Barney and Sandy have been trail angels for Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers for 15 years — opening up their home to hundreds of adventurers from around the world.
Any long distance hiker will tell you about a magical encounter they had with a trail angel. Trail angels are awesome people who provide support to those on long treks — a meal, a shower or a ride into the nearest town.
Barney and Sandy Mann are two of the most well-known trail angels in the U.S. Their house is an hour from the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. The two offer hikers dinner and a place to sleep, but also camaraderie as they start their journey north.
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Shelby Stanger:
Okay. I'm walking up to their house, and I've already gone to the wrong house because I don't read directions.
Shelby Stanger:
Hey. How's it going, Barney? Thanks for having us. Hey, Sandy.
Sandy Mann:
Hi.
Shelby Stanger:
How's it going? I'm Shelby. I have a bunch of stuff. Sorry.
Sandy Mann:
That's okay.
Shelby Stanger:
Where do you guys want me to put the gear?
Shelby Stanger:
Talk to any long-distance hiker and you'll hear about the importance of trail angels. They offer rides, showers, or even food on long-distance hikes like the Pacific Crest Trail, which we also call the PCT. Barney and Sandy Mann, they're well-known trail angels in the hiking community. Earlier this month, I visited Barney and Sandy at their home in San Diego. They live about an hour from the PCT trailhead. If you aren't familiar, the Pacific Crest Trail is a 2650-mile-long trail. It starts at the Mexican border, and it ends at the border of Canada. For the last 15 years, Barney and Sandy have opened up their home to PCT hikers who are just starting their journey. Luckily for me, and because all three of us are vaccinated, the couple invited me into their home the same way they welcome hundreds of hikers every summer. Well, I guess not exactly the same way. I didn't need a bed or a hot meal, but I did have a lot of gear. It just wasn't for hiking the famous PCT.
Barney Mann:
Would you like some tea?
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, I would love some tea. Thank you, guys.
Sandy Mann:
Decaf or caf?
Shelby Stanger:
Decaf.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Shelby Stanger:
This is a cool mug. It says "Pacific Crest Trail." How cool.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. And on the other side it says Frodo actually.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, that's so cute.
Sandy Mann:
Those were made for us.
Shelby Stanger:
I feel really lucky ...
Shelby Stanger:
Trail angels are special people. They're magical. Surrounded by a sense of awe and mystique, Barney and Sandy are seriously some of the kindest people I've met. They not only help the hikers, but they also organize volunteers to make sure that the PCT-ers get off to a good start. On a typical spring evening, Barney and Sandy Mann have up to 40 thru-hikers sleeping in their backyard before they start their long trek north. The couple provides hikers with meals, stories, songs, and early-morning rides to the trailhead.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you want to just take me through what a typical morning is of hosting someone on the trail?
Sandy Mann:
So we serve breakfast at 5:30. It's the same every morning. You want to jump in?
Barney Mann:
So at 4:30, the ... Yeah. You can tell. At 4:30 our alarms go off. And it felt, for a while, like the movie Groundhog Day. Every morning we get up, and we slice fruit. We bake either muffins or-
Sandy Mann:
No, we bake muffins, either pumpkin or blueberry.
Barney Mann:
Oh. Yeah. Serve steel cut oats.
Sandy Mann:
Warm up the frittata.
Barney Mann:
Warm up the frittata. The next morning, we get up, do the same. So actually one morning I set my alarm to the song that begins the movie Groundhog Day, I Got You Babe. And she laughed the first morning. A few mornings later, it got annoying.
Barney Mann:
Anyway, we're serving breakfast to those who are going out that day.
Sandy Mann:
Which may be 20, may be 12, may be 30.
Barney Mann:
And the others are still trying to sleep in the tents who are going out the next morning. In the meantime, our drivers are arriving because we have a cohort of ... I think the last year it was 51 drivers.
Shelby Stanger:
And they're driving from your house to Campo, which is the start of the PCT?
Barney Mann:
Right. They leave here by 6:00, and they'll be back in San Diego by 9:00 and get on with the rest of their day having already lived an adventure.
Shelby Stanger:
Barney and Sandy started hosting a few hikers back in 2006, and they've become pretty well-known, actually legendary, in the Pacific Crest Trail Community. Among hikers, they go by their trail names. Barney is known as Scout, and Sandy is Frodo. Trail names are just one part of the long-distance hiking culture that the couple loves. Scout, which is Barney, and Frodo, Sandy, hiked the entire PCT themselves in 2007. At the time, Frodo worked as a teacher, and Scout was an attorney. These days they're retired, but being trail angels became another type of career all on its own: planning, organizing, and executing responsibilities. During the off season, they still get to pursue their love of the great outdoors.
Shelby Stanger:
I'd love to kind of start at the beginning. How did each of you fall in love with backpacking?
