Scissors Crossing to MEXICO!

PCT MILES COMPLETE: 2129.6
PCT mile 76 to PCT mile 0
Section mileage: 76
Days: 11/3 - 11/5

We fall asleep to the sound of coyotes yipping in the hills. In the morning, Craig told me that last night I'd been snoring so loud that he'd had to wake me up. "Really?" I asked skeptically.

Climb out of Scissor's Crossing

Craig's artwork

"Yeah," he insisted, "I said, 'wake up! You're snoring!' and you said, 'no I wasn't!' and rolled over and went back to sleep."

Apparently. We climbed slowly up from Scissors Crossing into the mountains and away from the highway. We left Hop behind, as he was meeting up with a friend that evening. As we climbed, I started noticing details I've missed, like the bare branches of burnt manzanita shrubs with a skirt of new growth below. These mountains I take for granted.

I walked alone behind Craig in silence, thinking about the end. What I am going to do next. Pick up my dog, get a job, figure out what to do with myself. I have boxes of things squirreled away, things I am excited to see and things I don't need. "I'll eat a lot of fresh vegetables," I think. And bake, now that I can eat gluten again. And eat no more Knorr pasta sides ever again, at least until the next trip.

We stop at a flattish spot along the trail for the night. The next day, the trail continues to parallel a road over the hill and we near civilization. We pass a cliff patched with plaques memorizing loved ones. At first, I think these are all loved ones that died at this spot, para sailing or something. But there are too many of them! They must be loved ones released into the afterlife at this grand vista in the desert. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, sand to sand.

I eat more graham crackers with nutella, sitting on a picnic table in a roadside rest area. Why didn't I discover this snack sooner? At the next road crossing, we decide to take the road into the town of Mount Laguna, where there is supposedly a store. It's quiet, but there is a store, so we buy big beers and drink them on a bench in the parking lot while older tourists subtly avoid us. We are discussing spending the night when Hop comes walking towards us.

The three of us buy beer and microwaveable snacks and rent a little cabin for the night. Hotpockets, and things we wouldn't dream of ever eating again. There's a wood fireplace and the two of them stay up late drinking and talking. I go to bed early. The end is coming soon and I need time to let it sink in.

From Mount Laguna we have 42 miles to the Mexican border, and we'd like to make it there in two days. Hop's friend from San Diego is coming to pick him up and we'd love a ride too. That means we need to start hiking real miles, but even still we do not leave the cabin until almost 10. The trail is easy, and we listen to our electronic devices and walk until it's dark, through the backyards of people, sounding their dog alarms. 

Sure death awaits you

We camp at Lake Morena campground, where most thruhikers spend their first night on the trail. It's abandoned; even Hop is nowhere to be found. The next morning we wake up early to get a start towards the border. All day we leap frog with Hop in the heat of the day. In the town of Campo, the three of us reconvene at the little store. I buy the largest soda I have ever seen (big enough to be banned in NYC) and drain it right away, the cold rushing to my head. We buy beers and awful, awful Bud Light margaritas which we crack open immediately to drink while we walk the remaining mile and a half to the border. Closer and closer we get to the fence and monument. 

Cheers!

Hop and Cree

And suddenly we are there, cresting the slope and whooping, peering past to the corrugated metal fence beyond which lies Mexico. It's quiet and on a dirt road. A border guard pulls up, asks us what we're doing. I think, "it's pretty obvious; we just walked from Canada (kind of)!" We have an hour until Hop's friend shows up, so we drink our beers and take photos in the hot midday sun. It feels surreal. "We have 530 miles or so left in Northern California," a voice whispers in my head, but that's another trip that I get to take another time. I quiet the voice, drink my beer, and then tipsily ride in the back of a pickup truck to San Diego.

