Day & Section Hikes Pacific Crest Trail: Oregon

Paul Gerald was sitting in his cubicle one day at a highly respected insurance company when the phone rang. It was a good friend inviting him on a walk across Oregon on the Pacific Crest Trail. A few months later, Paul was unemployed and sleeping in the woods—just the way he likes it. It’s not like he was a career guy when that phone rang. He grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and developed addictions early on to both hiking and traveling. He got the journalism bug while at Southern Methodist University in the 1980s and went on to work in the sports departments of the Dallas Times-Herald and the Memphis Commercial Appeal. He was also a staff writer for the Memphis Flyer, for which he wrote more than 300 travel articles. He moved to Portland in 1996 because it’s a whole lot closer to mountains, old forests, clear rivers, and lonesome ocean beaches. Along the way, he has also written for Portland’s Willamette Week; the Oregonian; and all sorts of newspapers, magazines, and websites around the country. And to avoid doing any settled kind of work, he has dabbled in commercial fishing; landscaping; social work; the YMCA; tossing packages into trucks; driving a taxi; leading tours; and now running Groundhopper Soccer Guides, a soccer-tourism business. He is the author of Menasha Ridge Press’s 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Portland, the sixth edition of which came out in 2018. He also wrote and published three editions of Breakfast in Bridgetown: The Definitive Guide to Portland’s Favorite Meal, and he is the author and publisher of The Groundhopper’s Guide to Soccer in England, which led to him establishing Groundhopper Soccer Guides.