PapaDen's Pacific Crest Trail Journey: Book Three is an unforgettable passage through the heart of the High Sierra. Starting at Walker Pass and climbing into Kennedy Meadows-the symbolic gateway to the Sierra-Dennis A. Clairmont leads readers into some of the most demanding and breathtaking miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. From the blast-furnace heat of the Mojave's final ridges to the icy grandeur of Forester Pass and the mythic John Muir Trail corridor, this book blends vivid day-by-day storytelling with practical details for fellow hikers. Along the way, readers experience the hardships of food carries and high passes, the camaraderie of resupply stops, and the majesty of granite cathedrals, alpine lakes, and roaring rivers. This is the Sierra at its most rugged and rewarding-a journey of both body and spirit.
DENNIS ARMAND CLAIRMONT was raised in the small New England town of Gilford Village, New Hampshire, at the base of Gunstock Mountain, where he developed a lifelong love for the outdoors. Fall meant playing football, winter brought skiing, and spring was for baseball. But summer was always his favorite season-building treehouses, digging underground forts, fishing for trout in nearby streams, raking blueberries, and hiking and camping with the Boy Scouts. In 1968, his family relocated from New England to California, leaving behind the landscape that had shaped his early passions. More than five decades later, after raising four children, Dennis found himself returning to those childhood roots. At 66 years old-despite arthritic knees and armed only with a backpack-he set out to undertake the most physically demanding challenge of his life: hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Campo, California, to the Canadian border. Dennis has chronicled that adventure in PapaDen's Pacific Crest Trail Journey, a trilogy of three books that tells the full story-one of perseverance, adventure, and personal rediscovery along one of America's great long-distance trails. Dennis now lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife Shelley-his college sweetheart-after 52 years of marriage. They remain close to their four children and fifteen grandchildren.
