By Barney “Scout” Mann

Since 1999, more than 500 PCT hikers have begun their journeys with the same embracing kick-start — a big dollop of Bob Riess hospitality.

For the past nine years, when April and May come ‘round, a complex choreography commences in San Diego – the “Bob Riess trail angel ballet.” It begins with a pick-up at San Diego’s airport, train station or bus depot and then transitions to Bob’s house, where Bob offers a place to sleep for a night or two. At Bob’s house, hikers find a full stock of camping fuels, any kind whatsoever, and on request Bob will even make an alcohol stove for your hike. He provides rides to the local outfitter, the post office and grocery store, followed by a last, pre-hike meal, often Mexican dinner at the El Juan Café. Then there’s laid-back TV-watching, usually PCT videos to get everyone psyched up. All this leads to the final act, Bob’s early morning wake-up call: “Wheels up at 4:30 a.m. Let’s get rolling.” And so the dance ends. It ends at a “beginning” — at the southern PCT border monument at dawn’s first light, with photos of another group of PCT hikers starting on their way. While his latest group hikes off, Bob makes the drive back to “start” his day: a face-off, mano-a-mano, with a room full of glassy-eyed teens in his 7 a.m. math class at Bonita Vista High.

Bob’s ballet is long–running. Broadway producers would kill for such a show. Bob has played out this border “ending” perhaps two hundred times, 90 miles round-trip, 18,000 total miles. That’s equal driving three-quarters of the way around Mother Earth. Closer to home, it equals 6.8 consecutive PCT thru-hikes. And all this done in the wee hours of the day, before Bob faces his math students.
But unlike the Bolshoi, a ticket to Bob’s ballet is free. He laid out how he feels about this in Yogi’s PCT Handbook (by Jackie McDonnell): “My personal policy [is] we do not accept money from hikers.” Bob delights in telling tales of the hikers who hid a twenty in his house and how he tracked them down. With equal delight, Bob’s hikers are heard to say up the trail: “I felt like I was family when I was in Bob’s house.”

“Any doubts I had about this hike are gone after today & last night. When Bob Riess’ van pulled up & my name was yelled out the window, an awakening happened. My heart and eyes lit up and I felt a homecoming,” wrote Erin “Teatree” Brown at the start of her 2003 thru-hike.

But not this year. This year Bob is far away in Rochester, Minnesota. Bob, who’s old enough to qualify for AARP and for senior meals at Denny’s, says he’s heard too often from friends whose parents had died that “they’d wished they’d spent more time with Mom and with Dad.” Bob didn’t want to be left wishing so he jumped at his school district’s sabbatical program. When first interviewed for this article Bob was in his childhood home with his father, Eugene Riess.
What’s a trail angel? In Bob’s case, you could pass him on the street and you’d have no inkling of his trail life. Bob’s a large man, an easy-going soul. In demeanor and body, there’s nary a sharp angle or plane to be found. When he gets moving he’s a presence, cutting a swath, whether he’s cooking breakfast for 600 of his closest friends at the Annual Day Zero Kick Off event, or pulling up to the airport curb shouting out the window to gather in a hiker. He’s selfless, and like that confounded Energizer Bunny he just keeps on going, fulfilling his self-appointed role as San Diego’s thru-hiker saint. Before spending the last ten years teaching, Bob was in the Navy, exiting as a 22-year veteran Commander. Bob’s a guy who thinks nothing of arming twenty Kick Off volunteers with knives to make short work of dicing 240 pounds of potatoes. And to entice that annual potato salad militia, Bob gives each volunteer a pocket knife he’s personally engraved. One woman has collected them all.

Pre-Bob, pre-1999, a thru-hiker bound for the PCT terminus at the California-Mexico border had two possibilities. First, if he or she was lucky, a San Diego relative or friend would be near enough and willing enough to make the long drive to Campo. But if unlucky, thru-hikers faced a public transportation nightmare, a three-ride, bus-trolley-bus whammy that Jackie “Yogi” McDonnell charitably describes as taking “a long time.” In fact, the public transportation to Campo takes a half-day to cover 55 miles and leaves you
at sunset, high and dry, still almost two miles north of the trail’s start. The result? Some have said that their worst day on the PCT was the day they spent getting there – Day Zero.

Since 1999, Bob’s been a third possibility. He first hung up his shingle by making a tentative, simple posting on the PCT-L e-mail list. With that humble announcement the PCT hiker world began beating a path to his door.

Since then, stories such as that of 2007 thru-hiker Daniel “Out of Order” Alvarez have not been uncommon. Daniel is an East Coast native with no San Diego relatives or friends. In the spring of 2007 he made contact with Bob. But getting to Bob proved no easy feat. His US Airways flight was repeatedly delayed and he didn’t land in San Diego until 2 a.m. And if that weren’t insult enough, the airline lost his luggage.