Me and Cree

Idyllwild to Scissors Crossing

PCT MILES COMPLETE: 2073.4
PCT mile 183.5 to PCT mile 76
Section mileage: 118.2
Days: 10/26 - 11/2

The trail was closed south of Idyllwild from a forest fire last year. We hadn't figured out a suitable alternate yet. In the spring, most hikers had gotten a ride through this section. A brave few had walked along the road. Our northbound friends had passed along harrowing tales from the trail grapevine about winding roads so narrow that there was no shoulder to walk on and cliffs on either side. We weren't looking forward to that, but we were determined to find a way to walk all of the way to the Mexican border.

I waited in line at the Idyllwild Inn check-out. A woman in front of me was in a huff, telling the man behind the counter indignantly about her hot tub jets, "They kept turning on and off all night, keeping me awake."

"Sorry," the man apologized, not looking sorry, "Why didn't you call the number on the office door? We could have helped."



Eating pomegranites

The woman looked miffed, "I wasn't going to change out of my pajamas in the middle of the night to come find someone. And," she added, "there were cockroaches in the cabinet."

"We don't have cockroaches at this elevation, he responded, "and you already have a free nights' stay."

"I have photos," she insisted, and looked down at her camera.

"Sorry," the man mouthed at me.

"Show me the photos," I told the woman, "I'm an entomologist," I lied. They were crickets, but the woman still left in a bustle of resentment, probably mentally crafting her scathing yelp review. I walked up to the desk to ask for advice about an alternate route to the Paradise Cafe.

We set out midday with packs chocked full of food. Our alternate route took us through town, and up a steep neighborhood hill. We passed ranch houses and cabin mansions before finally arriving at a spot where a dirty road departed from the pavement. It was quiet and open, and we could see down into the valley. We walked until the sky started getting darker and we found a flat, sandy spot to set up our tent. We split a pomegranate as the sun set.

The next day, we followed the sandy road back to the highway and veered south to follow a mountain bike trail parallel to it. The trail dumped us in a vacant campground. From there, we walked on the shoulder of the road while trucks whooshed past blowing our hats off. Cattle ranches lined the highway on both sides. We passed a stream whose bed was a dusty ditch. A little town with a fire department. Trees with shade occasionally, where we say on our packs to eat graham crackers with generous globs of Nutella on top. This is our life.

We reached the Paradise Cafe early afternoon. Outside, a wrinkled old man was singing songs. We walked in, bewildered by civilization. The waitress brought us plates heavy with burgers and fries. The end is close. We jumped back on trail at mile 152 and set off, uncomfortably full, into the late afternoon. I lagged behind Craig, falling ridges behind. We stopped at a water cache for the night. A lone little aspen was planted next to us and we fell asleep to the sound of its leaves shaking percussively in the wind.

The next day was quiet and hot. We saw no people and no wildlife, except for the ever present crows windmilling overhead. The trail was easy and we took lots of shade breaks. I took a side trail to a water source that looked like a fire hydrant with a hose attached to it. It wasn't until later that we realized it tasted like hydrocarbon-infused water. We plugged our noses and gagged down as much water as we had to. We were both delighted to dump the fracking water out when we reached the cache on Chihuahua Road.

Dinosaur-sized boulders

We started with the sunrise the next morning, hiking fast into the cloudy, warm day. We started walking into Warner Springs on the trail parallel to the road until we were attacked by sharp hitchhiking seeds. In town, we sat under the overhang of the abandoned gas station, next to the closed resort. The security guard for the (closed) resort kept driving by in his van eyeballing us. The second we walked back to a resort building to fill up our water bottles, he came careening gleefully around the corner on his golf cart (which he clearly had on hand for off road missions) to kick us out for trespassing.



Sunset in the desert

We didn't know what the south end of Warner Springs held, but we'd been kicked out of the faucet in the center of town, and we couldn't walk into the desert without water. Luckily, there was an elementary school with a welcoming picnic table and faucet for hikers. We made food while the football team practiced. A group of three girls were sorting recycling next to us when one shrieked, "SNAKE!" and they all went screaming away. I popped up and walked over to the bins. A large skink (a lizard) slithered away, making me jump. The girls laughed, embarrassed at their mistake.

