University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Jim Simon plans to hike more than 900 miles this summer to raise money for the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York. Photo: NANCY J. PARISI

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• “The hike is something that I wanted to do anyway as a personal milestone, but I figured…why not do some good while I’m doing something for myself.”

  Jim Simon

  Associate Environmental Educator, UB Green

By DAVID J. HILL

Published: May 26, 2011

Jim Simon knows it will be difficult. There will be stunning vistas, but for every grand view, there’s the potential for a steep fall to the bottom, or an avalanche, or getting lost deep in the wilderness in a heavy snow pack.

Hiking 900-plus miles in largely isolated and, at times, unstable, terrain is no small feat. “There’s definitely risk involved,” he says. “It’s not a walk in the woods. It’s not paved. This is walking along a mountain, holding your ice axe, and if you slip, you have to pull it the right way and self arrest. And if you don’t, you’re going to be hitting the rocks at the bottom.”

But Simon is motivated. He’s constantly working, doing his part as one half of a two-person team (with Erin Moscati) that works for UB Green, the office charged with the Herculean task of ensuring a university of roughly 40,000 people mitigates its impact on the environment.

Off campus, Simon continues his green efforts, serving as a board member for the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York, an organization committed to improving the air quality in a heavily polluted region. Through its grassroots efforts, the coalition has made tremendous strides toward that end. But, like the work at UB Green, there’s much more to be done.

To help raise money to continue the coalition’s work, Simon is taking a month and a half off this summer to hike a section of the Pacific Crest Trail. The 2,650-mile National Scenic Trail stretches from Mexico to Canada, winding through the Mojave Desert in California and high into the Cascade Range in Washington and Oregon. Temperatures along the trail range from below freezing to higher than 100 degrees.

While hiking the Pacific Crest Trail has been a personal goal of Simon’s—he hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail five years ago—he’s using it as an opportunity to raise money to help support the Clean Air Coalition’s efforts. His best friend and fellow trail hiker, Dan Cross-Viola, is raising money for the Belle Center, a youth-geared community organization on Buffalo’s West Side.

“The hike is something that I wanted to do anyway as a personal milestone, but I figured…why not do some good while I’m doing something for myself,” Simon says.

Supporters will be able to track Simon’s journey through a blog he plans to update continuously with photos and journal entries. (The UB Reporter will publish the URL for the blog when it becomes available.) He’s especially interested in sharing with readers the impact that poor air quality has had on the ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest.

The Clean Air Coalition has established a Web page for those who would like to contribute to Simon’s hike. He hopes to raise at least $1 for each mile he hikes.

An Olean native, Simon, 28, now lives in Buffalo. He received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UB; his master’s is in environmental policy. He began working at UB Green as an undergraduate student, becoming full time in February 2007.

Simon will fly to Chicago on June 21 to meet up with Cross-Viola. The next day, they’ll fly to Seattle, where they’ll spend a day or two gathering supplies. On June 24, they’ll hitch a ride to the trail head, at the Washington-Canada border, to begin the journey.

Simon plans to hike 934 miles southward to Ashland, Ore., near the California border, while Cross-Viola is hiking the entire trail, a daunting task that will take until November to complete.

While risky, Simon figures the hike will be rewarding. He expects to return Aug. 16 with a new perspective on life and its priorities. “I feel like I’m going to slow down a lot, and that’s something I need to do anyway,” he says.

“Personally and professionally, I’m constantly running around. I’m always doing something. I always need to be active in a lot of different things. I still want to do that, but I want to be more deliberate. So I think that this is going to help me curate what I’m involved in a little better and just not get so worked up about things.”

The independence nature affords is also something Simon appreciates. “That independence, really, it’s something that we don’t experience in our daily lives,” he says. “We’re so connected but we don’t realize that we can do things on our own without these connections to the outside world.”

Simon stressed he is grateful to UB Green for allowing him to take this hike. He is using several weeks of vacation time that he’s accrued, but is also taking two weeks of unpaid leave for the trip.

As he hikes through Washington and Oregon, Simon won’t just be shedding the trivial worries that often creep into daily life. Upon his return, he likely will look a bit lighter.

“I’ll probably lose some weight,” he says. “I was doing the calculation of calories expended and calories taken in on a daily basis and there’s definitely going to be a pretty big deficit, so I’m probably going to lose a couple pounds a week.

“When you have to work for it and earn it, and you have to put your body on the line for the things you get, there’s something rewarding about that,” he says. I’m not going to know what cast member of “Jersey Shore” got kicked off. I don’t care. It’s not going to matter. There’s going to be so much world news that happens that I’m going to miss, and that’s OK. I’ve got my thing going.”