Our food bags were heavy once again to avoid being hungry, although all of us had become bottomless pits and shameless about free food. We had an easy, quite pleasant first five miles back on trail, but I had eaten almost a full loaf of super heathy bread and could feel it expanding it my stomach making me want to lay down, letting the stream ease me to sleep instead of walking.
The fall foliage had come into full, beautiful bloom sending a thousand different colored leaves dancing through the air with every breeze. The wide trail without too many troublesome roots made it quite easy to walk staring straight up into the tops of the trees looking at the colors and not pay much attention to where it led.
Eventually, we came upon a brilliantly flat campsite with a privy, a crude shelter with a picnic table, and a perfectly clear stream running right through it. Hop-a-long, Scout, Natty, and I set up camp and ate dinner at the table appreciating it like no one but a thru-hiker can appreciate an old picnic table.
In the morning, Natty woke us up at 5:45 and immediately started his jetboil for coffee. Wanting to sleep, I rolled back over dozing until I heard the stove turn off, then mustered up the energy to eat and pack up.
“WHERES MY SPOON?!” Natty yelled, jolting me awake more. “I left it right here!” he exclaimed searching around everywhere. “Something took it!”
“What’s it look like?” said Hop-a-long, looking around where we had eaten dinner last night.
“It’s the orange Yogi spoon!”
When no one found it, we determined something did indeed confiscate the spoon. Hikers get very attached to their spoons, especially one they have carried for well over 2,000 miles.
We went up, up, and more up to Rainy Pass the rest of the morning. As soon as we came up out of the big trees to the littler, more shrubby trees and wide grassy patches, we felt the temperature drop and saw frost glittering on each tall grass blade. Leapfrogging each other until we found a suitable sunny spot, we took a break right on the side of the trail near a stream where Hop found a half pound of goat cheese chilling in the water. After much deliberation, we determined that a.) someone had chilled it for a few moments in the stream and forgot about it, or b.) someone didn’t like goat cheese and left it chilling in the stream because they knew it was an easy spot to fill up water bottles and a hungry hiker would see it before it went bad.
With the sun a little higher in the sky, we moved further and further up valley until we came to Rainy Pass and sat by the sign on the side of the road and had a bite to eat again. Natty decided he had brought too much food and wanted to play a joke. He borrowed a sharpie and wrote on it: “Trail Magic, I read Wild” referring to the horrible Sheryl Strayed book that every woman over 40 thinks of immediately when you say “PCT.”
Usually, we walk downhill to roads and uphill after them. This particular one was quite draining because we walked uphill to it, then uphill after it to Cutthroat Pass. The name alone is encouraging….right? Crossing the road and going just up the trail, we came across real trail magic in the form of an epic cooler which gave us some motivation. The rest of the climb was really not too taxing and gave us spectacular views from the top.
Natty and I got up there first and stopped to re-fuel when we met this awesome old hippie named Chris who gave us trail magic of the greener variety and chatted with us. He had an independent, exploratory dog who wanted to sniff the entire world with unbending excitement.
Hop-a-long and Scout came up and we all decided to continue on until dark o’clock and see what’s there. Judging from what we saw on top of Cutthroat Pass, we would contour and run ridges the rest of the way to Canada.
The days had become drastically shorter and the nights colder in the past two weeks or so, making getting out of the sleeping bag increasingly difficult. We got to cruise downhill for some miles in the morning which was nice, but it did not get the blood pumping and my feet felt like frozen blocks attached to the ends of my legs.
We came across the last known water source before our last 2,500 foot climb on the PCT. Then some middle-aged guys with huge backpacks came from the other side of the stream. Natty clearly was not in a gear-talk or answer the weekenders questions mood, but I decided to humor them a bit basically telling them they had way too much shit with them, when one said, “Maybe you guys can help lighten my load, I have this bourbon here. Do you have a cup?”
Hop-a-long immediately produced her tiny wine cup she had carried all the way from Truckee and used to mix drinks with various drink mix powders.
“I guess 11am isn’t too early to drink for you thru-hikers!” one of the laughed.
We laughed remembering sharing tall boys of beer at 5am in the desert when we woke up to get us moving.
They ended up giving us the bourbon as a celebratory drink for the end of the trail. Awesome trail magic! Now we had vodka, wine, bourbon, and jack! They also told us we were only about an hour or so behind Agassi and Snow Turtle who we wanted to catch back up with again since they made it three miles further than we did out of Stehekin.
The climb was a long slog of switchbacks, but by the top, we had fantastic, sweeping views once more and a great knoll to eat a late lunch on. The trail bumped along and began slowly going down toward Harts Pass which was surprisingly more busy than any of us thought. I put on headphones to get through the hoards of people walking up from their cars a few miles and asking us if we’d read Wild. Damn that book. Just as bad as Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods.” Their actual writing was entertaining, but neither had any idea what they were doing and gave a fairly unrealistic picture of what goes on.
After all the day walkers, all of us wanted beer, so we sat by the trail head looking pathetic eating scraps of food for a while until Natty began flagging down every car asking if they had beer. None of them did, so we walked on, trying to push another six miles to a marked campsite.
Leaving Hart’s Pass was not super well marked, but we figured it out and not long after, we ran into Lorax hiking south. We 
paused, talked, and kept walking trying not to get in too late.
When we knew we only had half a mile or so to go, we saw some headlights and yelled over. It was Snow Turtle and Agassi! We finally caught them! Going a little further, we found the marked campsite which was not very flat or great, but tuckered out, we stopped and passed out pretty quickly, after eating of course.
The next morning, we leapfrogged Snow Turtle and Agassi for a bit, went through Woody Pass after being thoroughly temped to take the old PCT over the large scree field to avoid the 700ft or so descent only to climb immediately back up 800ft, but the reports seemed to say it was unstable.
After Woody Pass, we had only a little more uphill contouring before we went down for about 14 miles to Monument 78, the Canadian Border.
We cruised down wanting to drink the booze we’d been saving and carrying for 80 miles from Stehekin. That was the furthest I’ve carried booze, not drinking it along the way.
Hitting the monument felt so epic, we began celebratory drinks and photo ops. We waited for Snow Turtle and Agassi to get the group shot. Natty read us “Where the Wild Things Are” which someone had left with the register.
Eventually, we realized that we had to move our drunk butts a quarter-mile into Canada to camp as there were no spots by the monument. We built a fire in the ring and sat around finishing off the hodgepodge of alcohol we had.
The morning came and I looked over to see what I thought was Natty cowboy camping and yelled over at him to wake up when he answered in the opposite direction. Hop-a-long was near me and looked as utterly confused as I was. We investigated and found Magellan! He had gotten in absurdly late pulling a 36 mile day to make the 11am greyhound bus from Manning Park so he didn’t miss his flight. He had done it, just like Knees had made his absurd goal. We all did. Nine miles to food that’s not whatever is leftover from our packs!
Making it there early, we beelined for food and ate quite a lot. We had a slight mix-up finding my wonderful trail angel mother who had a cooler of beer because we arrived too early and she waited by the trailhead. It eventually got worked out and we relaxed.
PCT. Mexico to Canada. April 29th to October 7th, 2012.
The Backpacker Chronicles 