I came across this article via the PCT Trail Dirt Newsletter, originally published in the digital version of Backpacker Magazine (parent company Outside+) a few weeks ago and wanted to share. It wouldn’t let me link directly, as it is a paid subscription service, so I had to go the copy and paste route. The Outside+ articles are by and large really good and I recommend subscribing if you are an outdoor enthusiast of any kind.

Meadow Ed was a PCT legend and this was a lovely tribute from Barney Mann, another PCT legend in his own right:

“Meadow Ed” Wasn’t Just a Trail Angel—He Was a Pacific Crest Trail Hero.

A friend to the thousands of hikers he fed, the late Ed Faubert helped Cheryl Strayed during the journey she chronicled in “Wild,” and earned a place in PCT history along the way.

Published Nov 19, 2024

Barney Scout MannFollow

That’s distracting, thought Cheryl Strayed, the author of Wild. She was giving a talk at Skylight Books in Los Angeles when a balding, round-bellied man began bouncing up and down in an attempt to get her attention.

“Sir, can I help you?” Strayed asked. The man clutched a shiny red handle with a sharp-toothed blade. “Cheryl,” he said, “it’s me, Ed. Here’s the saw you left behind at Kennedy Meadows.”

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Ed Faubert and that saw were the stars in Strayed’s “pack shakedown” in the movie Wild. In that scene, Ed, played by Cliff DeYoung, sorts through the contents of Strayed’s pack, pulling out questionable items like deodorant, an entire roll of condoms, and that toothy tool. It’s the movie’s funniest moment. What the humor of it overshadows is that Faubert likely saved Strayed’s hike.

In an interview, Strayed concurred: “I’d reached Kennedy Meadows after that first 100 miles and thought, ‘I’m an idiot. I should probably quit.’ Ed and the others gave me this boost to hike on.”

Millions first learned of the Pacific Crest Trail through Wild. They might never have known of the trail but for Ed Faubert, who passed away quietly last month in a Pasadena, California, assisted living facility at age 79.

Roger Carpenter—”Greg” in the movie—was there with Strayed. Now a hardened Triple Crowner who goes by the trail name “Greg from Wild,” he recalls unequivocally that “Ed, his encampment, and that small group of hikers he’d gathered gave Cheryl the confidence that she belonged on the trail.”

It all began in 1995. As a 50th birthday present to himself, Faubert drove to Kennedy Meadows in the southern Sierra Nevada. Riding shotgun in his Bronco was nephew Andre Faubert. My uncle “wanted to be in a place he loved, not moping at home in Los Angeles,” Andre says today.

The same day they arrived, seven tired, bedraggled PCT thru-hikers wandered into their  campsite. It was second nature for Faubert, an itinerant chef and experienced backpacker, to feed those hungry souls. Faubert dished out heaping plates together with dollops of trail wisdom. When they left, Faubert’s cooler lay bare, and he drove four hours back to Los Angeles to restock. Now a budding trail angel, he soon ministered to a second batch of six backpackers that included Cheryl Strayed and Roger Carpenter.

In 1996 Faubert came back, and the dozen hikers became fifty. Faubert set up first in Kennedy Meadows, then Reds Meadows, then Tuolumne Meadows. “When will we see you again, Ed?” one hiker asked. Faubert responded, “Where’s the next meadow?” With that, Faubert became “Meadow Ed.”

Faubert was raised in Manchaug, Massachusetts, the youngest of five boys, shoe-horned into a mill town company-built home. His mom Mildred worked in the mill and dad William in construction. When he was only 8, his father died in a construction accident. He never finished high school but hitchhiked west and entered Glendale College. Faubert was voted class president and earned an English degree, but he was more interested in cooking for others. He became a self-made chef, and bounced like a pinball between local diners and line cook positions at distant Yosemite and Glacier National Parks. Soon, he fell in love with the Sierra, polishing his backpacking skills against a backdrop of glacier-polished granite.

Husky even in college, Faubert had a fifty-year-old’s receding hairline when he was in his twenties. On his tiptoes he stood five-foot-eight, and with that barrel chest you would expect a basso-profundo to emerge. But Faubert spoke in a surprisingly elfin, near-falsetto voice.

As the number of hikers he fed increased, Faubert wasn’t daunted. Instead, he expanded his work to become a PCT “Kickoff” leader. That event took place twenty miles north of the PCT southern terminus and at the time was the equivalent of Appalachian Trail Days in Damascus, Virginia. Meadow Ed’s “water report” talk routinely had standing-room-only crowds. Hikers hung on every word. The notes they took may have saved lives.

To Faubert, the hikers he fed and advised weren’t just souls passing by. They were his lifelong friends. In his later years, he lived rent-free in the basement apartment of Darlene Finocchiaro, a college friend of 50 years. I visited him a few months before he died; prominently hung on one wall was a photo collage titled “Some of my Best Friends,” featuring scores of PCT hikers.

One of those friends was Jackie McDonnell, author of the Yogi’s PCT Handbook and a Pacific Crest Trail legend in her own right.  McDonnell, who would go on to become the first female Double Triple Crowner, met Faubert in 2001 on her first PCT thru-hike. In that low snow year, McDonnell recalled that she’d asked about the upcoming Sierra Nevada. Faubert replied, “At 10,000 feet you’ll hit mosquitos and at 11,000 feet you’ll hit snow.” McDonnell still marvels: “Guess what happened? At 10,000 feet a wall of mosquitos and at 11,000 feet snow. This old guy at the campground. How did he know?”

In 2014, McDonnell was in the front row beaming when the American Long Distance Hiking Association-West named Faubert “Trail Angel of the Year.”  I was the emcee and I’d been asked to limit Faubert to a ten-minute acceptance speech. He came to the mic with six handwritten single-spaced pages. He glowed. I didn’t have the heart to cut him short.

Roger Carpenter, too, remained in Faubert’s lifelong circle of friends. One day, seventeen years after they first met, Faubert sent an email with the subject line: “Look what Cheryl did.” Faubert was so proud. The Wild  book and movie validated his decades ministering to hikers.

The year 2015 marked the last Kickoff, and in 2016 after serving platefuls to multiple thousands of hikers, Faubert gave his last hiker feed. He let his driver’s license lapse as he became more physically limited. On McDonnell’s last visit, only weeks before he passed, the conversation remained the same. Animated, elfin voice: “Do you remember this hiker? Do you remember that hiker?”

Near the collage of hiker photos were framed awards for Faubert’s poetry, a nod to his old English degree. A poem he wrote in 2006 could stand as his eulogy. The floor is yours, Meadow Ed.

A scholar with a camp stove lectern,

A preacher with a church 2,560 miles long and two feet wide, ….

A poet with the wilderness for an audience.

Overflowing with kindness and compassion.

What else could anyone ask to be… 

Meadow Ed