Hiking The Pacific Crest Trail With a Baby?! | Guest Post by Jack McClure
Today’s essay is a post from Jack McClure. He shared a bit with me about his adventure and I asked him if he’d be down to do a guest post. I asked Jack to describe himself and he said, “I’m an Alaskan, husband, father, and author of the book You Carry the Tent, I'll Carry the Baby.”
Let’s go hiking!
Grand adventures aren’t typically the first thing that comes to mind when modern parents welcome a baby into the world. It’s a time of doubt, uncertainty, and ever-mounting fatigue, filled with days of changing diapers, figuring out what she could be crying about, and sleepless nights that go on forever. So who in their right mind when dealing with these stressors would think: “Hey, you know what would be a good idea right now? Let’s thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail as a family!”
My wife, Alana, and I welcomed our daughter, Enedina, into the world in September 2022. Those months prior to her birth were an unusual time of idleness for us at our home in Fairbanks, Alaska. Summer is typically the busy season, with nearly twenty-four hours of sun providing the perfect opportunity to work on projects at home, hike and float the wild expanses, and get ready for the coming winter. Time outdoors has been an integral part of our relationship, and we’ve continued to foster that by going on packraft and hiking trips over the years. But the summer of 2022 was filled with smoke as over three million acres of forest in Alaska burned. With air quality at horrendous levels, frequently unmatched anywhere else in the world, we didn’t roam outdoors far from home. Throughout that summer, I would wander around our garden, the smell of burnt wood ever-present, trying to spend as much time outside as was reasonable. Being pregnant and not willing to risk anything health-wise, Alana stayed inside, occupying herself with books, exercise, and baking.
Being cooped up this way led me to dream. Dream of the life we could live as a family and how we wanted to raise our daughter. For both of us, nature has always been where we find the most contentment. Alana and I first met in 2019, working in forestry for the State of Alaska. Both of us had grown up in suburban environments outside big cities, Alana in Boston and me in Chicago, and rarely did outdoor activities with our families growing up. For Alana, it was trail work that was her gateway to the outdoors; she spent eight years living out of a tent, working with chainsaws, shovels, picks, and assorted hand tools maintaining trails in national parks and other conservation areas before moving to Alaska in 2014. Mine was a NOLS semester course I took in 2013 in Alaska, during which I fell in love with the vast wild spaces. I moved to Arctic Alaska in the spring of 2015 and have lived in the state ever since.
Late in that smoky summer of 2022, I came across the book All the Wild That Remains, about Ed Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West. The author, David Gessner, traveled throughout the American West, exploring the places and people that connected and shaped the two writers. The book planted a seed. What if we were to take a hiking trip around the Southwest after Enedina was born?
That trip could be a springboard for the bigger, more complex trips that had sat on the back burner for years. A baby and the start of our family were our chance at living the life we wanted to live, and it seemed foolish to pass that up. They offered the opportunity to reset our lives, committed to living our values and to setting a positive example for our daughter. Pre-baby, we had done longer trips in Alaska by foot and packraft, but these more local outings seemed like something we could do at any age. Then, I thought, what about the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT)? Alana had worked for months on various parts of the scenic byway during her time on trail crew and had repeatedly said that she was eager to hike the whole thing at some point.
“What if we hiked the PCT next year?”
“What are we going to do about Enedina?”
“She’s coming with, of course.”
“Has anyone done that?”
“I don’t know, but we can.”
First, a test…
We spent six weeks hiking around the canyons, mesas, and badlands of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico living out of our tent, finding a basecamp for a few days to a week, hiking throughout each area then moving on. Din took to camping and life in her backpack/child carrier well. The trip affirmed that we could do all the things we wanted with some slight accommodations for our new addition. We moved a bit slower than before and had to take more breaks, but we found that having a baby with us was no excuse to stay home and only dream of adventures that could have been.
“Seems crazy not to do it”
When we told others—friends, family, strangers, you name it— about our plans to hike the PCT, most of the responses were negative. For at least two thirds of those we told, the basic response was a scrunched-up face, followed by, “And you’re going to do this with the baby?” Everyone seemed to have some type of opinion, and each wanted to weigh in. My dad, skeptical of our plans, remarked that he’d see us in August, though our projected end date was in early December. My mom, always the worrier, continually asked throughout the planning process why we were doing this, wondering why we didn’t wait until Enedina was older or simply choose a shorter trip. The receptionist at our pediatrician’s office sarcastically commented that it would be “a ton of fun.” And still others simply suggested that it was not possible, due to the long distances, heavy packs, and any number of other factors related to dealing with a baby on a thru-hike.