Sandy Mann:
You go first. You're older.
Barney Mann:
I was 13 years old, in a Boy Scout troop. My parents didn't camp. I think in their lifetime ... Dad turned 97 yesterday. In their lifetime, they have camped in the outdoors five times, each time saying, "We'll never do it again." But they took me to Boy Scout meetings. And at age 13, we went backpacking, went on a 50-mile backpack in the Sierra Nevada. I was the smallest kid out there. Always been the smallest boy in my classes. It was no fun. I barely maybe tipped the scale at 80 pounds. My backpack weighed almost half my weight. It rained. We'd been promised the Sierra Nevada snow and shooting stars. It rained much of the week. But out there ... Things that I used to see on my little TV screen, Davy Crockett in the outdoors, it's real. Bears are not behind bars, and we saw beavers. We saw, the entire week, two other small parties of people. And I fell in love with it out there. And as long as I could walk and keep up, I was the same as the big boys, and that was special. And I'm glad I did because if I wasn't a backpacker when I met Sandy, I think she says that she wouldn't have married me.
Sandy Mann:
That's true. So I am a bit younger than Scout. I'm the middlest of five children. I have two other brothers: one, one and a half years; one, three years older. And they were in Boy Scouts, and they got to go backpacking. So of course, that was something that I wanted to do, but it wasn't so easy for me. I had to wait until I was between my sophomore and junior year in high school before I ever got to go backpacking, and that was with a church group. I had really always enjoyed camping. I think I had an epiphany in Zion and a second one in Yosemite about, "This is the kind of place I want to spend time in." So I started backpacking at the age of 15, and it just kind of took off from there. We took our kids backpacking. Our son went backpacking three times before he was a year old or around that time.
Barney Mann:
We never had a first date, but we had a first backpack.
Sandy Mann:
Right.
Shelby Stanger:
You guys keep calling each other Frodo and Scout. Those are your trail names, right? How did you get those?
Barney Mann:
Mine's a fairly short and easy story, but I love her story more. 2003, we're hiking the John Muir Trail, and this is our first long hike. It's going to be just over two weeks long. We're really jazzed. We did it from north to south. Started at the floor of Yosemite Valley and we're hiking up. And the first day, we're going to climb Half Dome. After a few hours, a young man just out of high school attaches himself to us. He was obviously feeling a little bit lonely. We too looked like parental types. And after three hours- [crosstalk 00:07:40]
Sandy Mann:
A good conversationalist.
Barney Mann:
Yeah.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. Thoughtful young man.
Barney Mann:
We're chatting for three hours. At the end of three hours, I hear this question from right behind me from him. And the question was "What's the most important thing you've done in your life?" Well, I had a number of probably truthful answers at that time. I'd been married for 20 plus years, raised three kids. But the answer that came out of my mouth was, "I was Scoutmaster for a large Boy Scout troop for five years." And Scoutmasters are a bit pretentious. As well as the book we had torn up ... And back in that day instead of reading a book on your phone, you'd actually tear up a book in sections, maybe 100 pages each-
Sandy Mann:
You could mail sections to yourself up ahead as you resupply.
Barney Mann:
And the book we had done that with was To Kill a Mockingbird. And who would not want to be named after nine-year-old Scout Finch. So that's how Scout came about.
Sandy Mann:
Scout's the storyteller. So actually when hikers arrive at our house ... So we pick them up at the airport. They come to the house. We give them kind of an orientation and show them what's what and where the bathrooms are and all this stuff, where they're supposed to wash their hands and brush their teeth, etc. It takes Scout half an hour. It takes me 10 minutes. I'm the scientist. He's the storyteller. Anyway. So in 2006, we were following the number of hikers online, their trail journals. And there were too many hikers whose trail names were confusing. Well, fast forward to 2007. Scout has decided, actually in 2006, that when we start our PCT hike he wants to commemorate it.
Barney Mann:
Well, it's going to be our 30th wedding anniversary summer. And this woman has put up with me that long, and I really wanted to get her something special. And she's not normally a jewelry person, but I commissioned a Pacific Crest Trail ring.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. He designed it and had somebody up in Oregon work very hard to get what he had in mind and to make that. So I'm oblivious. He's showing this to hikers who are staying with us. And then when we start the trail, he gives it to me and tears fall, mostly on his part. Anyway. So I have this ring, and a bunch of the hikers who had stayed with us who knew about the ring came to me at the kickoff and said, "We know your trail name. You are the ring bearer. You have to be Frodo." I was resistant for a couple of weeks, but eventually you just kind of ... When you start introducing yourself to other hikers that way, you know you've totally capitulated.
Barney Mann:
And to this day she still wears the ring.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. So it's got the PCT symbol on it. It's got the monument at the Mexican border, Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, and the monument at the Canadian border on it.
Shelby Stanger:
How does somebody get a trail name?
