Day Seventy Four

Today's miles: 27
Total miles: 1569

Today's terrain was extremely flat. After leaving the beauty of the Sierras in central California, reaching Northern California almost seemed like a let down. We walked endless miles through trees and over sun-scorched rocks, without the awe-inspiring beauty of the John Muir Trail to urge us along. Though the terrain might not be as pretty, it was much more graded than anything we had hiked before. Thus, after pulling 16-18 mile days in the Sierras, we suddenly got to Northern California and hit the ground running. The elevation was so gradual that it was easy to do 25-30 mile days. Some people even realized their full thru-hiking potential and pulled 40 mile days with ease.

We had no need to do so many miles, but I can't deny that it was fun to really, truly put your body to the test. We were strong, we were motivated, and the miles flew beneath our feet. Well, almost flew. I was still getting my body used to the rigors of trail life, so I flew a little slower, but still I moved. Still I was able to keep up. I was subtly impressed with myself, that after a month off trail I could keep up with my hiker friends with little trouble. Yes, I was tired and blistered and aching, but I was determined.

Our favorite phrase these days was crushing it. It was a term that Treekiller used often, at each break, at each motivational speech, each morning and evening.
"We've gone fifteen miles already!"
"Crushing it!"
"We have a big hill ahead..."
"Let's crush it!"
"What are we doing?"
"Crushing. It."

We took breaks every couple hours, and lunch was always a delightful reprieve. It was our longest break of the day, where we could recharge, filter water, drink some caffeine, and pound out the rest of our miles. Today's lunch stop was under a bit of shade and we quickly stripped off our shoes and dove into our meals. We had a tight-knit group these days: Wocka Wocka, Giddyup, Sunshine, Sneaks, Treekiller, Katie and I hiking and camping together. We told jokes as we relaxed beneath the trees.
"Did you see that tent at the road crossing today?" Sneaks asked. "I really thought it might be trail magic."
It hadn't been - the tent was set up for a cycling race and though they had fresh fruit and drinks available, it was only for the bicyclists.
"I thought that, too," I agreed sadly. "But once I realized it wasn't trail magic, I consoled myself with the outhouse."
Small amenities quickly became big delights on trail.

After lunch my speed improved, despite the pain from blisters. I kept up well all afternoon and though the last two miles of the day were brutally uphill, I managed to keep up a conversation with Treekiller and ignore the burning in my legs. When we camped at the top of the hill we toasted to 27 miles covered today and Treekiller's 36th birthday with some rice crispy treats. When we talked about our highlights from the day, mine was hiking my longest mileage day yet - and after a month off trail! Everyone cheered, and exhaustion finally gave me a full night of sleep.

Day Seventy Three

Miles today: 26
Total miles: 1542

We were up at 7:00 am with a big climb ahead of us this morning. I hadn't slept well last night; my body was still getting used to trail life again. Soon, I knew, exhaustion from hiking would knock me into a zombie-like sleep every night, but the first few days would be hard.

This proved to be very true in all respects. Today was my first full hiking day and I was determined to do the best I could. It was harder than I thought. Northern California was nothing like anything I had hiked so far: it was not quite the desert, but not quite the mountains. We had high hills to climb and mountains visible in the distance (such as the stunning Mt. Shasta) but the terrain was almost desert-like in its appearance. The weather was hot and dry, the water sources were frequent but small, the trees created shade but they weren't constant. We roasted under the sun, but it wasn't so brutal as the desert. It was an interesting blend of terrain and though it was fascinating to walk through, my body still rebelled against the miles.

I discovered that rejoining the trail was like starting over again, in some respects. I began to get blisters on my toes and the soles of my feet. The air was so dry that my nose began bleeding again. My muscles ached with fatigue and my pack felt needlessly heavy. It was as though I was back at the border of Mexico again, dealing with problems that I hadn't had for hundreds of miles. I forgot what a pain in the ass blisters were. I forgot how my fingers went numb when my pack straps dug into my shoulder all day. I forgot what it was to pour sweat and snot and mucus and blood out of every pore in my body. As the miles slowly rolled by, I began to question my decision.

Why did I come back? Why did I voluntarily put myself back on a trail that daily tries to kill me?

The realization that I had left the last bits of society behind when Tanner drove away, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Why had I chosen to return, after all?

Through the aches and the pains and the heat and the miles, the blisters and the nosebleeds and the cracked, dry skin, there was one thing that hadn't changed in my month off trail. I was strong. I was stubborn. And I was going to walk all the way to Canada.

I found that even though my pack was heavy, I shouldered it through the miles. I found that even though my feet had blisters, I kept walking over them. I found that even though the days were long, my legs carried me through. They had the strength of 1,000 miles in them, and even when I was tired and weary, they kept moving forward, one purposeful step at a time.

