Eric Ryback

With the current attention being given to the Pacific Crest Trail -- see Cheryl Strayed's "Wild" -- I thought I'd re-read the story of the first through-hiker. While Eric Ryback doesn't give us too much insight into his inner drive to hike from Canada to Mexico, we do get glimpses of his thoughts on dealing with miles of snow, running low on food, feeling lonely, and his final push through the southern California desert. I have to give Eric some slack, as he was only 19 years old when he did show more his hike and much of the PCT was only a line on a map and not a trail on the ground. show less

A fun book for me. I read it many years ago and decided it would be worth reading again. I have not been disappointed. I am old now, and no longer back packing, but I have been on enough parts of the Pacific Crest in Oregon and Washington that reading this book was like reliving old times. Maybe I can day hike sections of the trail now. The book is apparently out of print and was offered for sale for $50.00, so I borrowed it from a library.

Excellent. Read in 1977. Re-read 9-2010.