Sandy Mann:
Usually they do something really stupid.
Barney Mann:
Right. Like Pepper sprays himself with pepper spray.
Sandy Mann:
Or you could be the guy who's at the resort at mile 110, called Warner Springs that ... It's closed now, unfortunately. Big hot spring, pool. There's a little girl's birthday party, a five-year-old birthday party going on. And they're talking about little ponies, and they're arguing about who gets to be Rainbow Sparkles.
Barney Mann:
"I'm Rainbow Sparkles."
Sandy Mann:
"No, I'm Rainbow Sparkles."
Barney Mann:
"No, I'm Rainbow Sparkles."
Sandy Mann:
So this hiker turns to his buddy. They're lounging on these chairs.
Barney Mann:
And he says, "No. I'm Rainbow Sparkles."
Sandy Mann:
So he became Rainbow Sparkles, which he wore with pride.
Shelby Stanger:
So your first Pacific Crest Trail trip-
Sandy Mann:
Our only.
Shelby Stanger:
Your only. What was that like for you? And how was it so impactful for you that you decided to make it such a huge part of your life? Your earrings say PCT on it. I'm in this house and PCT signs are everywhere. The mugs we're drinking tea from are Pacific Crest Trail, I mean.
Sandy Mann:
Why are you always looking at me like I'm supposed to answer first?
Barney Mann:
Because I love you.
Sandy Mann:
So we actually started hosting hikers before we hiked the PCT. We kind of discovered ultralight backpacking. Back in 2003 we did the John Muir Trail and tried that out just to see, can we do these big mile days, ultralight stuff?
Barney Mann:
And when we come off it, still wanting to do a thru-hike.
Sandy Mann:
On the PCT. Yeah. And yes, and yes. We did our PCT hike in 2007.
Barney Mann:
We started hosting because it's one way to whet our appetite. Because one of the things about doing a thru-hike is, you have to really, really want to do it.
Sandy Mann:
To be successful.
Barney Mann:
Otherwise, it's too painful. You have to really want to do it.
Sandy Mann:
Too achy. When we did our hike, I was looking forward to this. I thought, "Oh, this'll be great. The scenery will be amazing, a lot of variety. It's going to be about the physical challenge and about the scenery." And it wasn't. It was about the people and the community. And that surprised me a little bit, but that really became very important to us as we were hiking.
Barney Mann:
I could probably sit here today and if someone walked in the door that I'd met for 10 minutes on the trail that year, you would watch two long-lost cousins getting together, hugging each other, and starting to trade stories.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you have a story from the trail, just one story that you love telling?
Barney Mann:
The problem is I have too many, and they're probably too long. What one's short-
Shelby Stanger:
Was there a good moment? Was there a really hard moment on the trail where you're like, "I'm over this?"
Barney Mann:
There was never a "I'm over this" moment. There were hard moments, but the next thought wasn't "I'm over this." The next thought is, "How are we going to handle this?" Yeah. Because we had a lot of really hard moments on the trail.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. We never got sick, which was helpful.
Barney Mann:
Thankfully.
Sandy Mann:
And we didn't have any major injuries. Scout broke a rib.
Barney Mann:
Well, you did have one.
Sandy Mann:
[crosstalk 00:13:14] Or cracked a rib.
Barney Mann:
You broke your teeth.
Sandy Mann:
I broke my teeth.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So how did you break your teeth?
Sandy Mann:
So this was just north of the California/Oregon border. And I stopped to do my business in the bushes, and Scout's gone ahead. When we hike, we try to have a little bit of time apart. So one of us will go ahead, and we'll say, "We'll meet in an hour. We'll meet at the next junction or the next stream crossing." So Scout's sitting down working on his journal as I'm catching up to him. And I just tripped on this teeny tiny rock, and I fell like a tree. I didn't even know I was falling until I was down. And I hit a rock with my tooth. I had no scratches on me, but I knocked out one tooth and broke the other one, my two front, top teeth. So I looked for the pieces of the broken one, which were too small. But I pushed the other one back in, and kept hiking on to find Scout. And luckily, we were near a dirt road, so we got a- [crosstalk 00:14:14]
Barney Mann:
I see her coming at me, and I could tell in the moment something is wrong. I mean, there was dirt on her front shirt and her face is just ... Something is very, very wrong. And then I see her open her mouth, and one tooth is not quite dangling, but you can see it's lower than the other. It's out of its socket. And the other one, half is gone. We are 20 trail miles from Ashland. It's a Sunday, which would prove to be critical because dentists don't come out on Sunday. And we needed to get help.
Sandy Mann:
And we had no cell phone. But Red Baron came alone and said, "Here, take my cell phone. I'll get it from you in town." And Filthy Figaro came along, and we knew his mom was in Ashland. And he said, "Here, let me call my mom."
