When Tropical Storm Hilary plowed over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in August, Nick Fowler was over a month into his southbound record attempt on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail.
He was hiking around 12,000 feet in Kings Canyon National Park as the winds ratcheted up and the rain fell in sheets. His only protection from the elements was a $1 emergency poncho and a 4.7-ounce tarp.
Fowler knew he couldn’t keep going through such an aggressive storm with inadequate gear. So, when he found a trailside cave, he ducked inside and spent 41 hours taking refuge, rationing his food supplies, and watching Hilary unleash torrential rain and dangerous rockfall.
“It sounded like the mountains were falling apart,” he said.
But even with a forced zero day in a high-alpine cave (on his birthday, to boot), Fowler went on to set the self-supported Fastest Known Time (FKT) in 52 days, 9 hours, and 18 minutes, shaving over three days off of Josh Perry’s 2022 record. Fowler averaged over 50 miles a day to cover the distance from Canada to Mexico in record time.
It wasn’t that long ago that Fowler, 35, couldn’t imagine hiking a single 50-mile day, never mind 52 of them back to back. In 2019, the self-employed Oklahoman went on a cross-country road trip with his wife, Hannah, to visit every national park. He’d hike a mile or two in each location and get back to the trailhead winded and fatigued. But Fowler slowly built up his distance and felt like a superhero when he covered 14 miles in a single hike.
When they stopped at Glacier National Park, he was motivated to do more.
“I couldn’t visit Glacier National Park without seeing a glacier,” he said. Fowler thought he’d need to hike about 22 miles to do that, but ended up completing a 32-mile roundtrip trek. The next day, he could barely walk.
But the day after that, he couldn’t wait to do it again.
“I was hooked,” Fowler said. “And going forward, I only wanted to do longer hikes.”
He soon decided to see how far he could hike in a day without stopping. He made it 73 miles through the Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness in Utah before returning to the trailhead.
After that effort, Fowler got curious about speedy thru-hikes on the PCT. At this point, he didn’t even know FKTs were a thing, and he’d only gone on a handful of short overnight trips himself. When he learned about the PCT FKT, though, he had a new goal in mind: to beat it. So, Fowler racked up more backpacking miles before heading to the Canadian border this summer. In 2021, he set the self-supported FKT on the Pacific Northwest Trail, a 1,200-mile route across Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Since then, he’s also hiked the Arizona Trail, the Hayduke Trail, and 1,100 miles of the PCT, all as training hikes for his FKT attempt.
Even though Fowler was used to hiking fast, he knew he was stepping into new terrain. He had never attempted anything as long as the PCT.
When Fowler started hiking from the northern terminus on July 16 of this year, he was carrying a base weight of 7.5 pounds—but he had a feeling that number would change.
“I have a superpower for losing things,” he said.
He was right. He dropped a food bag when he was 44 miles from Snoqualmie Pass—his next resupply—and had to cover the rest of the distance on 600 calories.
And he didn’t cut his losses there. He misplaced a headlamp in southern Washington and had to ask his wife to overnight him a new one. But the new light wasn’t there when he showed up to town, so he forged on, not wanting to lose time. It took two more resupply stops before a headlamp was finally in the right place at the right time.
Fowler wasn’t deterred by these obstacles he encountered during his hike. He knew they were inevitable and was ready to confront them.
“Whenever things went wrong, I turned it into a game of ‘how do I fix this?’,” he said. “Problem-solving is part of the fun and the challenge of long-distance hiking.”
Fowler expected things to go wrong on the trail, but his hike got even harder than he imagined it could, especially after his 30th day. He dealt with injuries that made it hard to walk and impossible to pop a squat. He kept encountering remnants of Tropical Storm Hilary, including raging creeks in the Sierra and washed-out trails in Southern California, that forced him to navigate 30-foot cliffs in the middle of the night. And, he struggled to keep pace with his hiker hunger. He had planned to eat 10,000 calories a day to meet his energy needs but found that insufficient. During one especially ravenous stop in Southern California, he spent $49 at a Chevron on lemonade, chocolate milk, Dr. Pepper, and other liquid calories and another $16 at a nearby McDonalds.
But, it wasn’t all pain and suffering during Fowler’s FKT. He got into this style of hiking because he had so much fun during that first big outing in Glacier, and his excitement for long trail days didn’t fade over 2,650 miles.
“I just love to do it,” he said. “You get to experience so much in a day, from the scenery, to the wildlife, to your emotions, it’s hard to describe just how amazing it is.”
From 2023
