Article: ULTRAFIT; The 9-pound hike; Rod Johnson's multimonth wilderness journey on the Pacific Crest Trail was an experiment in minimalism for the great outdoors. Bubble wrap and a pillow of camp food helped him along the way.(VARIETY)

Byline: STEPHEN REGENOLD

Sunlight burned the desert. Rod Johnson kicked sand, hiking north from the Mexican border, one foot in front of the next from the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT).

Ahead, snaking north along the 2,650-mile PCT, he would climb mountains, ford rivers and push for weeks through wilderness from California to Washington state. Johnson, owner and founder of Midwest Mountaineering, an outdoors shop in Minneapolis, began his quest on the trail last April with nothing more than a vest crammed with gear.

His goal: to hike the PCT with the least amount of equipment humanly possible. "It would be an ultimate gear ...

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