And I realized that each time our group stopped for water, or a snack break, or a rest beneath the trees to take in the view, that I discovered why I wanted to come back to the PCT. It wasn't for the hiking. No. Hiking was just a job, now - it was what we did day after day, a necessity. A means to an end. But it wasn't our purpose. We hiked the PCT for the people. For the camaraderie. For the stories we created when we were together. It was in those moments when we were together during breaks, telling jokes and laughing about the day's adventures. It was for those moments that I had chosen to return to the trail. I wanted to finish the story that I started, and the story was the people I walked with.

But I couldn't deny that I was weary. The trail was rocky, and rough, and I was in pain. When we got to camp at 7:00 we had walked 26 miles, one of the longest days I had done in months. We slept next to a beautiful lake and had dinner together by the water. Wocka Wocka, Giddyup and Sneaks liked playing a game each night where everyone told their best moments of the day. We thought back and picked out small highlights: a joke Sneaks told during our lunch break, or a pretty view of Mt. Shasta over the hills, or the delight of reaching camp after a long day.

I curled up in my tent that night, hearing the soft sounds of my friends doing the same around me. My feet hurt, my legs ached, my muscles were exhausted, but I was happy to be back, despite it all.

Day Seventy Two

Miles today: 10
Total miles: 1516

First, I need to take a moment to inform you lovely readers how nice it was to have a little hiatus from thru-hiking life. Tanner brought to my attention that I "didn't adequately talk about how awesome it was to see him and how excited he was to see me," so for Tanner's sake I'd like to point out that it was really awesome to spend time with Tanner, who I hadn't seen in almost three months. There was lots of girlish giggling and hugging and eating ice cream on the couch while watching marathons of Castle seasons one through five. Unfortunately, this "real life" time came to all too quick of a conclusion, and the day arrived when I was (more or less) over my French-trip-jet-lag and preparing to, once again, hike the PCT.

For those of you gear heads out there, a few things changed for this section. I swapped out my 20 degree sleeping bag for a 30 degree bag which was a pound lighter in weight. I also bought a new Platypus water bladder (my old one was getting gross), swapped my Thermarest Z-lite foam sleeping pad for the more luxurious (and lighter) inflatable Thermarest Neo Air, and brought along my own tent this time - the Big Agnes Fly Creek UL 2. Katie thought we may be going at different paces through this stretch of trail, so we opted not to share gear for the final 1,000 miles.

I contacted Katie and my other hiking friends and found out that they would be arriving in the town of Mt. Shasta, CA on the day I would return to trail. So I packed up my gear (I spent one whole day at home scrubbing everything down with a tire brush and soap in the bathtub.... everything was so sparkly clean again!!) and Tanner drove me six hours down to California. My trail friends were spending the night in Mt. Shasta, so we got a room near them for one final "town" day.

This morning we woke up at 8:00 and met Katie, Wocka Wocka, Giddyup, Sunshine and Sneaks (the group Katie had been hiking with since Yosemite - as it turned out, Sneaks had ultimately decided not to go back to school this semester so that he could finish the trail) for breakfast and I enjoyed the happy reunions I had with old PCT friends: Hitch, her boyfriend Olif, K-Pax, Toots Magoots (trail angel Aloha's wife), and Tears for Beers. I asked after more of our friends and discovered that Games, Reason, Lighthouse and Pimp Limp were a day behind us, Rotisserie, Sansei, and Papa Bear were two days behind us, and Focus and Dance Party were three days behind us.

Left to right: Olif, Hitch, K-Pax, Wocka, Giddyup, Honey Bunny, Bramble, Tanner (photo by Toots)

After breakfast there was nothing to do but hit the trail - I was excited to be hiking again, but it was obvious that the miles of Northern California had taken a toll on my hiking friends, and they were weary. Tanner and I said a sad goodbye at the trailhead and then he drove home to Portland. Meanwhile, Wocka Wocka, Giddyup, Sunshine and I got a slow start on trail and our original estimate of 15 miles quickly dwindled to five. We took a long break under the trees but decided we needed to go at least ten miles to make the days ahead easier for us.

I hiked last in line, completely shocked by the weight of my pack. Granted, I was carrying seven days worth of food, but I couldn't honestly remember when I had carried something so ridiculously heavy. Was I just deluding myself? Had my pack always been this heavy? Had my time in France with a light daypack made me weak? Whatever the reason, I was sweating and puffing along the trail and unhappy that I once again felt like a weary backpacker instead of a strong, hiking machine. I discovered that my friends had been pulling 25-30 mile days through Northern California and inwardly I wondered if I would be able to keep up.