We hiked into dusk, through big beautiful live oak trees. As we climbed out of the valley, the sun exploded on the horizon, leaving a gory mess of pinks and reds bleeding in the sky. It was incredible. We stopped to set up our tent and watch the drama in the sky unfold.

It was cold the next morning, so we started late. A line of clouds rose slowly from the horizon, stretching from the earth towards us, seemingly pulled upwards like backward blinds, until the whole sky was gray. I made tea to coax Craig our of his sleeping bag and into the day. We ran into a trail crew widening the trail and clearing brush on our long climb. That night, we camped at another cache that amazingly was stocked with water, surrounded by fractious cholla cacti.

All calm at sunset

We woke up in the middle of the night to a crazy storm. The tarp started smacking the ground. Sand and rain blew horizontal. Strong gusts whipped through our camp, ripping the stakes out of the ground every ten minutes. I couldn't sleep. We had to take turns venturing out into the storm to restake the tarp.

Sunrise after the storm

The next morning, we started slowly, groggy from our long night. The trail dragged us along the undulating ridge of the San Felipe Hills. The path seemed to go on forever, endlessly stretching miles ahead. The highway lay far below, tiny trucks moving noiselessly to and from San Diego. Old cactus friend started popping up, characters from my childhood trips to the Sonoran Desert as we neared Scissors Crossing. Barrel cacti with their curved spines: ironically perfect fish hooks in the middle of a desert. Teddy bear cholla, painfully huggable. Tall, stately ocatillo embellished with spines. Everything with spines, ready to fight for its life.

At the highway, we hitched west into the town of Julian with a woman on her way to bible study. Julian was packed with pie-crazed Eastern European tourists (Julian's known for its pies). We fumbled into a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant, where I inhaled my giant, soggy burrito and endless cups of sweet, cold soda. After a few hours of consumption and electricity, we started towards the edge of town to hitch back to the trail. Another hiker was standing on the corner! Before we could get close enough to see who he was, a semi pulled off to pick him up.

Trail near Scissor's Crossing

Craig and I were only at the roadside with our thumbs out for a few minutes when an older woman pulled off for us. She smiled and we smiled back. When Craig opened the door to climb inside, the smell jumped out and slapped us both in the face. Craig pushed aside the cardboard box of rotting fruit to squeeze inside. We weren't in her car for two seconds when our driver sprang to life, talking a mile a minute, careening from topic to topic and from shoulder to shoulder on the road.

She wanted to tell us about her car keys and boss (the bitch) and road trip and daughter (that ungrateful bitch) and astrology. Her mood rollercoastered from gleeful to angry, and all of this on the fifteen minutes it took to get to the trail. We leapt out at the junction, thanking her and hiking off, thankful that the drive had ended safely. Craig turned back to me, "You know she's on meth, right?"

"Huh. That explains a lot," I said.

We quickly caught up to the other hiker from town. It was our old friend Hop!, another flip flopper. We'd met him in Kennedy Meadows and again in Crater Lake. Hop was as grateful as us to see another hiker, so we decided to camp together for the night. Trouble was, he'd sent home his tent, and it was supposed to rain again tonight. During the storm the night before, Hop had hiked like mad to get to a person-sized cave to hide from the storm. Tonight, we were lucky enough to find a cave-like space under the thick branches of a squat desert tree. The three of us sat together talking in the dark, drinking huge cans of Tecate and eating apple pie with a fork directly out of the box. We are so close.

Big Bear to Idyllwild

PCT MILES COMPLETE: 1968.3
PCT mile 277.7 to PCT mile 183.5
Section mileage: 101.5
Days: 10/19 - 10/26

We kept putting off our departure from Big Bear. Finally, after stuffing our faces with pizza and cups of soda, Tink drove us to the trailhead of the Cougar Crest Trail. A man returned to his pickup with his dog. "Where are you going?" He asked enthusiastically. We told him, but were anxious to get hiking, so left him and Tink to talk. The sun was waning. Back in May, we had started from this very parking lot with 7 liters of water apiece, hiking by headlamp up the mountain. I remember thinking how important it was to get to the PCT to camp, to get a fresh start in the morning. I remember thinking how steep the trail was, not believing that I could become an efficient hiking machine.

