Mid-morning today, we hit the 2,000 mile mark of the PCT. This is a number that, in many ways, doesn’t even seem real: who hikes two thousand miles? A plane trip of two thousand miles is significant, and doing the same by car is a really major expedition. To hike it…well, that’s just crazy. Apparently the kind of crazy that we suffer from.
This also means, of course, that it’s “only” six hundred and fifty miles until we hit the Canadian border. Right now, that simultaneously sounds like a lot and a little. It sounds like a lot because, well, we’ve hiked far enough to understand just how much of a major effort that still is…and it sounds like a little because, compared to how far we’ve come already, it’s not nearly so big a deal.
Of course, the 2,000-mile mark doesn’t come with any fanfare or at any particularly incredible part of the trail; it’s just a point you reach as you’re gently climbing away from Santiam Pass, slowly winding your way up the mountains here. We spent the day going up and down a lot more than we’re used to for Oregon, which made for tough hiking, especially since we’re carrying a lot of food, since we just resupplied, and a lot of water, since water sources can still be a bit rare around here.
We hiked around a fairly well-known mountain here called Three-Fingered Jack, and, this evening, we have an absolutely killer campsite. We’re camped on the side of a mountain with an amazing view of Mt. Jefferson, a 10,000-foot volcano here with snowfields and that catches the light beautifully at sunset. This is one of those campsites that you’d pass during the day and think, “wow, l really wish I needed to camp right now, because this is amazing”…except, this time, we did need to camp, and I’m really glad we got this site.
[alpine-phototile-for-flickr src=”set” uid=”44265343@N00″ sid=”72157659352556862″ imgl=”flickr” style=”gallery” row=”5″ grwidth=”800″ grheight=”600″ size=”500″ num=”30″ shadow=”1″ border=”1″ align=”center” max=”100″]
Leave a Reply