‘I could do nothing to stop myself’

William Monk prefers the kind of headover-heels feeling he has for his wife to the other kind of falling, like the literal 67-foot tumble that left him bloodied and bruised off the world-renowned Pacific Crest Trail.

“With each tumble and roll I could hear my own grunts, groans and cries of pain. I can still close my eyes to this very day and see my fall as though it were occurring again,” the long-distance hiker turned author wrote in his new book, Whistler's Way: A Thru-Hikers Adventure on The Pacific Crest Trail.

“The worst was the knowledge that I could do nothing to stop myself.”

“The incident,” as he Monk now calls it, happened on his 60th birthday. To be more precise, it was June 30, 2019. Monk was about 100 miles south of Washington state, roughly halfway through the trek stretching from the Mexican border to British Columbia.

“I came across this heavy snow traverse that was probably 100 yards across the trail, and I was going to just kick in with my feet and climb over it,” he said.

He regularly purges items that he does not use throughout long-distance hikes to keep the weight of the pack on his back around 30 pounds.

“You just learn to do with less,” he said.

Monk had just sent ice axe home thinking that he was safe to proceed without it in June. He opted to dig in with his feet to scale the steep obstacle in his path.

“I lifted my left foot up and I fell straight down the mountain,” he said.

“…When I fell, I hit every rock and tree on the way down.”

GETTING UP AGAIN

The contents of his pack spilled out as his body dropped. Bittersweet relief would come when a tree stopped his fall. He knew he was seriously hurt, but he couldn’t tell the full extent of the damage done.

There were, however, clear signs of ribs “broken to the point that when I moved, I could feel and hear them clicking,” he said.

The pain of throwing his pack on his back proved too excruciating, so he dragged it behind him while he slowly tried to make his way back up to the trail, where he would be more visible if another hiker came along.

“I was black and blue all over… it looked like somebody had beat me with a ball bat,” he recalled.

His mind flashed back to sections of the trail when he didn’t see another hiker for days at a time. He hoped that wouldn’t be the case this time as he searched for his eyeglasses to the best of his compromised ability and wished for some birthday luck.

Monk recounts the grueling hours between the fall and the moment he was airlifted into the belly of the Black Hawk helicopter in Whistler’s Way.

“This made for such a great book… I couldn’t have planned this fall any better,” Monk joked.

Whistler, by the way, is his trail name.

And Whistler was back on the trail to finish what he started 37 days after “the incident.”

PUSHED TO THE LIMITS

Monk trekked 2,189 miles through 14 U.S. states while conquering the Appalachian Trail (AT) in 2017.

“The PCT is far more diverse. You start in the southern desert of California and end up going over the Sierra Nevada, up to 14,000 feet and then through Washington State,” he said.

Monk self-published his first book, Whistler’s Walk: The Appalachian Trail in

142 Days, based on journal entries covering everything from training for the journey to successfully summitting Mount Katahdin.

Whistler’s Way, released on April 27, was picked up by LOBA Publishing. It follows Monk’s five-month-long PCT journey, introducing readers to several trail angels that had a hand in helping him hike on.

“No through-hiker can hike 2,650 miles and do it all and achieve it by themselves. They need help,” he said.

“…The selfless kindness of strangers, that’s the highlight.”

The back jacket of Whistler’s Way describes Monk’s PCT journey as “filled with awe-inspiring views, heartstopping danger, and unrelenting adventure.”

“The intrepid 60-year-old must face 700 miles of scorching desert crawling with rattlesnakes and mountaintops raging with snowstorms, testing his physical stamina to the limit and beyond.”

KINDNESS OUTSHINES ALL ELSE

The offers of hiking companions, drives to nearby towns, hot showers, free meals and encouraging words complemented the wonderous beauty of snow-capped mountains, sunlit meadows and babbling brooks.

“There were times where I would be walking along… and I didn’t want to stop for lunch because I wanted to see what was next, and very rarely was I ever disappointed,” he said.

To top it all off, Monk said his wife of 41 years, Annie, was a constant source of support and motivation. He FaceTimed her so she could be with him for the final steps of his PCT journey. When he laid in a hospital bed in Salem questioning if his fall at the midway mark had quashed his dreams of conquering the PCT, Annie told him to take a break to heal and get back out there.

“There’s countless days that you don’t see anybody and you’re out in the middle of nowhere, but I found out that I can be by myself and that I like myself,” he said.

When he’s not hiking, training or writing, Monk is helping Annie with the couple’s bed and breakfast in Granville Ferry.

He plans to hike the 3,028mile Continental Divide Trail next to achieve what is known as the Triple Crown in hiking circles. That will have to wait for the global pandemic to settle.

In the meantime, Monk is enjoying spreading the word about Whistler’s Way.

“There’s no better feeling than opening up a box and pulling out your book for the first time,” he said.

Whistler’s Way is available for purchase through Amazon.ca and in bookstores, including Mad Hatter Books in Annapolis Royal. It sells for $22.99.