We weren’t opposed to hearing criticism, but much of the feedback seemed more like knee-jerk reactions that reflected each naysayer's capabilities or interests, rather than our own. Anyone who has raised children knows well the experience of being on the receiving end of parenting advice, often unsolicited. Throw in something novel for the twenty-first century, like living outside in a tent for five months, and you open a can of worms.
Ironically, if we stayed home and parked our daughter in front of an iPad for multiple hours a day, most people wouldn’t have batted an eye, even though screen time has been widely shown to lead to the degradation of eyesight, coordination, and general development in babies and children. Yet head outside with clean air, water, and a natural environment that is a known boon to childhood development and adult well-being, and suddenly you’re the “crazy” one.
While there was skepticism, we also received encouragement and support. Those in our corner prodded us on, asking if we needed help with preparations and offering assistance for whatever might come up while we were on the trail. My friend Cody, himself an avid outdoorsman and accomplished trail runner, bolstered our confidence by reframing our trip in the modern context:
“You mean, you’re going to make a journey similar to many of our human ancestors (who also had baby in tow), but with all of the safety nets of your wilderness competence using modern equipment, wilderness skills honed in an objectively harsher environment, modern communication technology, modern medicine, food resources, and general societal infrastructure on a well-trodden route with many other hikers and the option to bail at basically any point?
Seems crazy NOT to do it, in my opinion.”
Eating ice cream every day
Throughout our journey, we often wondered what kind of lasting effect, if any, the trip would have on Enedina. One year post-trip, it’s clear that the trail had a notable impact. No matter where we are, she wants to be outside, hanging by the door and saying, “outside” asking us to go out and explore. Once outdoors, she runs around with abandon, her laughter and shouts filling the air as she looks around. We’ll never know the full extent of how the trip shaped her, but we have no doubt about its positive role in her growth.
Despite the challenges on the trail, we’re grateful for the experience and strongly believe that it has been the best thing we’ve done for our daughter so far. We went into the trip thinking that it was our adventure and that Enedina was along for the ride. But early on, we realized how wrong that was, how we were doing her trip and we were just the facilitators—a fitting metaphor for parenting in general, if there ever was one. We watched as she grew, learned to see, explore, and take joy in her surroundings. She rolled with the punches, through long, hot, dry stretches and cold, blustery, rainy days.
Alana often likes to say that “the best thing about being an adult is that you can eat ice cream everyday.” While I can assure you that she very much likes ice cream, that ethos takes on multiple interpretations within our household. It’s easy to get caught up in the routine chores and schedule of everyday life and forget that most everyone reading this can do just about whatever they want, whether that is eating ice cream all the time, starting a new habit, or redefining how you live as an individual and family. Our biggest limitation is so frequently our own lack of imagination, willingness, and desire to really do something different, something that feels true to who we are. Sure, all of us have some type of constraint, be it money, time, or the 20-pound infant that’s crying on your back. But constraints don’t have to be barriers and instead can forge our character and shape our most meaningful experiences.
Our PCT journey wasn’t about setting records or proving a point, but rather about living deliberately and choosing a path that embodied our core values despite the doubts from others. The trail was far from sunshine and rainbows, filled with plenty of tears, stinky diapers, and extreme fatigue. It’s likely that your own path doesn’t involve strapping a 9-month-old to your back for 1,500 miles. However, whether it’s embarking on a new venture, quitting your job, or starting a new chapter as a family, let our journey stand as testament to what’s possible when you embrace uncertainty and let your values guide you. In the end, we discovered that our greatest adventure was in daring to live a life true to ourselves, baby and all.
I asked Jack for a longer bio I could include:
Jack McClure is an Alaskan, husband, father, and author, whose works include his book, "You Carry the Tent, I'll Carry the Baby" as well as feature essays in Alaska Magazine, among other outlets. After growing up in the Chicago suburbs, Jack took a NOLS semester course in Alaska, where he fell in love with the state and moved north to the Arctic. There, he lived alone in a 12' x 12' 1920s log cabin well beyond the grid and 250 miles from the nearest grocery store.
His work has ranged from guiding northern lights and river tours in the Brooks Range to conducting wildlife research with lynx biologists and sampling cores at a gold mine. Jack and his wife Alana strongly believe in spending time outdoors as a family, which led to their most ambitious trip: a thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail with their then 9-month-old daughter in the summer of 2023. Today, Jack and his family live in a home they built themselves in Alaska's Interior, where he continues to explore the state's wild landscapes while pursuing Alaska-themed writing projects.
I loved this. Kind of exhilarating.