Barney Mann:
We'd keep on offering to take her pack. Or not offering, tell her we wanted to take her pack. And she would say, "No, it's my mouth that hurts."
Sandy Mann:
Not my body.
Barney Mann:
Not my body.
Sandy Mann:
I had to keep my tongue on the broken tooth because the pulp was exposed. Anyway, long story short, we got into Ash and went to the emergency room. The doctor said, "It's Sunday evening. You're not going to see a dentist. Yes, we have a dentist on call, but that's why they're dentists and not doctors. It's so they-" [crosstalk 00:15:24]
Barney Mann:
They don't come out-
Sandy Mann:
"-don't have to this kind of stuff."
Barney Mann:
-on the weekend.
Sandy Mann:
Luckily, Dr. David Layer had been a Boy Scout leader, and he was the dentist on call that night. So he met us in his office, which was just across from the motel where all the hikers stay.
Barney Mann:
He spent two hours with us. And I was his assistant. He had me hold stuff, the lights. He actually rebuilt the one tooth that had broken in half. And the other one, the first thing he did was take an x-ray. And he said, "The nerve is still attached. We can maybe save it." So he reseated it, and then he built a bridge. And Shelby, you're looking at Frodo right now. This is 14 years ago, and that's how we walked out of it. Sorry. That's how we walked out of his office after two hours.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
You guys have so many stories that give me goosebumps. It is so cool. I mean, trail magic. You got your two teeth back. You went back on the trail, and eventually, you finish.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. One of the things about hiking the PCT or about a thru-hike, both of us could tell you a story or several stories from every single day on the trail.
Barney Mann:
It's 14 years ago, and for each day, it was five months.
Sandy Mann:
You look 14 years ago on a day that you're not on the trail, could you tell a story about that day? No. You don't remember it. But you remember what happens on the PCT.
Shelby Stanger:
Why is that?
Sandy Mann:
It just embeds itself in your brain differently I think because its being associated with so many amazing memories.
Barney Mann:
You imprint differently out there. We are different out there. You know that. And unlike most of our life, which are familiar patterns and stuff, any moment around a bend, the most amazing thing can happen and they often do out there, whether it's somebody, whether it's an animal, whether it's the most godawful weather you've been in.
Sandy Mann:
Whether it's the campsite that you set up in that was just so amazing with a great view. Yeah. So you do imprint differently out there. And then when you finish a trail, that stops.
Shelby Stanger:
What is finishing a trail like? Is it anticlimactic? Is it amazing? Is it just like another day?
Barney Mann:
It is not another day. It's an amazing feeling. Imagine some of the most ecstatic moments in your life, and that's what finishing a trail is like. Every night on the PCT, I'd brush my teeth. And as soon as I'd finish brushing, I'd look up. I'd find the Big Dipper. I'd then trace across the one side of the Dipper six lengths out to the North Star. And I'd look at it, and I'd think about it. I'd think about, that's where I'm heading.
Sandy Mann:
And you can probably see that 90% of the time because it wasn't cloudy.
Barney Mann:
Then afterwards, you get depressed.
Sandy Mann:
Some of us.
Barney Mann:
Some of us.
Sandy Mann:
Scout had issues. I'll let him tell you that story.
Barney Mann:
Well, I'll tell Frodo's first. We finish Friday night. We literally get back to our house in the night Friday night. Monday morning, she is there facing down at 7:30, 35 students in her class. And she just slipped back into her life. Me, I flopped around for a month. I actually had a decision to make, whether I was going to retire or not. And I chose not to, which was actually the right thing, but it took me 30 days. I didn't shave my beard for 30 days. On a long trail, we have usually a baggy wallet. You've taken your license and one credit card and a few bills and maybe something else, and that's your baggy wallet. I couldn't take the things out of my baggy wallet and put them in my regular wallet. And actually at the end of the month, I stood there and looked at the mirror for about 10 minutes before I finally took out the scissors and cut off my five-month beard and then shaved. I knew I needed to. I needed to move on. And then I went back to being a lawyer half time for three years.
Shelby Stanger:
I think we all know that feeling, of something coming to an end and not being able to quite let it go. I imagine that sensation is even stronger with an experience as magical as hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail. I've heard from so many PCT-ers that people you meet on the trail become family, which means trail angels must be like fairy godparents. When we come back, Scout and Frodo share all the planning that goes into hosting so many hikers, and they explain what prompted them to become trail angels.
Shelby Stanger:
I love listening to music while I make dinner or when I need to fully focus, which is a lot of the time, so I was stoked when Sonos sent me the new Roam portable speaker. I own a lot of portable speakers, and this one is superior to anything I've ever had. It was easy to set up with my phone. And it automatically switches from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth wherever you go so you don't have to think about your speaker, just your playlist. It even tunes itself to your surroundings so the sound is always clear and perfectly balanced like you're in your own recording studio, which is very cool for a podcast person who loves good sound, like me. Best of all, this thing is durable and waterproof. So it'll be coming with me to the beach this summer. You can discover sound made easy at Sonos, S-O-N-O-S, .com.
