usual direction because she was told it was impossible.
Last year "just to prove I could do it" Teddi hiked a 325-mile section of the PCT in Southern California. Teddi’s presentation will include her photographs from the PCT hikes. The meeting starts at 7:30pm at the San Bernardino County Museum, 2024 Orange Tree Lane, Redlands.
An article on the Pacific Crest Trail Association web site tells her fascinating story, “ in the 1960’s, with two daughters in Girl Scouts, Boston ventured on her first backpack into California’s San Bernardino Mountains. ‘It rained like crazy,’ she said. ‘Oh god, I fell in love with it.’
“Soon she was taking eight girls on a full John Muir Trail hike. And it was there, in 1972, that Boston met her first PCT thru-hiker. That’s all it took. She came home, bought (Eric) Ryback’s PCT book and started to plan her own thru-hike. She made a detailed, day-by-day 11-page itinerary with 16 mail drops. She took a built-up load of sick leave and requested six months off.
“On May Day 1976, toting a 65-pound pack, Boston couldn’t have been further removed from twirling ribbons around a sunny May Pole. A blizzard in Washington drove her into her tent for two days. Her local paper, the Orange County Register, recorded her routine for the early weeks: ‘Up at 3:30 a.m. daily, she walked on the frozen crust until about 10 a.m., when the sun, melting the snow, forced her to don her snowshoes. Since all trail markers were buried by the snow, she did the first month by compass and map. When she got far enough south to find her first trail marker she was fewer than 10 feet off the trail.’”