The trail, now, was easy. Behind us, the sunset over the lake.

The next morning, we set out into the high desert. South this time, counting down the 277.7 miles towards Mexico. It was cool in the shade, hot in the sun. We were sore after three weeks off, and took lots of breaks. Soon, we ran into another couple of true SOBOs: Dormouse and Dirtstew. They were just as surprised to see us, telling us the we were the first PCT hikers they'd seen in awhile. We bid them goodbye as they hiked farther south. We stopped after 19 miles in a valley in the shade of bright yellow aspen trees to sleep by a cold trickle of a stream. I didn't sleep well; the desert nights are cold and I woke up over and over to pull my bag closer to trap warm air inside.

We didn't start until 11 am the next day, which is obscenely late by PCT standards. When we did start, we hiked almost a mile when I realized I had left my camera on a rock. By the time I'd run back and returned to my pack, it was afternoon. We felt lazy and sluggish. Next to the trail, we passed a fenced off area. Inside, we could see captive carnivores. A grizzly bear, tiger, lion. Each lived in a little cage twice its length, and paced incessantly back and forth. They seemed oblivious to our gaping stares. These animals are apparently "stunt" animals used for Hollywood films. It depressed us, and not long after passing them, we decided to stop for the night, a mere 9 miles into our day.

The next day, we started early to make up for lost time. The trail descended into Mission Creek valley, and the sun was hot.  As it wove back and forth across the creek, the trail kept disappearing into willow and invasive cattail thickets. We would emerge into the glaring desert sun with no sign of trail ahead, and have to double back and spilt up to find out where we'd gone rogue. "Found it!" One of us would yell and we'd move on until the next stream crossing, where it would all repeat. We emerged from a canyon with tall, metamorphic rock walls to find the perfect camping spot. A small waterfall fell into a pool knee-deep. We set up our tent on soft sand in our little desert paradise, taking turns half emerging in the stream.

We made a double tea bag breakfast before leaving our paradise. The weather was blindingly, suffocatingly hot. I climbed up and out of the Mission Creek valley listening to history podcasts about true life princesses and gangsters. The landscape was barren with shrubs and cacti. The trail led us down a winding catwalk into a white sand desert in a flat river valley surrounded by more barren ridges. Down the center ran the silty Whitewater Creek. The water was too silty to drink so we decided to take a short detour to a preserve. Where there was supposedly a wading pool... From the trail, we could see a cluster of palm trees marking paradise like tall imperialistic flags in the desert.

A group of forty or so kids were running around. There were outlets and potable water and even the fabled wading pool. We camped out in the grass with thousands of tiny ants. The flashlights of the children excitedly bobbed back and forth between their camp and the bathrooms.

At six the next morning, we set off into the groggy, dim dawn. The trail led us up a canyon and along ridges with deep sand and confusing side trails branching off in all directions marked with cow patties. "Rogue cattle, escaped from the reservation," a trail maintainer would tell us later, "they've been breeding in the hills, feral for generations." On the other side of the ridge, the horizon was blanketed with rows of wind turbines churning mechanically. We excitedly took big steps into deep sand, climbing down into civilization. Beyond the wind farm was our goal: a twenty story casino.

First we needed to pass through Cabazon, which began on the edge of the desert with dilapidated trailers seemingly rising out of the sand. No one was outside, although most of the houses had cars in the driveways and angry dogs snarling at the fences. We found a patch of shade for some relief from the heat, so that Craig could look up directions to the casino.

"That's ironic," he said, looking down at his phone.

"What?" I asked irritably. The sun was getting to me.