Shelby Stanger:
Every thru-hiker I've ever talked to has a trail angel story. Someone gave them a ride to the nearest town. Someone opened their home for a shower or home-cooked meal. Someone gave them a hug when they needed it. These angels, people like Scout and Frodo, restore our faith in humanity, at least restore mine. But it takes a lot more than just kindness to welcome 1,000 people into your home over two months during hiking season. When I toured their house, I saw the spreadsheets where Scout and Frodo organize everything from flight information to dietary restrictions for each hiker that stays with them. Having had their own trail angels on their own PCT hike, Scout and Frodo know the importance of providing this kind of kindness to other hikers. I want to hear a little bit more about the trail magic that you experienced on the trail that you've taken and given to other people.
Barney Mann:
We were approaching Sonora Pass, and it's a hard hitch, we know, from there. We actually originally hadn't planned to go to Northern Kennedy Meadows.
Shelby Stanger:
Where is this? Sonora Pass?
Sandy Mann:
Sonora Pass. So it's towards the northern end of the High Sierra. North of Yosemite.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay.
Sandy Mann:
Actually originally, my parents were supposed to pick us up there and bring us our resupply, but my father had just had heart surgery unexpectedly. So we were on our own, but we needed to get food. So there's a place called North Kennedy Meadows. It was kind of a little resort where you could ride horses and stuff like that. And they had a little store and a little café.
Barney Mann:
Yeah. We knew we could resupply. And we can see this pass for the last 45 minutes as you're dropping down onto it and see maybe ... Maybe we saw four cars during that time.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah.
Barney Mann:
It's a 10-mile hitch to Northern Kennedy Meadows. We drop down there. And the first thing we do is, "All right. Where should we stand to hitch?" And before we even do that, we hear a voice call out: "Are you Pacific Crest Trail hikers?" And a woman is in a large SUV with her husband, and she asked us, "Do you want a ride?" This was Vivian, and what was his name?
Sandy Mann:
I don't know.
Barney Mann:
I don't remember his name. He was a doctor, lived in Chicago, and they go to a UC Berkeley summer camp. And it gets hot. It's down to 5,000 feet. And one year, five or six years before us, they decide to drive up the Sonora Pass, 10,000 feet plus, to be cooler. And they do. And these grungy people wearing backpacks come out of the woods. They start to chat with them. And they realize, "Oh my gosh, these people are hiking from Mexico to Canada." And they take them down to Kennedy Meadows, the nearest place, and they treat them to a meal. And they drop them back off. So every year since then, one day they will drive up the Sonora Pass, and they would sit and wait. And this year, it was-
Sandy Mann:
And we were the lucky ones that year.
Barney Mann:
We were the lucky ones.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow.
Barney Mann:
They drove us down, treated us to a meal, and they were tripping over themselves wanting to hear our stories. And it's as if we had discovered long-lost family.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. That was great.
Barney Mann:
And they were trail angels, and that was trail magic.
Shelby Stanger:
So what is a trail angel?
Barney Mann:
A trail angel is anyone who does something else, who does something nice for a hiker. And it can be as simple as the guy in the North Cascades who was sitting there having lunch. We come up to where he is at the trail junction. We all admire the mountain goats out in the distance. And he's finishing. And he looks at us, realizes we're out for a long time, and says, "Would you like my last piece of pizza? And I have this soda." He has just been a trail angel and what he has done is trail magic. And it can also be hosting 40 people at your house a night.
Sandy Mann:
Right.
Barney Mann:
Simply giving a hiker a ride into town. It can be large and small.
Shelby Stanger:
So when did you guys start really opening your door to others full time?
Sandy Mann:
Probably, I would say, 2008.
Barney Mann:
Yeah. That's when numbers got up above 100. So the house is set up for that about two months a year, and then there's some preparation in the months beforehand.
Shelby Stanger:
What does that look like?
Sandy Mann:
Nowadays, it looks like a lot of computer communication and stuff like that. First of all, in January we meet with our San Diego volunteers who are drivers. Some of them will just come and hang out in the afternoon to help with hikers, drive hikers to the AT&T store, or if they have lots of packages, to the post office that's a half mile away. Anyway, lots of ways that people can volunteer. So we'll meet with them in January and talk about systems that worked and what do we need to improve and who wants to do what when and how to sign up.
Barney Mann:
In 2019, I think I wrote just over 80 thank-you notes to people who had volunteered to help us out.
Sandy Mann:
Right.
Shelby Stanger:
So there's not only people who come and stay with you, but there's people who volunteer?
