Pacific Crest Trail, Take 2

After the tough call to leave the PCT last year when the PCTA asked hikers to postpone, I’m back on trail! Here’s the first vlog episode.

This was a bit of a crazy way to start the trail. Farid came with me to do the out and back border tag and we set off up the PCT route late in the evening on June 26th, 2021. A few miles up the trail, we set up camp so we could get an early start in the morning. Our intention was to do the 60 mile out and back in 4 days, hitting the border on my start date of June 28th.

We woke up early just before the sun and packed up our gear, continuing toward the Northern Terminus. Shortly up the trail we ran into a group of hikers slowly waking up for the day. They passed along the news that they were on their way back down to Hart’s Pass to find a new way to the border after hitting huge snow fields. They’d also run into a ranger the previous day who had warned them of dangerous conditions as the heavy snow was rapidly melting in the heat wave, making passage to the border treacherous.

We took some time weighing our options and decided we would continue with this group and take the alternate to the border. They had a set of paper maps in addition to Guthook so we agreed to stick together to navigate the alternate route.

Guthook, unfortunately, had the route labeled completely wrong, and after some serious bushwhacking, we found a trail that we concluded would lead us where we needed to go. After lunch, the group agreed to meet at a specific point on the map to set up camp, and then we split up to hike at our individual paces.

The next section of trail we dubbed “The Graveyard”. The combination of fires, high snow, avalanches, and wind storms left the trail littered with hundreds of fallen trees. Night began to fall and we still hadn’t made it through the obstacle course to get the camp site. We turned our headlamps on and hiked until we could no longer see the trees well enough to climb over them. We found a small patch of flat ground about 18 miles from where we had started that morning, and set up for the night, hoping to catch the crew in the morning, since they had the paper maps.

By the light of the morning we tried to find the trail the would lead us west toward the approach trail. Unlike the PCT, these trails had not seen any maintenance in a while, so it was much tougher to find our way. We were only a mile or so from our intended campsite, and we started very early to catch up. When we arrived at the meeting point, we found no sign of hikers. Additionally, the trail we had intended to use to go west across the river, had been washed away by a landslide. The river below was raging from early snow melt and was impossible to cross.

We retraced our steps trying to find an alternate path across the river as the temperatures continued to rise in one of the highest heat waves of the year. Temperatures were reaching well into the triple digits and we were feeling it.

Several miles of retracing our steps and questioning our choices later we found a trail that led across the river. By this point it was the heat of the day and we were melting. We dipped in the icy river and took a nap under what little shade was offered. We ended up finding a campsite just across the river and setting up camp for the evening, so that we could reevaluate how to get up to the terminus the following day, since our “friends” with the paper maps had left us in the dust.

We managed to get some good sleep and decided that our best option would be to head back the way we came to Hart’s pass and then reevaluate. We were both very frustrated with the poor trail conditions, our failure to bring our own maps, and the heat was only increasing. We clambered back over all the fallen trees we’d struggled over on our way in and eventually found our way back to Hart’s pass. River crossings were challenging since the trail was now overflowing with water as the heatwave quickly melted the snow fields. This also meant that the mosquitoes were out in full force, eating us alive! On a more positive note, the wildflowers were making an appearance, turning the once snow covered mountainsides into colourful fields of blossoms. The snow field we had glissaded down just a couple of days prior was now melted enough to see the trail, making our climb back up and out much simpler.

We made it back to our car at Hart’s pass and took a giant sigh of relief as we drove down into Mazama to figure out a new plan of attack for tagging the border.

And that’s just the first three days!