How an adventurous teacher in backcountry Washington pioneered the Pacific Crest Trail
Portrait of Katherine Montgomery, circa 1910 (courtesy Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, #35.0-2010.1.1a).
In 2007, Barney Scout Mann hiked the Pacific Crest Trail with his wife, Sandy. He was a practicing lawyer at the time, and the experience along the way inspired him deeply. But Mann’s inspiration doesn’t just come from the landscapes, nature and people he encounters. This is the presence of the trace itself. “In the 21st century, it’s a miracle that we have a continuous wilderness trail that stretches from Mexico all the way to Canada,” Mann said in an interview with GlacierHub.
man joined Pacific Crest Trail Association, and soon found himself serving on the organization’s board of directors. That’s when he started reading about the trail’s history.At the time, historians and guides alike credit Clinton C. Clarke founded the trail. Clark, a Harvard graduate, was a wealthy oilman who began promoting the idea of the Western Appalachian Trail in the 1930s. However, Mann also read a book by Joseph Hazard, Highly respected Mountaineers of the Northwest. In Hazzard’s 1946 book, Pacific Crest Trails from Alaska to Cape HornA short passage about Clark meeting a woman named Katherine Montgomery caught Mann’s attention.
A passage from Joseph Hazard’s book “Pacific Crest Trails” in which he recounts his conversation with Catherine Montgomery. (courtesy of Barney Scout Mann)
Hazard, who also sells textbooks to schoolteachers, describes meeting Montgomery in 1926 hours before a meeting with the local mountaineering club—before Clinton C. Clarke began spreading the word about the trail many years. Montgomery, a lifelong teacher, excitedly suggested “a meander down the heights of our western mountains, with mile markers and shelter cabins . . . from the Canadian border to the Mexican border.” That same evening, Azar wrote , he took the idea to a local mountaineering club, and it “acted favorably.”
“That’s it — that’s all they know about her,” Mann said. “I wonder—did she do this? Can we be sure? Who is this woman?”
The mystery led Mann to spend years digging through old newspaper articles, journals, magazines and other archival documents to determine that this was in fact the first time anyone had come up with the idea for the Pacific Crest Trail. “It’s amazing where people make their shadows come from,” he reflects. “I went looking. I found this woman in her own time. Proud spinster, it’s an ugly word, but it’s what they used back then. In fact, she’d call herself that before anyone else . This is an amazing, dynamic woman.”
Mann eventually found a key article showing that it was actually Montgomery who first came up with the idea for the Pacific Crest Trail, via the original meeting minutes of the Seattle Mountaineers, which credited the idea to Montgomery’s local mountaineering club. By then, though, Mann’s research had revealed a larger story about a schoolteacher, suffragette and avid “vagrant,” the modern word for hiker.
The Mount Baker Park Glacier can be seen from the surrounding peaks. (Credit: Ron Clausen via Wikimedia Commons)
Born in 1867 to a Scottish immigrant family on Prince Edward Island, Canada, Montgomery Spent her childhood in Nebraska, and at age 20 traveled to Western Washington to become a teacher. More than a decade later, Montgomery accepted a teacher training position as an elementary school teacher in Bellingham, where the massive glacial summit of Mount Baker and the surrounding Cascade Range are clearly visible. Montgomery would venture into the backcountry on weekends or holidays, often trekking deep into glacial mountains with other female hiking buddies—an unusual activity for women at the time. “She endured having to hike and wear bloomers, this tough wool,” Mann noted. “But that’s what it takes to get out there. So that’s what she’s going to do.”
An old photo of the Montgomery homestead. (courtesy of Barney Scout Mann)
One of Montgomery’s closest “wandering” companions was Ida Baker, a colleague and founder of the teacher training school where Montgomery worked. Together, the women built a 14-by-14-foot log cabin on 160 acres in an area that required a full day of train travel and another day of hiking to reach. By following National magazine articles written by Baker and other female wandering companions, Mann pieced together why Montgomery loved the outdoors so much. “It’s a place where she can be herself without the austere veneer of a strong woman of the era,” Mann said. “Everyone says she loves the outdoors and feels free in it. It’s a place where she feels comfortable when she has few other places to go.
Mann even credits longtime hiking partner Baker with playing a role in Montgomery’s idea for the Pacific Crest Trail. In 1916, Baker for american forestry A national magazine, the school bought a subscription to. Five years later, the same magazine published a second article on the idea for the Appalachian Trail. Mann thinks Montgomery likely read the article and was inspired to take a similar idea to the West Coast—in fact, she even mentioned it later in a conversation with Joseph Hazzard pitching the idea. “So, it’s a connection to Ida Baker, and Catherine is a woman who is extremely open-minded and focused on the outdoors,” says Mann. “Her agenda for the day, when she’s supposed to buy textbooks from there [Hazard], was ‘No, I’m going to sell this guy with this grand idea. ‘”
A few years later, Baker died in an unusually strong storm that knocked down hundreds of square miles of trees. In an essay about her death, Montgomery wrote, “When I think back on Ida Baker and the locks of my life, memories of financial hardship, batch production, transcontinental travel, or farming together come to mind. minds, but most of all outings together.” Despite the loss, Montgomery continued to explore the outdoors throughout his life. While there are few pictures of Montgomery in the backcountry, Mann said we can infer that these “vagrants” looked a little different when they came out into nature than what we see today. “They have these beautiful pictures of people with wooden trekking poles – today you and I have crampons on our boots, an ice ax in one hand, spikes on their boots, and these wooden stick,” he said.
Bellingham Party by the Lake, with Montgomery on the far left. Mount Baker, Washington, 1906. (Courtesy Mazama Library and Historical Collections, VM1993.026. Crop from original.)
Climate Change Since Montgomery’s Era changed the scenery Pacific Crest Trail.this parkwood glacierFor example, used to be a huge hurdle. “In the past, crossing a river was a big thing and you needed to think twice about it — that’s the kind of thing she saw in her day,” Mann said.However, now only There. “Today, the ice barrier on the Pacific Crest Trail has changed and turned more into fire,” he said.
Ironically, Montgomery is unlikely to be hiking the official Pacific Crest Trail. But Mann thinks Montgomery’s particular corner in Washington looks almost the same as before. In her will, Montgomery bequeathed all of her land to the Washington State Federation of Women’s Clubs, which used it to establish protected forests.Most of her lands are well preserved and now include Katherine Montgomery Nature Interpretive Center Near the town of Enumclaw, Washington. “Given what she said that morning, I think she would have been surprised that this huge entity was in place and had a positive impact on so many people,” recalls Mann.
For his part, Mann believes stories like Montgomery’s underscore the ways in which individuals can still make a huge difference. “People don’t inherently care about history. But they can care about stories and people,” Mann said. “I love being able to preserve stories and memories.” He is written Widely About Montgomery’s contribution to the founding of the Pacific Crest Trail opened a new chapter in his career as a writer. If he could meet Montgomery, there were only a few things he wanted to know. “I just want to sit and listen to her and hear what her voice actually sounds like—in her own words and hear her talk about any of these adventures she’s doing. Just tell her what she’s doing, I think. It’s enough to actually have a huge impact.”
Signpost for the Pacific Crest Trail. (Credit: US Forest Service – Pacific Northwest, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons. )