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. Oh yeah. And yeah, we're also organizing our live-in volunteers because we have people who have hiked the trail who want to help out. So they'll come and live with us for a week and help hikers in any way they can. They help pick up hikers at the airport. They help drive hikers to the trail. They help hikers figure out what gear they actually need. They'll help us cook. They'll do all kinds of stuff. Yeah. We absolutely need that with 40 people a night.
Shelby Stanger:
You have a beautiful, comfortable home, but it's not a mansion.
Sandy Mann:
No.
Shelby Stanger:
And you host so many people here.
Sandy Mann:
Yep.
Shelby Stanger:
How do you do it?
Sandy Mann:
Well, I stress about it.
Barney Mann:
I enjoy it.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. So if you count out all the spaces and stuff like that, it really doesn't quite add up to 40, which is where we say we draw the line. Then you draw the line at 40, and then you go to the airport and there's some forlorn-looking person with a backpack looking like they don't know what they're doing. And you say, "Do you need a place to stay? Are you hiking the PCT?" So then the number goes up to 41.
Shelby Stanger:
This is great, you guys. Okay. So this is the dining room where all the food happens. [crosstalk 00:27:07] It's a perfect kitchen.
Sandy Mann:
Dinner happens outside actually.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. [crosstalk 00:27:10]
Barney Mann:
Everything usually-
Sandy Mann:
-here in two shifts.
Barney Mann:
Frodo and I trade off. And we'll have five or six hikers, well, when I do it, with chef's hats. And we'll set up for salad. We'll have three or four people working on salad. We often do sautéed vegetables because it's easy and it's fun and they taste good. And people are slicing and dicing.
Sandy Mann:
We kind of have five or six entrées that we rotate. We make chili. My specialty is stuffed shells, which is kind of like cheap and easy lasagna. We do chicken paprikash with biscuits.
Barney Mann:
A lot of these people, no offense to millennials ... Fewer people seem to know how to cook. So we'll get here, and I'll show someone how to sauté or whatever. And they go, "Oh my God. Thank you, Scout." Or especially biscuits. It's real easy from Bisquick. And they make beautiful biscuits that are fresh, hot out of the oven. And they go-
Sandy Mann:
They're so impressed with-
Barney Mann:
-"This was actually fairly easy."
Sandy Mann:
They'll thank Scout. "Thank you for teaching me to sauté."
Barney Mann:
Yeah, to make biscuits. It's fun.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you have anymore stories about people who've come here? Any wild nights or fun nights, memorable?
Barney Mann:
Memorable. Early on, back in the day when we used to ... The numbers were such we could sit around the dining room table. Maybe have 15, 17. That hasn't-
Sandy Mann:
For dinner.
Barney Mann:
For dinner. That hasn't happened for a long while. We were sitting around dinner. There were a number of Europeans who were dominating the conversation, and there's one young man who was sitting there fairly quietly. And as the meal begins to wind down, he says, "Yesterday I got out of the Army." And the table grows silent. He had been stationed in Iraq. He would be out for 12, 14-hour days and said, "I would come back to base, and I would just park myself in front of the computer and get lost. And one day, I came across a Pacific Crest Trail journal and I was hooked. And I decided I wanted to do this." And before he picked up his fork to begin eating again, he looked at us around the table and said, "The reason why I'm hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is because I do not want Iraq to be the seminal event of my youth."
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. Then we also had the Israeli who was determined to get to the trail by himself. He didn't need help, except that when he got to REI his credit card didn't work. And he had no way to deal with it, and he realized that it wasn't going to work anywhere.
Barney Mann:
The banks were closed in Israel. He couldn't make any phone calls, and he's there. He's got no cash and a dead credit card.
Sandy Mann:
So he calls us, and he comes and stays with us for two or three days. Three days. At one point, I think we were making ... Oh. I was making cupcakes for dessert. So I'm mixing up the batter, mixing up the frosting, I don't remember what. But here's the beaters, and they have stuff left on them. And we always let our kids lick the beaters. So Scout comes and takes the beaters and turns to this guy. Do you remember his name?
Barney Mann:
I don't remember his name. And I gave him one, and he looks at me like, "What is this?"
Sandy Mann:
What am I supposed to do with this?
Barney Mann:
And I just take the other one. With my tongue out, I just lick it. He goes, "Oh."
Sandy Mann:
He had never done that. He actually wrote us a letter at the end saying that he wished his parents were like us. Yeah.
Barney Mann:
Yeah. One of the things that I like to do is, maybe every other evening after dinner ... And there's a little bit of a lull before people actually end up in bed. And I'll break out my guitar in here and start doing old folk songs, just the old standards. As a summer camp director, I used to lead 100 kids in singing. Adults never get to do a singalong. When's the last time as an adult that you've been able to be in a singalong? And they're sitting in here. It's songs they know. And- [crosstalk 00:31:19]
Sandy Mann:
And sometimes we end up with 30 people in this room.
