The High Adventure of Eric Ryback -- Take 2

I feel like I need to start my commentary on The High Adventure of Eric Ryback with the controversy I mentioned in my opening post.  Eric Ryback was (and to some degree still is) lauded as the first person to through-hike the "Triple Crown": the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail.  Everyone seems to agree that he was the first person to traverse all of these mostly on foot.  I haven't found any concern that he did truly walk the entirety of the Appalachian Trail, which he did as a high schooler.  His PCT hike came the summer of 1970 upon his high school graduation, and the following year led to the publication of this very book.

In the years after publication, there was some question regarding whether Eric had actually hiked the whole distance or whether he had hitchhiked portions of the PCT.  When his publisher said his claims my not have been accurate, he reportedly sued them for $3 million.  However, when the statements of the drivers who gave him rides were presented, the suit was dropped.  A few years later, Eric hiked the Continental Divide, much of it with his younger brother Tim.  There was no "trail" as such at the time, but the CDT (such as it is) now approximates the route he hiked.  (There is also a book about that one: The Ultimate Journey: Canada to Mexico Down the Continental Divide.)

So, what to make of all this?  Did he hitch a ride for portions of the PCT?  Who knows.  Probably he did.  But it's still quite an accomplishment, even if the whole way wasn't "on foot" as he claimed.  It's also interesting that he elected to go from north to south.  Most through-hikers these days go from south to north, starting in the southern deserts in the spring and giving the Cascade Mountains a little bit of time to warm up before they arrive in the fall.

Often, travelogues are terribly tedious to read.  Especially one like this, where each day is just getting up, packing, up, walking, pitching camp, and sleeping.  Boring with a capital B.  But somehow this one keeps the story going.  Most chapters are short, and there are photos included from his time on the trail, so both those things help.  And, though Eric does have a certain sensibility to his writing that could come off as highfalutin, it's tempered in my mind when I remember that he was roundabout 19 years old at the time he wrote it.  Bearing that it mind, it comes off as much more sincere, genuinely awe-inspired, than it otherwise might.

I enjoyed it so much I may even read The Ultimate Journey.