"The only business in town is a paving company." I looked around. All of the roads we'd come to so far were only paved with dust. We headed in the right direction, joining up with the one paved road in town. It was five lanes wide and completely empty, save for rows of neglected palm trees that lined the street.

"Do you think they're trying to be another Palm Springs?" I quipped. At the highway, we got our answer. A faded sign welcomed visitors to "West Palm Springs". Luckily it didn't take long to catch a ride to the casino, where we were the sole dirty hikers at this roadside destination. It was a Friday, and tourists were pouring in for the weekend. We waited out the heat of the day at the strangely 50s themed restaurants, surrounded by the modernity of the twenty story casino on one side and an outlet mall on the other side. I spilled a cup of hot coffee on my lap. Craig left a trail of little ants everywhere he set his pack. We didn't belong here, even if there were milkshakes.

We hitched back to the trail by still-hot dusk and set off into the desert, the interstate getting smaller and smaller in the distance. We only traveled a few miles farther to a faucet at the base of Mt San Jacinto.

We woke at 4 am to start our climb in the dark. We had a long fifteen mile climb tomorrow and wanted to get an early start to beat the heat. A couple miles in, our headlamps met another in the dark. A older man with wide eyes was descending the mountain. Strapped to his chest was a two liter bottle half full of brown water. Craig and him were talking, but I wasn't listening. I was staring at that bottle. As we exchanged parting words, he turned back and added, "you two have enough water, right?" We nodded. "Because you have another 18 miles to the next source." We knew this, of course. He tapped the bottle, "I didn't get enough water, so I've been filtering my piss. Not bad with some Kool-aid powder."

We waited until he was out of earshot to start laughing in horror. The mountain was alive pre dawn. I almost stepped on a tarantula the size of my fist. A cute skunk wobbled across the trail. An owl flew away silently at our approach. The eyes of a huge jackrabbit (or jackalope or jackacougar) glowed at us down slope. We even heard the loud SHHHHHH of a rattlesnake in the distance. By the time the sun rose at 6:30, we were well into our climb. And still we kept climbing. A total of 8,000 feet of switchbacks, from ecosystem to ecosystem, out of the desert, past grassy fields, under a canopy of tall pines. We camped at Strawberry Junction.

The next morning, we walked down to Idyllwild to find breakfast. The first business we saw in town advertised "CHAMPAGNE BREAKFAST BUFFET! Sundays". It was a Sunday. What a miracle.

Traveling south, ie the Victory Lap

Chairman meow

The section of trail from Ashland to Canada was finished, but our trip was far from complete. We had two sections of trail to complete (Sierra City to Ashland, and Big Bear to the Mexican border). But first. We had boatloads of friends to visit on our way south.

In Bellingham, we stayed with my good friend Teagan at her new apartment. She apologized profusely for her hectic work schedule. Craig and I assured her that we really really were happy sitting indoors cooking and watching an entire season of Orange is the New Black. So much had happened this summer!
We took a bus south from Bellingham to Portland, where we ate shelled peanuts and drank beer with Michelle. The next morning, we took a series of buses west to the mouth of the Columbia River. In the town of Astoria, we visited my friends Jake and Roxy. They are both teachers. We went canoeing and visited a colony of sea lions on the docks (hands down, best physical comedians, ever). We collected mussels and cooked them in white wine sauce and played Settlers of Catan. Craig and I went to Jake's middle science classes as Science professionals, to tell the kids about being real live scientists. Only a few of them probably caught on to the fact that we are unemployed and homeless.

I am starting to realize that there is life after the trail. I have friends living happy, fulfilled lives. And that can be me too. It's encouraging.

We took buses south on the coast of Oregon, down to Lincoln City. Zack and Nikki, Craig's friends from Minnesota, picked us up and took us home to their house on the beach. They forage for mushrooms on the weekends and teach during the week, walking on the beach every night. We explored tide pools during low tide, looking for messed up star fish clinging to the rocks.

