Start: Hopkins Lake
Finish: CANADA!
Daily Mileage: 14.1
PCT Mile: 2655.2
I had a bad last night on the trail. My sleeping bag was wet through, and though it wasn’t cold, every time I did the rotisserie through the night, I got new wet areas of the bag on my skin which was a horrible feeling. It took me a long time to get to sleep. By the morning, the top part of my bag had dried out mostly from my body heat, but I had spent the night curled up as small as possible to keep my feet out of the wet end of the bag. You just have to make it work as a thru-hiker, and your decisions are what you have to live with without having the luxuries of town available, so I will own my mistake.
We got on the trail as normal for our last 6 miles to Canada. The trail was literally all downhill to the border, so it was a quick and easy cruise in. The trail we mostly below the trees with little to see, and wet vegetation lined the trail from the rain yesterday, but nothing could slow us down from reaching our destination.
We booked it in, and soon we saw the perfectly straight line cut through the forest designating the border! A couple more quick switchbacks down and we arrived at the famous monument I had seen so many times in pictures marking the finish to the trail. There were a few other hikers there already to welcome us in, including Zephyr and Polyphony who I had bumped into and camped with a few times along the trail.
Honeybun and I reached the monument together. We generally hike together, but after traveling together for so long, I would want to reach the destination with my hiking partner. Zephyr took our pictures and we signed the register marking the end of the trail. However, it seemed a bit anti-climactic. We were at the terminus to the trail, but we still had 8 miles to get out to a road, and then I had decided to go back to complete the one section of trail that I did not maintain a continuous footpath through since the Shelly Fire was not extinguished and the trail was reopened. Were we done, or not? We weren’t really sure. We were not done hiking, and though we had reached the terminus, I don’t think that it really had the impact it could have since we had unfinished business.
We hung out for a few minutes, but with what we had left to do, we wanted to finish out this section of trail and prepare for the next, almost like a resupply and town stop before continuing down the trail.
We walked across the border straight into Canada. There is obviously no checkpoint or customs way out here, but Honeybun and I had applied for and been approved by the Canadian Government to do a remote border crossing as it was the quickest and easiest way to finish out the trail without backtracking 30 miles with a longer drive back to Seattle at that. I also liked the novelty of passing through countries on foot in the wilderness on an otherwise tightly controlled international border. How often do you get to do that legally?
We headed into Canada and the quality of the trail immediately declined. It was narrower and there was more wet vegetation hanging over it, but we were only 8 miles from the road. We started up the last climb of the trail which was at least graded like the normal PCT, though with more blowdowns and blocked trail. Nothing could stop us though. We bashed and crawled our way through, and even had to take off our packs at one point to squeeze through some downed trees for the first time on this trail.
As we gained elevation, the trail became easier and we soon crested our last rise and started our last descent. To me, every milestone was the last one we would encounter in the trail, momentarily ignoring the fact we were bouncing back down to California shortly.
The trail got better and better as we descended, and we soon finished the last descent and started the last flat along a river out to the trailhead. My girlfriend Kate was picking us up, and I was coordinating with her over my inReach to make sure we were going to meet. We both want to meet on the trail, though for different reasons.
Kate and I have been dating for more than 3 years, and this is also my third long distance hike in that time. She has supported me on all these hikes sending packages and coordinating anything I needed back home, and has been a fantastic partner that it has seemed at times I was undeserving of spending so much time away. I tend to pick up and carry rocks as mementos of the trail. I didn’t do that too much on this trail since there wasn’t too much rock that was unique. However, as only Cookie Monster and Honeybun knew, I carried a special rock the entire way from Mexico this trip so it would have a bit of me in it.
When I met Kate on the trail, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes!
However, as I mentioned, our journey wasn’t over. We planned to finish my only skipped section of trail from Etna Summit to Seiad Valley in northern California. That trail was completely closed due to the Shelly Fire when we passed through. We had a plan to walk around the fire, but the entire region was under evacuation orders by the time we walked into Etna, so we quickly bussed and hitched around the area.
Honeybun was flying home in a few days, and we wanted to quickly hit that section of trail so he could join and we could be through it with our thru-hiker fitness.
On the way back into the USA, we grabbed new tabs for my car since my plates had expired. We got back to Kate’s and we did our normal pack explosions and get maintenance, including drying all of our wet stuff from the storm. It was later in the day, so Kate’s mom and grandma made us dinner to celebrate and help with our short schedule. Then it was off to bed for the whirlwind of the next few days.
2 comments
Congratulations!! I hope to get a chance to meet Katie someday.
Err. Kate! =)