Hiker going the distance on Pacific Crest Trail.

Byline: SUSAN PALMER The Register-Guard

On April 22, Brent Lennox boarded a train in Eugene bound for Southern California. He got off in San Diego two days later and then walked back home.

It's taken him four months to get here and he's not done yet.

The 18-year-old Eugene resident is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches 2,650 miles from the Mexican border to British Columbia.

Part rite of passage, part education and all dream fulfillment, the summer-long trek has given Lennox the chance to test himself in a landscape both magnificent and treacherous.

He's stood atop California's Mount Whitney, at 14,494 feet the tallest mountain in the continental United States. From that height, the serrated peaks of the Sierra Nevadas stretched almost endlessly below him.

"It was like a cornfield of mountains," Lennox said. "I'd never seen anything like it."

He's forded thigh-high rushing streams in Yosemite National Park. He's stumbled through the stifling heat of the Mojave Desert, braved rain and snow to be rewarded with daily vistas so stunning they almost defy the imagination.

"It's a wonderland up there," said Lennox, who stopped in Eugene for a two-day break from the trail to replenish supplies and visit family and friends.

This morning, he heads out to pick up where he left off at Odell Lake. He still has about 600 miles to go and expects to finish the first week in September.

He's anticipating more adventures, but on this last leg of the trip, he's also shed the illusions that weighed him down almost as much as the heavy gear he started out with.

A wide gulf separates the fantasy of daily backpacking and the reality, Lennox said Tuesday. Putting in 25 miles a day for five months isn't for the faint of heart.

"It's hard, hard, very hard," he said. That's not exactly what he envisioned in the years he dreamed about this trek.

He recalls being attracted to backpacking when he was 13 or 14 and a student in Northwest Youth Corps' alternative education program.

He earned his high school diploma at 15 and got a job at REI when he was 16, which fed his backpacking fever. But past trips in the woods paled in comparison to this adventure.

"I had an idea that hiking would become easy, that I would be scampering through the forest," he said.

Trudging is more like it. And it's work, pure and simple - physical work to walk for miles with a 20-pound backpack and mental work to realize this is what you'll be doing sunrise to sunset day in, day out for thousands of miles.

"It never got easier," Lennox said. "My ability to deal with it improved."

Preparation also helped. Lennox began in February, buying supplies to fill the dozens of food boxes that his parents agreed to send to nearby towns that serve as resupply points along the trail.

He saved about $1,000 of his own money and supportive family and friends kicked in another $1,000 to help him on his way. REI granted him leave for the trip and also gave him $300 worth of retail credit for trail gear.

Lennox figured he was traveling light at the beginning of the trail, but 180 miles into the trip, certain essentials in his pack had become dead weights.

His 1-pound stove? Too heavy. His 1-pound water filter? Forget it. And 2-pound sandals? Replaced with lightweight flip-flops.

Dropping into Idylwild, Calif., Lennox spent a night in a hotel crafting a stove out of the bottom of a Pepsi can. Instructions for making the stove can be found on the Internet. The featherweight burner uses denatured alcohol, which can be stored in plastic water bottles, much lighter than gas or propane stored in metal cannisters.

He also traded his water filter for a lighter-weight chemical puri- fier.

Among his biggest fears starting out was whether he'd be OK alone. But while civilization may be miles away, people aren't - and Lennox soon found himself part of a hiking community of like-minded folks, some of them doing short trips on the trail, some through-hikers going the distance.

They came in all ages, some as young as he is, some in their early 60s, he said.

About 350 people applied for permits to hike the entire trail this summer, according to the Pacific Crest Trail Association, which oversees and maintains the pathways. Of that number, about half have dropped out, said Joe Sobinovsky, association program director.

Lennox made plenty of friends among the hikers, but discovered that hiking alone let him set his own rhythm. Many hikers seem to have their best energy early in the day, but Lennox discovered he preferred hiking well into the evening. Trail friends started calling him Night Crawler.

Among other things that he's learned: Guidebooks can fail you. Lennox didn't take walking poles because a trail veteran advised against it, but it was among the first things he asked his parents to send him. He dutifully packed corn pasta in his resupply boxes because lightweight hiking guru and author Ray Jardine advised it. Out on the trail he quickly grew sick of it.

And that's the beauty of the resupply points. Through hikers drop into towns along the trail about once every seven to 10 days. Besides picking up more food and sending back unnecessary things, they bathe, do laundry, even take in a movie. Mostly they eat, Lennox said.

For his Eugene stop, he asked his mother for a full-course home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner.

His parents, teachers Richard and Mary Beth Lennox, say they've enjoyed living vicariously through his adventure and are proud of his achievement.

"I couldn't do what he's doing," Richard Lennox said.

Better still, said Brent Lennox, the trek is helping him learn to trust himself. When he's alone on the trail and makes a wrong turn, there's nobody to blame and nobody to help but himself.

Conversely, when he meets a challenge such as crossing through 11,000-foot Forester Pass in the Sierra Nevada or braving an encounter with a rattlesnake, he owns the experience.

And no matter what else happens, he's always got that feeling from the first day on the trail, his first 25-mile day.

"That's when I felt: `All right! I can make it to Canada,' ' he said.

PACIFIC CREST TRAIL

What: Begins near Campo on the Mexican border east of San Diego, and goes through Southern California's Laguna and San Jacinto mountains, the western arm of the Mojave Desert, Yosemite National Park and Mount Shasta. In Oregon, it skirts the Three Sisters, Mount Jefferson and Mount Hood. It drops down to the Columbia Gorge at the Washington border, rises near Mount Adams and takes hikers along the base of Mount Rainier. It ends at the Canadian border near Manning Provincial Park in British Columbia.

History: Californian Clinton Clarke first proposed linking the trails known as the Cascade Crest in Washington, the Oregon Skyline in Oregon and the John Muir Trail in California into one continuous trek in 1930. He organized teams of young YMCA hikers to scout a route, and they did so each summer from 1935 to 1938. But it was 30 years before Congress passed the National Trails System Act in 1968. That act designated the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail as the first national scenic trails.

Books: "The Pacific Crest Trail Guidebook," two volumes by Schaffer, Schifrin, Winnett, Jenkins and "The Pacific Crest Trail Hiker's Handbook" by Ray Jardine. Other reference books at www.pcta.org/store/index.shtml

Web sites: www.pcthiker.com/pages/journals/2002/brent.shtml for more on Lennox's trip. Or www.pcta.org and www.pcthiker.com for more on the trail.

CAPTION(S):

Brent Lennox stands on the Sonora Pass, more than 9,600 feet above sea level, the first week in July.