We continued south, thumbing our way down the coast on highway 101. A couple of girls from Newfoundland picked us up first. "We're headed down south of Eureka tonight," they offered. We looked at each other. We'd been debating whether we should go back to Ashland to buy bikes to cycle through the section we missed in Northern California. This was as good a sign as any, so we agreed. These girls did not disappoint. They played perfect coast music, and we made a picnic feast on the beach. We cruised through the redwoods in awe. The girls dropped us off in a town outside of Eureka so we could stealth camp for the night.


Picnic lunch with our new hitching friends

The next few days, we hitched down the coast with whoever stopped for us. There is no shortage of characters in Northern California. An old man who ran a bar gave us leftover sauerkraut and potatoes for breakfast. A painter in a VW bus picked us up. A girl asked us who Snoopy Dog was, since she was recently signed to his label. We were driven by surfers, by electricians, by teachers, by strangers of all stripes. At night, we competed with the transient homeless populations for hobo hideaway campsites. It was glorious.

In Berkeley, we met up with my friend Megan for a night. It was time to get back on trail.
Friends keep asking what the next adventure is, and I don't have an answer. The PCT has been the light at the end of the tunnel, the goal, the one item on my bucket list for so long, that I don't have an answer. So now I do have a goal: make a bucket list.



Shaving in a field in Northern California

We continued south by train and rental car and metro train and bus, back up the mountain to the place where we started this journey. Big Bear. Our friend Tink, from trail, let us stay at her house for a couple of nights before dropping us off at the Cougar Crest Trail. Mile 277.7. Where this all began. Here it goes. Back to the desert.

Hike on the Bay

Stehekin to Canada

TOTAL PCT MILES: 1851.3
PCT mile 2580 to PCT mile 2660
Section mileage: 110
Days: 9/23 - 9/28

Stehekin was like a storybook town, with one road that led from the trail to the dock. It is isolated, in space and communication from the outside world. To get to Stehekin, you need to take a ferry across a big lake or hike in like us. The lake is framed with mountains and fog. There is no cell phone or landline phone service. No internet. Just a community garden, an inn, and the most incredible bakery in the world. The winter population is only 61 hardy souls.

We were determined to get in and out of the town in one day. Rain was forecast for the next couple of days, and we wanted to get a head start on it. Four hours later, we had managed to pick up our resupply package, shower, do laundry, paw through hiker boxes, charge our electronics, and eat more food.

We took the bus back to the bakery, where we each selected a few baked goods for the last section of the trail. Without outside communication, we decided to play a high speed matching card game intended for children. For hours. It was hugely entertaining. We took the last bus of the evening back to the trail. We hiked a few miles out and set up under a big tree, just as the rain began. This was sure, we knew, to be the start of a lot of rain.

The next morning, we slept in until after 9. Despite the rain, the morning wasn't so bad. We walked through the mist with occasional drizzle, but since we were hiking uphill we stayed warm. We ran into a big, eight person group taking a lunch break together. "What is that? Mountain hardware?" One of the hikers called to Craig jokingly. Craig is using a stylish, heavy duty trash bag as a pack cover. It's surprisingly effective.

By Rainy Pass, it had really started to rain. "Why is this called Rainy Pass?" Said no-one, ever, in September. We continued climbing, but our arms were numb with cold. We warmed as we climbed higher, past tamarack trees with yellowing needles. Little rivulets of water ran across the trail. We found a little camping spot just shy of Cutthroat Pass 22 miles into our day. The clouds had blown past for a moment, so we took advantage of the break in the rain to set up our tent. We got a glimpse of the ridge and the jagged mountains south of us before zipping up the tarp to hide from the elements.

On the ridge, it was a cold night. We didn't start until 11 as it was freezing outside and still raining. Even in the tent, we could feel the chill of clouds blowing along the ridge. When we gathered the nerve to start, it was still cold and wet. Unfortunately, we were descending the mountain, so hiking didn't warm us much. By 3 in the afternoon, we had only gone 11 miles, but I was done hiking. We set up in the woods quickly. For the rest of the day, we read The Goldfinch aloud and made tea to warm up.