That night we set up camp and the normalcy of trail life began to sink into my bones again. Pitch the tent, pull out gear, make dinner, dig a cathole, clean up and go to bed. It was nice to be among friends again. Sneaks and a new friend named Treekiller joined us later that evening and our campsite was soon full of laughing friends and old faces. As we ate dinner Sunshine raised his glass and yelled, "a toast to Bramble being back on trail!"

"Hip hip hooray!" the others yelled, and I smiled. Whatever the reason for putting myself beneath a 40 pound pack and hiking another 1,000 miles on the PCT, it would certainly be worth it in the end.

Tour du Mont Blanc

In seventy one days I hiked over 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, from the border of Mexico to just below Lake Tahoe in California. After two and half months in the wilderness, Tanner drove 12 hours from Portland to pick me up and take me home. I still planned on finishing the PCT, but I had a different adventure to complete before that could happen.

Last year I signed up on a trip abroad to hike 100 miles around the highest peak in western Europe: Mont Blanc. We would hike through France, Italy and Switzerland in a classic route around the beautiful Alps mountain range. Along with a crew of ten other girls, one man, five guides and two photographers, this would be my new trail home for the next fourteen days. Though I would still be hiking, it would be a much different experience than on the PCT. Instead of a 35 pound pack, I would only be carrying a small daypack. Instead of processed trail food, we would daily indulge in fresh fruits, meats, cheeses, and french bread. Instead of hiking 15-20 miles per day, we would be doing 7-12. And instead of sleeping in a tent each night, we would spend our evenings in adorable European towns along the trail in quaint auberges and huts.

It was quite a culture shock, in more ways than one. Our first few days on trail I was still in PCT hiking mode, my brain expecting long days, a fast pace, and rigorous terrain. While the terrain of the Mt. Blanc range was, indeed, quite steep, the pace was anything but quick and the days were anything but long. At first it frustrated me, for two months on trail had ingrained a certain mindset in me: hike more miles, hike more miles... and this was clearly not the objective here, for we had two weeks to do 100 miles, almost double the time it usually took me to hike as far. But soon this new lifestyle settled into my bones, and I learned to relax and enjoy the lazy pace, the bright, interesting European cultures, the feel of the French language on my tongue again, the delightful company of my new hiking mates (who were not worn and weary by weeks and weeks of walking through the desert and mountains), and most of all, the stunningly beautiful views of the Alps each day.

Each morning we awoke in our small villages, dressed for the day, packed our lunches (Salads! Fruits! Meats! Cheeses!) and shuttled to the trailhead where we walked until late afternoon through rolling hillsides, mountain vistas, and past cow pastures, listening to the tinkling sound of cowbells like wind chimes in the breeze. We took long lunches beside rivers and found our favorite break activity was to go "hut spotting." Europeans love building small huts - called "bivouacs" or "refuges" - high up on the granite cliffs of the mountains so that mountaineers can have shelter when they climb the peaks of the Alps. These huts are so high up and so tiny that it seems nearly impossible that such structures could be built there - or even reached on foot. But we loved spending hours looking through binoculars trying to spot them all, clinging mightily to each rock face.

In the evenings one of our guides would pick us up and shuttle us to a new town, with beautiful names like Chamonix, or Courmayeur, or Martigny. We socialized with the local people, explored the towns, tasted the local cheeses such as beaufort and serac and raclette.

We laughed and enjoyed life and woke up again the next day to continue our journey through one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world.

And most of all, I learned to slow down. Instead of hurry, hurry, hurry through the miles, I learned to soak in the views, to enjoy the journey, and to love hiking again. There were many days on the PCT when this was a hard thing to remember. I learned not only to slow down on the trail, but also in life. One of my favorite evenings along my journey was a night spent in La Fouly, Switzerland. We were having a group dinner of raclette, a kind of fondue meal served with platters of cheese and potatoes. It was a very social kind of dinner, one that is common to the French and Swiss people. Our long table consisted of 19 people crowded around it, laughing and talking all night as we passed around plates of food, told jokes, and conversed in a harmonizing mix of French, English and Italian. The warmth of the evening felt like a family reunion, and I realized what a traditional and special way of eating this was for Europeans.

At one point in the evening I looked over at the table next to us and saw a young couple having dinner together. Their plates were full of half-eaten food, and both of them were highly engrossed in their phones, so much so that they barely looked at each other all meal. And this, I realized, was the trouble with America today. We are so connected to our media and our online social lives that we barely remember what it is to have dinner with each other anymore. But the French remember. And this is what life should be: friends and family laughing and talking over good food and wine, for nothing fills your soul so well as this.

It was heartbreaking to say goodbye to my new friends after two weeks, but all journeys must come to an end. And for me, I still had many more adventures to come. Only a few more days and I will be back in a world of thru-hiking, carrying a 30 pound pack along dusty trails and making my way ever north to Canada.