Barney Mann:
Yeah. And doing silly camp songs, repeat after me.
Shelby Stanger:
What is one? I would love to hear one.
Barney Mann:
I usually start out with John Denver, Country Roads. Even the Europeans seem to know that.
Sandy Mann:
Leaving on a Jet Plane.
Barney Mann:
Silly songs, such as The Lion Sleeps Tonight. So you get people doing the chorus, and you try and coax some into doing the high part.
Shelby Stanger:
The wimoweh?
Barney Mann:
Yeah, the wimoweh. In fact, one night we were doing that and had a gentleman from Japan-
Sandy Mann:
He didn't speak much English.
Barney Mann:
No, didn't speak much English. Mr. [Cup 00:31:56]. So we're sitting there doing The Lion Sleeps Tonight, and we're all in the chorus now doing the wimoweh part. "Oh wimoweh, Oh wimoweh." This beautiful male falsetto from about 10 feet away on the couch starts coming out of Mr. Cup's mouth.
Sandy Mann:
It surprised everybody.
Barney Mann:
Perfect, on pitch, surprised us all. And it was just great.
Sandy Mann:
It was great.
Barney Mann:
(singing)
Shelby Stanger:
It's so cool to become part of this community and to meet good, genuine people along the way who are willing to offer help. It can be scary to go on an adventure like the PCT, especially if you're doing it solo. Being thru-hikers themselves, I knew Scout and Frodo would have some really deep knowledge on what it takes to hike the entire 2,650 miles.
Shelby Stanger:
So what should you know if you're going to do something like this, and how should you be prepared?
Sandy Mann:
So I'm surprised at the number of people who come here who have never slept outdoors before.
Shelby Stanger:
And then they go hike the PCT?
Sandy Mann:
Yes.
Shelby Stanger:
That's insane.
Sandy Mann:
Yes.
Barney Mann:
And they have...
Sandy Mann:
Or they've never hiked more than five miles at a time.
Barney Mann:
They've quit their job. They've put their stuff in storage. They told all of their friends.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. We get hikers who, after the first 20 miles, they get to Lake Morena, and then they get a ride back here, or we pick them up and they just say, "I just can't do this."
Barney Mann:
We get the phone call that they literally are crushed. The first 20 miles are really hard. They tend to be waterless most years. They have a couple steep climbs, including toward the end a 1200-foot climb that's really exposed. There are classic switchbacks. And when I say crushed, you can literally see it on their face. They had this dream. They knew what they were doing for the next five months. And they found out it was way, way too tough.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. I mean, that doesn't mean that hiking the PCT is impossible or super, super difficult. It just means you have to prepare yourself mentally and physically. So if you're going out there not in shape, you got to plan on taking lots of time. You're not going to do 20 mile days. You have to really, really want to do this. As Barney says, you have to be really resilient. Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
How do you learn resiliency?
Barney Mann:
That is a question I've never been asked before.
Sandy Mann:
It's kind of something you have to grow up with. You have to be faced with challenges and overcome them.
Barney Mann:
So you can probably teach yourself to be resilient, and that is literally say, "I will be open to change." But that's a hard one because we all tend to get really wedded to the way we do things. When I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 2007, I had taught backpacking in Boy Scouts. I had been doing it for 40 years. And out there, I saw things that I would have told people, "You should never do this." And yet I saw for this environment, this worked. And I changed.
Shelby Stanger:
So you must know people who've turned back, right?
Sandy Mann:
Let's tell about Diane, about Hopeless. French hiker, young woman, very enthusiastic, but not terribly experienced. Starts her first day and it takes her two days to get to Lake Morena which is typical, which is 20 miles. Usually you don't start out 20 miles a day unless you're really experienced. But at some point, she got herself tangled up in the chaparral.
Barney Mann:
Dehydrated, lost, and she literally describes crawling -
Sandy Mann:
Dumping her pack because she couldn't get out with her pack on, and crawling through the bushes to try and get to an open area, and came upon somebody who helped her. And then they went back and got her pack. But she got to Lake Morena and called, and we picked her up and brought her back here. And she was-
Barney Mann:
"I'm going home to France."
Sandy Mann:
But then she thought, "Well, I'll stick around and help out for a couple of days." And then she made some friends with some other overseas hikers who were going to start in a couple of days, and she went out there with them. And she did great. She did the whole thing.
Barney Mann:
She became a very strong, confident hiker. We're still in touch with her. She's in medical school now and doing well. But her trail name became Hopeless because when she came back here, that's what she was.
Shelby Stanger:
What's the best advice you've ever been given on the trail?
Sandy Mann:
Hike your own hike. Don't start out too fast.
Barney Mann:
Never quit on a rainy day.
