Four are PCT hikers, two are cousins, going along for the first leg (3-4 days) only. I hear they had 60lb packs, and Brett took them to REI and made them get some lighter gear. A group like that moves only as fast as the slowest hiker.
From Bill Bryson:
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"I waited for Katz for three-quarters of an hour and then went looking for him.......My grandmother could have got this far, I kept thinking. Finally, I rounded a bend and there he was, stumbling toward me, wild-haired and one-gloved and nearer hysteria than I have ever seen a grown person.
It was hard to get the full story out of him in a coherent flow, because he was so furious, but I gathered he had thrown many items from his pack over a cliff in a temper. None of the things that had been dangling from the outside were there any longer.
"What did you get rid of?" I asked, trying not to betray too much alarm.
"Heavy fucking shit, that's what. The pepperoni, the rice, the brown sugar, the Spam, I don't know what all. Lots. Fuck." Katz was almost cataleptic with displeasure. He acted as if he had been deeply betrayed by the trail. It wasn't, I guess, what he had expected."