On April 16, 2007, Daniel wrote in his journal:
"By 2 a.m. the San Diego airport was deserted. Just a lone security guard glancing at me as he made his rounds and a Charles Lindberg statue bathed in electric light. I walked out of the terminal and slouched down to wait next to the statue. At least I still had my cowboy hat. A dark blue Dodge Caravan pulled up and a cheerful face peered at me through the window. 'Bob?' I asked. The man nodded. 'You've had quite a day, haven't you?' said Bob Riess. The first time I spoke to Bob on the phone was from the Philly airport when I tried to explain that I wouldn't arrive in San Diego until 2 a.m. I tried to convince him that I should just wait at the airport until morning. Bob wouldn't hear it.

'You call me right when you get there,' he insisted. 'And I'll come get you.' And there he was, picking up a total stranger at 2 a.m."
Not only did Bob make the late night pick-up, but when Daniel’s lost luggage stayed lost he insisted that Daniel take his own pack to start the hike. This was not just any pack, but Bob’s 1970’s, venerable Adventure 16; an external frame beauty with a “hip-hugger,” aluminum swivel hip-belt. This pack not only pre-dated Daniel’s birth, but also probably exceeded his birth weight. Bob bought the pack at Adventure 16 back when the store was still in a barn, and it may be one of the packs Adventure 16’s founder, Andy Drollinger, made in his garage, assisted by the store’s second employee, none other than Wayne Gregory, the eventual founder of Gregory Mountain Products. For the first 150 trail miles, until his own pack caught up, Daniel proudly carried Bob’s pack.

How are trail angels born? In Bob’s case, that same Adventure 16 pack played a role. Bob lugged that pack to the top of Mount Fuji and did long segments of the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail, twice. The Tahoe-Yosemite Trail shares much of its180-mile-length with the PCT. The first time Bob hiked it was in 1976 with his then-wife Mary Martha. The second time was in 1994 when he went south along the same route with his 10-year-old son, Bobby. Bobby hiked faster and was always stopping so his dad could catch up. Bob says their most frequent conversation was “You okay, Dad?” But in regards to his future trail angel status, the significant thing about the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail was that Bob kept running into PCT thru-hikers heading north.

Flash forward two years — Bob got a new computer and stumbled onto the PCT-L e-mail list. “I was a 100% lurker for two years,” he remembers. Bob read e-mails from hikers who said their worst day was Day Zero and read stories about thru-hikers camping in parks and getting rousted by the cops, and about thru-hikers sleeping with the homeless and sleeping on broken glass. Bob thought, “I have a new van. I’m single and I’m unsupervised. If I want to, I can have perfect strangers in my house.” And so he did. He posted his message on the PCT-L and during that first season he hosted 33 thru-hikers.

“I would have bet you a steak dinner that somewhere along the way someone would swipe something,” he says. But 500 hikers, 500 strangers later: “Never happened.”

Bob’s first guest was Joanne “Goforth” Lennox who paved the way for all the rest. I recently reached her at her home in northern Washington. Her voice clearly told me that she relished talking about Bob. “First I thought his posted offer must be a scam,” she remembers. But on the phone Bob professed his bona fides to her – he’s a father of two, a teacher, and a retired Navy Commander. At the airport, Bob and Joanne were supposed to meet at the three palm trees grouped together. She stood at three palm trees wondering “Where is this guy Bob?” Meanwhile Bob stood at three palm trees, just around the corner. Finally, they figured it out.
“My greatest fear is forgetting a hiker and leaving them stranded at the airport,” says Bob.

Joanne recalled that as she crossed Highway 94, just a few miles into her hike, she found a note left by Bob — “Congratulations, you’ve started.” That boost propelled Joanne from her March 21 start until her hike’s end on October 15, 1999.

And speaking of Highway 94, no story about Bob can be complete without describing what it’s like to drive from San Diego to Campo with him. Bob himself says “I haven’t rolled the van yet doing those NASCAR turns on Highway 94, but I’ve come close.” Daniel remembers, “The van swung wildly back and forth in the night on the curvy highway to Campo.” And a local club says on its widely circulated bumper stickers: “Pray for Me, I drive Highway 94.”
Bob is one of the four original organizers of the Annual Day Zero Kick Off, the ADZPCTKO, and to his knowledge he and Meadow Ed are the only one ones who have attended every single event. The Kick Off marks its tenth year this year but Bob won’t be there.
When I last talked to Bob, as part of final fact-checking for this article, he was at the hospital at his dad’s bedside. The turn of events had been unexpected but Bob was there. I told Bob that I, that all of us, would keep his father in our prayers.

Bob Riess, trail angel, is set to return in 2009.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Bob Riess who gave generous interview time, and to Joanne Lennox, Daniel Alvarez, Larry Tyler, Shelly Mann, and my bride Frodo. For San Diego trail angels this year filling in for Bob, see the ADZPCTKO ride board.