Since we bailed on the rain the day before, we had set ourselves up for a long day. We wanted to get close enough to the Canadian border so that we could slackpack ourselves there and back in a day. It was cloudy in the morning, but at least it wasn't raining again, and we had climb to warm us up. A couple times the sun blinked at us before the clouds swept through again. Long enough to give us a beautiful rainbow in the valley, but too brief for us to really dry out. Tall peaks were silhouetted behind the clouds. We descended to a completely abandoned Harts Pass, where we ate bagel sandwiches (thank you Stehekin bakery) for a chilly lunch.

Up we climbed into more misty, probably scenic mountains. We headlamped for about an hour to the top of a hill where we set up camp in a lumpy field. 31 miles. Tomorrow, to the border. To celebrate our long day and anticipated long day, I made double Teriyaki noodles with extra oil. It was cold and the ground was uneven, so I set up the stove in the middle of the tent. "Is that stable?" Craig asked nervously. "I think so," I responded. I reached to zip the tent and the pot toppled over, spilling greasy noodle water all over the inside of the tent and my sleeping pad. I almost started crying. Craig started giggling. "Not funny yet," I said. We used our bandanas to sop up the liquid, but it was still oily. Craig had the ingenious idea of using wet wipes to cut the grease. The great Teriyaki disaster of 2014.

The noodle grease attracted a whole colony of mice. All night we could hear them running around the tent and under it. We spotlighted one of them clinging to the mesh on the ceiling. It had beady little eyes and an adorable pointy nose. "Should we kill him?" Craig asked. Ever since he had woken to the mouse nibbling on his ear, Craig's been especially weary of mice. The mouse escaped the tent before we had to choose his fate. We duct taped the hole and went back to sleep. We had a big day ahead of us.

The next morning, we left camp at sunrise with the tent relatively mouse-proofed. The tent and grass were covered in a thick coat of frost. But! The sun was out and the sky was blue blue blue for the first time in (what felt like) forever! And it was my 30th birthday. We excitedly left camp, hiking in and out of the cold shade of the mountains. We hiked the long switchbacks up Woody Pass, passing thruhikers carrying their full loads. We stopped only once on the 15 miles to the border, to filter a liter of water. Craig presented me with a birthday present: the last Snickers bar. We continued to descend into the valley, to the anticlimactic border crossing in a shaded little clearing. There was a collection of little pillars marking the spot, and a couple of thruhikers taking photos. Glimmer and Coldstart, drinking little bottles of champagne. We split my last Stehekin baked good: a sticky bun, stale by now but still delicious, and a little box of wine, before turning around and retracing our steps back up the mountain.

We congratulated elated thruhikers as we passed them, heading for the border and the end of their hikes. By dusk, we were back at our tent. The mice had thankfully left it alone. Thirty miles for my thirtieth birthday. I could not think of a more fitting way to celebrate.

The next morning, we hiked the fifteen miles back to Harts Pass, where we hoped to find a ride down the mountain. We were thrilled when a young Polish couple picked us up. Down in the nearest outpost of Mazama, we crammed in sandwiches, beer, and chips until we could barely wobble to the highway to try our luck at hitching to Bellingham. We hadn't even reached the highway when a station wagon with a couple and their dog pulled off to offer a ride. And in a flash, this section of the trail was over.

Stevens Pass to Stehekin

PCT MILES COMPLETE: 1771.2
PCT mile 2476 to PCT mile 2580
Section mileage: 104
Days: 9/18 - 9/23

Before we left the resort, Craig asked one of the employees if there were any pizza places that delivered there. She said, "unfortunately, no. Wait here for a minute." Around the corner came another woman with a pizza. "Would you like a slice?" She asked, "we're testing our new pizza ovens today!" Saying goodbye to our new trail friends as they headed into Skykomish, we hiked a few more miles back into the foggy drizzle. We set up camp next to a little trickle of a stream before the rain really started in earnest again, watching TV (yes, TV) on my tablet until we were sleepy.

