Category: Trail Journal

We have walked from Mexico to Canada! After just a little more than a hundred and seventy-two days, and after two thousand, six hundred fifty miles…we are here! I can’t even explain how amazing it felt to get to Monument 78, the northern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail, just before 10 AM this morning.…

Since before we even began, I’d heard and remembered tales of hikers coming over the last hill before getting to Canada, and seeing their destination stretching out before them. I’d wanted to experience the same thing myself, and really looked forward to doing that today. Except today, when we got there…you couldn’t see a thing.…

Yup — Washington is at it again. We woke up to a light rain, and it continued on and off all day long, sometimes becoming a legitimate rain, other times just misting. A couple of times, we thought we might get lucky and have it entirely stop, but, of course, no such luck. Glimpses of…

We’re getting incredibly close to Canada. We passed the 2,600-mile mark midday today, which meant there were only 50 miles left until the border. Tonight, we’re camped just 43 miles from the border. That…doesn’t even sound like much to us at all. That’s just a couple of days. This is getting really close! We’re lucky…

In the last few days, other hikers we’ve met on the trail — not through-hikers, but folks out for the weekend or a shorter trip — have started greeting us by saying “Congratulations!”. Only on a trip as long as the PCT could five days and roughly a hundred miles count as “almost there”, but…

I can’t believe we’re finally in Stehekin. Ever since our very first explorations into maybe-possibly hiking the PCT, Stehekin has loomed large in my mind as the very last town stop on the PCT before you get to Canada. Not only that, but it’s both incredibly inaccessible — the only ways into it are the…

It’s incredible how much better your mood is when you get the first day of sunshine after a rainy spell. We went to bed last night listening to the rain still falling on our tarp, but, this morning, it was completely gone. After a couple of hours, the clouds even cleared off, and we had…

It’s as if the Pacific Crest Trail wants to make sure we remember there were hard times, as well as good times, before we go. Yesterday and today have been two of the hardest days of our entire trip. Why? Before I even get into the weather, let’s start with the terrain. The trail here…

It’s been raining on and off all day long, so the tall, omnipresent underbrush is completely wet — which means your pants get soaking wet as you push past it. The trail’s overgrown, so you have to fight your way through said underbrush all the time. It’s warm enough out that putting on your raingear…

Even before we started this crazy trip, I’d heard that northern Washington was supposed to be one of the most beautiful parts of the entire trail. Today, I believe it. We’ve entered the North Cascades, and the mountains around here are astounding. I feel like I’m far from any place I’ve ever known, and it’s…

As we begin what feels like the last major push of this hike, Washington has decided to once again…be Washington. It drizzled on and off for the first few hours of our hike this afternoon, only to gear up and start raining with serious intent just as we got to camp. As I write this,…

It really is starting to feel like we might actually do this thing. I know that might seem like a funny thing to say, especially after a hundred and sixty-two days on the trail, but I’m not one to claim premature victory. Yet, tonight, we only have eleven days of hiking left to go, and…

Last night, it was 35° overnight. Today, it was in the mid–40s all day long. In other words, it’s getting cold out there! Now, this doesn’t meant it’s already the middle of winter up here in Washington. Some significant proportion of the cold is because we’re at altitude; the elevation where we’re camped tonight is…

No, I’m not talking about rain. Today, we saw one of the strangest things I’ve seen along the entire PCT. Walking through the forest, really in the middle of nowhere, we came upon…a shower, attached to a tree. There was a pipe coming out of the ground, clear tubing attached to it with plumbing equipment,…

What’s the perfect way to end a long day of hiking? It just might be soaking in hot springs coming out of an abandoned mineshaft, far, far from everything, but with just enough civilization around to make it amazing. Goldmyer Hot Springs is about a dozen miles north of Snoqualmie Pass. It’s not on the…

We were trying to figure out today just how long it’d been since we’d seen our close trail friends Dilly and Dally. We’re both pretty sure that it was at Vermillion Valley Resort…which was officially 87 days and 1,516.10 miles ago. That’s a long time, no matter how you slice it, especially out here on…

Of our five resupply stops in Washington, three are at ski resorts. I suppose that’s because resupplies happen where the trail crosses roads; the trail is often on steep mountains, and people want ski resorts on roads. No matter what, it’s kind of funny to end up stopping at these ski resorts at the end…

After our amazing trail magic at Chinook Pass just a couple of days ago, we figured we’d had our fill for some time. After all, how much luck can you possibly have? But that was before we ran into Not Phil’s Dad today at Tacoma Pass. The people who provide this level of trail magic…

Now that we finally can see this state, I have to say — it’s kind of amazing. Seeing Mount Rainier yesterday was its own kind of spectacular, but today was filled with lots and lots of everyday beauty. The mountains up here afford so many good views, and the slowly-changing seasons mean that the plants…

After so many days when we couldn’t see a thing because of all the rain, today we got a real treat: Mount Rainier! At 14,411 feet high, Mount Rainier is within a hundred feet of Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the continental U.S. (and which we climbed a few months ago). But Mt. Whitney…