Barely Enough
Issue #1 - September 2026
The Hat Creek Rim is a rugged volcanic escarpment in Northern California and one of the most challenging sections of the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile trail that runs from the Mexican border to Canada.
This particular section is notorious for one main thing: a lack of water.
For nearly 30 miles between the small town of Old Station and Baum Lake, there is no reliable water source along the trail. There are no streams to fill your CNOC, no convenient spring waiting around the next bend. Without a water cache, a hiker has essentially two choices: carry enough water to last the entire 30 miles or make the difficult off-trail descent into Lost Creek, deep into the canyon below.
I hiked the Hat Creek Rim this year as part of a 450-mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail from Bucks Lake, California, to Ashland, Oregon.
It was hot.
Very hot.
The high temperature the day I crossed the Hat Creek Rim was 103 degrees. The heat radiated from the volcanic rock beneath my feet, and the blisters already formed over the previous week were getting worse. Every step hurt. Not the kind of hurt you notice and forget. This was pain that became part of every thought. It was time to give my body a rest.
Near the end of the Hat Creek Rim section is the Burney Mountain Guest Ranch, just about a mile off the trail. The ranch is one of those places that feels almost impossibly luxurious when you’ve been living in the wilderness for weeks. They have hot food, showers, rooms, and A SWIMMING POOL.
And perhaps most importantly, people who understand exactly what you have just been through.
The night before reaching the ranch, I slept near Forest Road 22 Water Cache, surrounded by grazing cows and the sound of coyotes playing somewhere in the distance. I fell asleep thankful the water tank had been filled by the rancher who owns this land.
The next afternoon, I walked into the ranch.
While there, I took advantage of the resupply shop and bought the food I would need as I continued my journey. Then I checked into my room and took a shower.
I was a new person.
The ranch provides loaner clothes while you are there so you can wash your trail clothes, which may seem like a small thing to someone living a normal life. To a thru-hiker who has been wearing the same clothes day after day, it feels like an act of extraordinary generosity.
That evening, sitting in our randomly styled yet clean loaner clothes, about seven of us ate dinner, swapped stories, and laughed for hours.
We laughed about our trail names and the stories behind them. We compared experiences. We talked about the places we had been, the animal encounters we had had, and the journey still ahead of us.
Then I went back to my room, cleaned up my gear, and prepared my pack for an early departure the next morning.
Later that evening, before going to bed, I found myself back in the lodge, filling one of my water bottles with cold water from the kitchen.
The lodge itself had the feeling of an old ski lodge. Huge timbers stretched overhead. The furniture was rough-hewn and substantial. A large fireplace dominated the room, and through the big windows, you could see the glorious blue swimming pool I had enjoyed earlier in the day.
After weeks on the trail, this was heaven.
The dining room was quiet now, and at the head of the large table sat a lone hiker that wasn’t there before. He was unbelievably thin.
Most of us were thin, but this man was thinner than most. His clothes too large for his frame. His arms were long and narrow, disappearing in the sleeves of his shirt, and his shoulders looked like they had been stripped of everything except the bare essentials. His face was deeply hollowed, with high cheekbones and sunken cheeks. His skin was stretched over a frame reduced to almost nothing, yet he still looked strong.
He wasn’t weak, just thin.
And then there was his hair. It was long and completely white, and extremely messy. Some strands hung down around his face while others stood straight up in every direction. It was clear that he had stopped trying to control it weeks ago, and the hair was living its best life doing whatever it wanted.
Combined with his hollowed face, long limbs, and bony frame, he looked wild, as if he were part animal, raised in the woods, and had simply wandered in and found himself sitting at the head of long, formal dinner table complete with linens and charger plates. He just didn’t quite fit.
And he was eating.
Actually, eating doesn’t quite describe it.
He was buried in a bowl of soup, attacking it with the kind of urgency you only see when someone is truly, profoundly hungry.
His entire attention was focused on his food.
The owner of the ranch, a hiker herself, stood beside him, almost like a waiter assigned to a very hungry king, bringing him whatever he asked for and making sure he had everything he needed.
More soup.
More bread.
He was emaciated. I mean, truly starving.
But weren’t we all?
Long-distance hiking does strange things to the human body. You can eat thousands of calories a day and still struggle to replace everything you burn. After enough miles, your body begins to draw from every reserve it has. You are in calorie deficit.
Clothes that fit snug at the beginning of the hike are hanging from your body.
You become acutely aware of your need for food—not just craving because you are hungry, but because your body requires it to live.
This gentleman was the extreme version of this process. His body was starving. His body was incredibly tired. His clothes were worn, torn, and caked with miles of desert sweat.
He looked up from his food upon my entrance, and a smile spread across his face. The type of smile that contorts your entire face and changes your appearance. A smile that writes a book. His eyes bright, his face open. His hollow cheeks flush with color, and the wild hair and skeletal frame suddenly came to life.
He looked completely, utterly happy and satisfied.
I knew exactly how he felt. I have been there dozens of times.
There is a particular kind of happiness that comes after you’ve been pushed to the edge physically and then suddenly find yourself somewhere clean and safe, with a giant meal sitting in front of you.
It is difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.
The food is the best you have ever had.
The shower is the best shower of your life.
The bed is the softest most luxurious thing you have ever laid on.
Sitting in a chair is a culmination of all your conquests. You are a king.
He and I talked for a few minutes about his journey. Like me, he had just hiked one of the hardest and most grueling sections of the Pacific Crest Trail, and we were both ultralight hikers.
His backpack was tiny, and he carried only what he considered to be essential.
For those unfamiliar with ultralight backpacking, a true ultralight hiker typically carries somewhere around 8 to 12 pounds of base weight. That is everything in the pack except food and water.
Everything you need to live in the wilderness is reduced to roughly ten pounds.
Shelter.
Sleep system.
Clothes.
Cooking kit.
Water filter.
Navigation and safety equipment.
Everything!
The philosophy is simple: eliminate everything you don’t absolutely need. Every ounce matters.
The less you carry, the farther you can go.
But standing there that night, looking at this wild man feverishly eating his dinner with the biggest smile ever on his face, I started to think about something beyond backpacking, and beyond the trail.
Maybe the full lesson here is not just about how much weight we can remove from a backpack, but about how much weight we carry through life.
To be continued…
© 2026 [Christopher S. Miser / Ultralight Leadership]. All rights reserved.
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