Sandy Mann:
Oh, that too. Oh and Girl Scout told us, "Every day find something to shout for joy about."
Barney Mann:
Oh, yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Scout and Frodo definitely have a lot to shout for joy about. They basically host an adult summer camp with community meals, singalongs, and lifelong bonds with new friends. But there's a ton of work that goes into grocery shopping, helping folks from Europe with phone plans, and organizing hikers and volunteers. Frodo and Scout do it all free of charge. I was so curious about their why. What motivated them to open up their home and spend so much time with complete strangers?
Barney Mann:
People ask us often, "Why do you host people especially when the numbers get so high, and you have people completely invade your life for two months?"
Sandy Mann:
And we don't accept donations.
Barney Mann:
If there's one thing I could wish for in this world, it would be that there be more kindness. We have people write us all the time, especially internationals. They'll say, "No one would ever do this in Europe. We haven't seen that at all. And to have an American open their house, feed us" ... And basically we treat everyone here, whether you're 18 or 70, as if you're one of our children, in the nicest way. We don't discipline. And I feel like we're sending out in the world this wonderful, insidious wave of kindness.
Shelby Stanger:
It's amazing. You guys published your phone number, I mean, everything, online. We live in an age where you're not supposed to publish your address or your number, and you're like, "No, I'm going to publish my information, where I live. I want you to come stay here." And nothing has been taken from you. You've never had an issue.
Sandy Mann:
Nope.
Barney Mann:
People are basically good. And you give them the opportunity-
Sandy Mann:
And people who want to do the PCT in particular are good. Yeah. When you see someone on the trail, and sometimes you're out in places where the only people out there are PCT thru-hikers, and you know that when you meet that person they'll give you the shirt off their back. And you'd do the same for them.
Barney Mann:
After we did our thru-hike, I came back, and I've said it since then, out there I found the community I always wanted to be with and I never knew existed.
Shelby Stanger:
The community seems really incredible. There's just this connection between thru-hikers with each other. So other than hiking the trail, which you know a lot of people aren't going to be able to do, how can people become more like you?
Barney Mann:
So one of the things that we do say is, especially when people offer something, we'll ask them that they pay it forward. And we get notes and letters and cards. We have a stack of cards. People tend to write us around Christmas-time, thank you, whatever, saying that the next time that they had a situation ... All the time we are presented with opportunities to do something nice. All of us are. Take advantage of that. Sometimes it feels a little embarrassing or whatever, but do it next time. And it's this wonderful, positive feedback. You do it once. That felt good. And you're more inclined to do it again and again and again.
Shelby Stanger:
How does one become a trail angel?
Barney Mann:
So I actually had someone ask that recently, a guy who had read my book, Journeys North. He lives up in Washington, and said, "I would really like to help out hikers. I want to hike someday myself a significant portion, maybe the whole thing. How can I touch this?" And what I suggested to him was, there are a number of passes up in Washington. Hikers get to them. Just go one day-
Sandy Mann:
Passes where there's a road, we're talking about.
Barney Mann:
Yeah. Sorry. At passes where there's a road, park your car. Have a cooler with some cold drinks in it. Maybe you made some sandwiches, if you want to get more-
Sandy Mann:
Or fruit.
Barney Mann:
Yeah. Fresh fruit.
Sandy Mann:
Chocolate milk.
Barney Mann:
The little chocolate milk boxes.
Sandy Mann:
They've got to be cold though.
Barney Mann:
Better than beer. And sit there for a couple hours. Hikers will come out, and you will get to be a trail angel with trail magic.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. Sometimes people barbecue things.
Barney Mann:
Any time you pass by a trailhead during those months, hikers are out there. Be on the lookout.
Sandy Mann:
Yeah. Offer a ride.
Shelby Stanger:
Every act of kindness, big or small, can go a long way. And for Scout and Frodo, being trail angels brings them a ton of joy. The people they meet and the kindness they offer and share with strangers fills their cup and connects them to this amazing community, this family that they love. That sounds like trail magic to me. Thank you so much to Scout and Frodo for welcoming me into your home, for giving me a tour, for singing me songs, for sharing tea, and sharing such wonderful wisdom and stories. Because of COVID-19, Scout and Frodo haven't decided if they'll be hosting hikers in 2022. They're just waiting to see what happens, and they said they'll make a decision this fall. You can find out more about their hosting and check out Scout's book, which I highly recommend reading, Journeys North, at BarneyScoutMann.com. That's B-A-R-N-E-Y-S-C-O-U-T-M-A-N-N. You can also follow him on Instagram, @journeys.north.
Shelby Stanger:
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fassler and Sylvia Thomas, and produced by Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we appreciate when you follow the show, when you rate it, and when you review it. And yes, I read every single review. So please take two minutes to write a review wherever you're listening. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas. Go out there. Be kind. Give back.