I woke up with a start to a girlish squeal in the middle of the night. "It was nibbling on my ear!" Craig said, "there was a mouse standing on my head, chewing on my ear." The mice kept us up again, scampering around outside the tent for the rest of the night. To our dismay, we woke late to more rainy mist.

At 10, we started hiking, feeling some regret that we had chosen to skip town. We climbed up and down over ridges, pikas calling back and forth in the mist. We saw no other backpackers all day. Maybe they were too smart to hike today, I thought gloomily. All of the views were socked in, and we can't wait for the mist to lift. We did run into another bear, once again eating berries. Once again, he lumbered off when he heard us approaching. We hiked until after dark, yet only managing to fit in 18 miles due to our late start. After last night's mouse trauma, we chose to hang the food on a nearby tree stop we could at least get a good night's sleep.

We were relieved to wake up the next morning to clear blue skies. The next couple days, the weather stayed sunny and the views were incredible as we approached Glacier Peak. The higher elevations were exposed and carpeted with ripe, sweet blueberries. Under the canopy, we collected edible oyster and lion's mane mushrooms, adding them to almost every meal. Our mileage climbed back into the 20s and spirits lifted as well. "I think this section is supposed to be the hardest in Washington," a hiker friend had told us at Stevens Pass. I hoped so. The days were filled with endless, long ascents and descents reminiscent of the Sierras. We ran into more hunters than thruhikers. At dusk, we ran into a sectionhiker we'd met back at White Pass before the wedding. We camped with him in a little clearing. The night was so warm and clear that we decided not to put our rain fly on.

I'm missing the fall colors in the northeast; they start now and peak in October. In this section, however, the colors have been amazing in their own way. The blueberry bushes are red and purple, other shrubs are turning yellow, and the evergreen conifers are, you know, green.

We woke up, predictably, to rain on our tarpless tent. It wasn't quite dawn, but we packed up quickly and started hiking. We were descending into a deep valley. In the distance, we could hear the rumbling of thunder. I counted the seconds between flashes of lightening and cracks of thunder; the storm was approaching. At last, we reached a grove of giant old growth trees, thick enough to provide cover from the rain. Silence. We filtered water, both unhappy with the rain. The stream at the bottom of the climb was a frothing torrent, milky white from glacial silt.

On the other side of the bridge, we began another huge climb into the clouds. We were running low on both food and fuel. At lunch, I ate cold mashed potatoes with crunchy mystery bits while Craig made the saddest burrito of all time: a tortilla with Taco Bell sauce and the rest of an Ez cheese can. We finally emerged into blueberry land with its adorable pikas and incredible colors.

Over the crest of the ridge, the misty views were replaced with an endless vista of naked, granitic mountains. We hiked in awe past a glacier and streams with just-melted ice cold water. Despite the beautiful views, I felt hungry and faint. As Craig filtered water in a glacier stream, I crunched on a dry packet of ramen noodles.

Twenty-nine miles into our day, we camped at dusk. Both of our feet killed. Mine were bleeding and Craig's felt like they were breaking. To compensate for our long, hard day, I made a massive pot of noodles for dinner.

We woke up at 5 am and hiked like mad to get to the ranger station before the first bus left at 9 am. Still in the dark, I saw Craig's light ahead stop and swing back and forth up the hill. I heard a small rustle and then silence. "What was that?" I asked. Craig's eyes were wide. "I think it was a mountain lion." Until it was light out, I felt unease, swinging my light behind me to look for the wideset eyes.

We arrived at the ranger station ten minutes early, where two other thruhikers were waiting, surprised to have us roll up from behind. The bus was driven by a friendly woman with minute braids. She stopped at the bakery long enough for us to run in and buy armloads of day-old balked goods. We happily crammed cookies and pie into our faces as the bus rolled into the magical town of Stehekin.