Crunch: A Million Snowy Steps Along the Pacific Crest Trail. This item is unavailable.Crunch: A Million Snowy Steps Along the Pacific Crest Trail

In 2017, the Pacific Crest Trail wasn’t itself.

Okay, so it was still dirt. A lot of dirt—almost three thousand miles of the stuff. But in the remote Sierra Nevada range, over four hundred miles of the trail were buried, hidden under a historic snowpack layered over fifty feet thick.

For Pacific Crest Trail hikers, the snow was either a roadblock or a challenge, and Daniel Winsor had spent enough cold nights recycling carbon dioxide in his sleeping bag to know one thing: a few snowflakes weren’t going to stop him.

Storms pummeled the Sierra into June. Towering sheets of ice had replaced the steep trails winding to thirteen thousand foot passes. Snowmelt transformed tame creek crossings into deadly wades. Invisible voids lurked beneath the snow, waiting to swallow unassuming hikers—by most any measure, only a suicidal fool would try it.

There were a lot of cold nights tucked down in that sleeping bag.

The rare prize of connecting a continuous path between Mexico and Canada in 2017 was hard to ignore. So with the odds stacked against him, Daniel pushed against his own fear and doubt to head into the Sierra backcountry anyway, aiming toward a preposterous goal in a year refusing to cooperate.

In his debut memoir, Daniel dissects the lofty highs and miserable lows of hiking through a below-freezing environment for weeks on end. From inflamed tendons to frozen boots, from maddening hunger to sunburned nostrils, from rocky partnerships to back-stabbing cohorts—Daniel explores the inexplicable drive to find ones limits in an age where comfort and safety is all but guaranteed.