BONUS MATERIAL: Click here to watch a video interview with Jennifer McCarty on our YouTube channel.
Long-distance hiker Jennifer McCarty (pictured above) was deeply moved when she heard the story of Jake French (pictured at right) -- the 24-year-old Dufur resident who was paralyzed in December 2008.
Jake's story was profiled in Vol. 1 Issue 4 of the Sheriff's Office newsletter, "The Briefing Room." An accident broke the C6 vertebrae in his neck, leaving him a quadriplegic and derailing his burgeoning forestry career. He is now pursuing aggressive -- and expensive -- therapy at Adapt Advanced in Beaverton. It's the best shot he has at gaining back some of his lost mobility and independence.
McCarty decided that she wanted to help Jake -- so she took a walk. A very long walk.
She hiked an astonishing 1,000 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail -- from Mexico to Yosemite Valley, CA -- raising over $5,600 along the way for Jake to attend Adapt Advanced, which will support Jake’s rehabilitation for two months.
A hike becomes a cause
McCarty, 34, teaches graduate students at OHSU and University of Portland. She knows Jake's physical therapist, Anna Saltonstall.
"I knew that I wanted to do a hike by myself," McCarty said, "but to do that and stay motivated meant finding a charity or foundation that I could fundraise for that was personally meaningful."
She said "it all clicked" when she saw a TV news report about Jake. "I knew that I could walk 1,000 miles to help Jake learn to walk again -- and once I met him and sensed his excitement and tenacity for life, I knew that I could do it."
"Jenny is one of the most incredible people that I've ever met," said Jake French. "One day Anna said that she had a surprise for me and to meet her at a restaurant in Dufur. Honestly, I was expecting a seat cushion that I've been waiting for. I was so surprised once I met Jenny and she told me about her plan to walk 1,000 miles. She wanted to do a walk for someone who had that ability taken away from them."
Making friends, finding 'trail magic'
McCarty is a fitness buff and a committed long-distance hiker, or "thru-hiker" -- on her Web site, www.3ptbenders.com, she and her husband Owen McCarty have chronicled long-distance hikes in Nepal, Corsica and Colorado. But she stepped up her training for her first solo hike.
"About two months beforehand, I really started walking lengthy amounts and working out for hours on the stair-climber and treadmill," she said.
She left the Mexican-American border at the start of May, and began a hike that averaged a blistering 22 miles per day, with occasional no-mileage "zero days" to recharge along the trail.
"I started my trip alone, and didn't know anyone on the trail," she said. That didn't last long: " Hundreds of hikers start at the Mexican border each April/May, but they're fairly spread out. Over time, we get to know one another and bonds form. As I walked and took days off in small towns, I began to connect with several hikers."
She formed a loose confederation with those hikers, and the group dubbed itself "Team Zero." "We didn't necessarily walk all day together," she said, "but we planned to camp together and hike the same distance each day. This becomes more important as you enter the Sierras -- since a group is much safer at elevation, in snow, and while fording rivers."
The sense of community also includes what McCarty calls "trail magic" -- caches of food and water left at key points along the Pacific Crest Trail by an unofficial support network of "trail angels."
"Trail angels are usually people who hiked the trail in previous years, or just friendly folks who appreciate the experience," she said. "It's not always typical to know who the trail angels are -- they can be totally anonymous, unknown to the hiker community."
A journey of extremes
The Pacific Crest Trail hike (chronicled in McCarty's online journal of her trip, walkforjake.blogspot.com) took her from the desert past the far edge of San Diego sprawl, over Mt. Baden-Powell, through the Mojave Desert, and over the Sierras.
McCarty found innovative ways to solicit donations for Jake during the hike. "Did you know that the Pilates positions Jenny posted on the online journal of her trip were a fundraising idea?" said Jake's mother, Margaret French. "Every time she posted a pose online -- like the one in front of McDonald's golden arches at mile 342 -- people in her Pilates class donated money to Jake."
McCarty said "The best moment for me was coming down off of Fuller Ridge -- 17 miles down, 7,500 feet -- out of the first major snow we'd experienced into the absolute desert near I-10 in Cabazon, CA. There I was in scrub, sand and surrounded by wind turbines -- looking up at a scraggly, snowy ridge that I'd just been on that morning."
She says the scariest moments did not involve the rattlesnakes and bear she encountered on the trail. "The scariest moment was in the Sierras -- probably traversing up Mather Pass," she said. "I wrote about that one in my blog. While it was incredibly scary, it required the utmost concentration, and therefore it was intense and thrilling at the same time -- as was the fording of Evolution Creek."
Jake French said she served as a long-distance inspiration during his intense Adapt Advanced therapy sessions. "There were many times while I was working out that I thought about Jenny and her enormous undertaking," said Jake French. "When I got tired, I thought about what Jenny must be going through, and it gave me strength to keep going. I'd think, 'Here I am in an air-conditioned house, working out for an hour or two, and she's walking through 100-degree heat or climbing extremely rugged mountains for days on end. What's my excuse?'"
A happy reunion
She ended her journey on June 30, fighting through a crowd of day-hikers and tourists to get to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. (She's the tiny speck in the picture at right.)
"The transition was tougher than I thought," she said. "When you're on the trail, you're alone, free and have no rules or expectations to live by other than your own. As soon as you enter into 'civilization,' all of that changes -- and very few people will understand this, other than thru-hikers."
A post-hike meeting with Jake French was "smiles and hugs all around. Being an outdoorsman, Jake had been following my journey, and understood the difficulties and experiences that I was having -- so I finally felt like we could sit down and talk about all the details like old friends."
"I cannot thank Jenny and all of our supporters enough," said Jake French. "The $5,600 that Jenny raised will fund 56 hours of my therapy. I currently use four hours of therapy each week -- which works out to 14 weeks of therapy that have been donated. Every hour that I spend in therapy is multiplied over my entire life -- because each ounce of strength I get back is mine forever."
To read Jennifer McCarty's online journal of her Pacific Crest Trail hike, visit walkforjake.blogspot.com. To donate money to fund Jake French's aggressive therapy program, click here. To learn more about Jake French, visit his Web site, www.jakefrenchinspires.com.
To watch a bonus video interview with Jennifer McCarty on our YouTube channel, click here.