The proper way to Hitchhike
Most towns along the PCT are more than a half-day's walk from the trail, hardly accessible. So, the hiker has no choice but to swallow a big dose of humility and plant themselves by the roadside.
A few basic rules: stick your thumb in the air. Doff your hat, sunglasses to show off your face. Take the time to tame your dirty hair into some semblance of a hairstyle. Let your backpack be visible, with hiking poles. We’d also have taken the time to check if the road is bustling on FarOut, if it's not better to push on to the next one that people frequently use.
It's one of those things where being a man can be reassuring, even though at least one of my PCT buddies got hassled by another rather annoying man who made a lot of unsolicited advances. My female fellow hiker friends had set themselves a rule never to hitch alone with a man. As for me, apart from two little old ladies who jokingly threatened to whisk me away, I never had a problem. I was even rather good at hailing cars, because the younger, cuter, and more appealing you are, the greater your chances of stopping a car would be. One day, I even hitched more than two hundred kilometers for a doctor's appointment. But that's another story...
If in doubt about the driver's virtue or alcohol level, it's always possible to politely decline. I also regularly discreetly snapped a photo of license plates and kept my GPS beacon prominently displayed.
So, I never had a problem, yet every time I got into a car, I always had a thought for Casino, whom I met in Mont Laguna: She was a young hiker just starting out.
After walking about fifty kilometers at the start of the PCT, she realized her shoes wouldn't do, her feet were a mess, and she needed a bit of rest. So she stuck out her thumb to hitch back to town, and she got picked up by a middle-aged man in a truck. She hesitated to go alone, but sore feet are often a good incentive for an extra dose of courage. Once settled, alone in the car, he said to her, after a long silence and without taking his eyes off the road:
"I used to do very bad things."
That's when Casino, all of 22 and just five-foot tall, started to sweat... She was alone, at the mercy of a burly guy two heads taller than her.
But that's also when her savior took her home, put her up, fed her for free, helped her get her new shoes in the neighboring town, and even took her to a casino on an Indian reservation, where she won a bit of cash and her trail name.
After all, she'd just hitched a ride with a repentant bank robber. Not a rapist or a murderer.
