Hiking the Pacific Trail Part VII

Miles hiked this section: 89
Days hiked: 5
Total miles hiked: @ 1,250
Miles still to go: 530

Hi from Eugene, OR! I made it into and out of Canada. There was no one at the border except birds and squirrels. No Mounties or U.S. soldiers patrolling the woods (one rumor passed south by a few hikers). I heard that "illegally" crossing the US/Canada border is technically a felony, but that Canada doesn't enforce any kind of punishment. This was lucky news for at least 50% of the hikers because only a few of them had actually bothered to apply for the recommended "Entry Into Canada" permit letter. I only heard about it possibly needing the permit letter once I was already on the trail, but I figured that as long as I had my passport, they'd have to let me back into my home country -- and I was right. The border guard just looked at our passports, asked us a few generic questions about how we knew each other, what we'd been doing in Canada, how long we'd been there, and waved us on through. She didn't even stamp my passport, dang it!

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Stehekin, WA (the last trail town before Canada). I took two rest days, because...well, because I could. And because on the day I was going to go back to the trail, I met 3 hilarious guys who I'd been wanting to hike with ever since I'd met one of them in Skykomish. I think I laughed more in Stehekin with Geoff, Ben and Joeffy than I had on the whole rest of the trail.

Everyone who was passing through the beautiful little lakeside village of Stehekin was talking about finishing the trail, and what they were going to do to celebrate at Monument 78 (the northern terminus of the PCT at the Canadian border). Geoff was going to get naked and have his picture taken on top of the Monument. A few people were going to smoke cigars. Others were packing in flasks of Mexican tequila and Canadian whiskey, and were going to do a shot of each. Lots of people were making mini-movies with their cameras, and of course, everyone writes their final thoughts in the monument's trail register. Everyone was excited/sad to be done. Geoff compared it to the feeling of the last few days of school before summer starts... but at the same time, having it feel like the last few days of summer before school starts. A weird combination of excitement and dread. Most people are exhausted and want it to be done, but they've had such a great time and love the people they've been hiking with -- and they wish that part didn't have to end. Most people seem to have some form of love/hate relationship with the trail on a small scale by the last 100 miles.

I'd made a pact with myself during the horrendous day of blowdowns that if I could make it over all the fallen trees and washouts and STILL make my 22.5 miles for the day, I could eat whatever I wanted to at Stehekin's famous bakery. When I actually got to the place, it was late afternoon and their stock had been pretty much wiped out by other thruhikers, so I had to wait to savor the miraculously huge and gooey sticky buns/cinnamon buns until the morning we took the shuttle back to the trail. Oh yes, I had one of each, thank you very much. I ate a fresh, warm and absolutely enormous cinnamon bun on the shuttle bus back to the PCT. I don't even want to know how many calories were in that thing. It was like rocket fuel. I didn't have to eat again until 3pm. That's notable, because I usually must eat every 3 hours when I hike, or I feel like death. I managed to save the sticky bun for breakfast the next day, and it was even better than the cinnamon bun, possibly because I was consuming it in the woods, far from civilization.

Geoff, Ben, Joeffy and I made it to the road at Rainy Pass the first night, 20 miles north of Stehekin. Early in the day, we met a 77 year old lady hiking with her son. She was from Norway, and talked like a skinny Dr. Ruth Westheimer. She was hilarious -- a real sparkplug. We ended up sitting at her feet for 10 minutes while she told us stories of all the long trails she's hiked SINCE SHE TURNED 70. Definitely inspiring for us. She was carrying a backpack that looked almost as big as ours, and was obviously sleeping on the ground at night. Hard to belive anyone would want to do this at 77.

At the very end of the day, as we approached Rainy Pass, we came upon a hiker cache. A trail angel had left a big Sterilite storage box full of Kettle chips bags, Pringles, cupcakes and chocolate haystacks from Trader Joe's, beer and soda. The thank-you register was blank, so were were the first ones to it, and enjoyed our pick of the goodies. The guys were jubiliant because it was their first time to a food cache that hadn't been picked over by others, so we sat down and had a little buffet of snacks and told funny stories while we celebrated ending our first day back on the trail. We left all the beer untouched, so I'm sure most of the subsequent hikers were perfectly happy. The guys I was with were all non-drinkers. They'd all "found Jesus", as they liked to say. Pretty religious folk, but they hadn't lost their sense of humor (Praise Jesus!). Every morning before we started hiking, they'd read one of the Psalms from the travel-size Bibles they were carrying. The plan had been to read Psalm 1 in San Diego airport at the start of the trip, and read one per day, in numerical order, until they reached Canada, hopefully finishing with the last Psalm, #150. Believe it or not, it actually worked out that way, although they hadn't been trying to keep to any kind of hiking schedule. We read Psalm 150 together at Manning Park, in Canada. I appreciated this routine, and we had lots of extremely interesting conversation about religion while we were hiking together. They were my favorite group to hike with on the trail so far.

A few hundred yards further north, we ran into a few section hikers right at the highway who pointed us toward a campground that was only a few hundred yards away, and then gave us a box of apples and some MRE meals that they weren't going to eat. The boys were psyched, because the food resupply options in the Stehekin general store were so limited that all that was available were Top Ramen, graham crackers, small containers of chocolate cake frosting, and various candy. I was luckier than the others, though. I'd visited the store a little earlier, and been able to buy the last few packages of turkey meat. Plus, a very sweet older couple who were vacationing at the Stehekin hotel had invited me to have dinner with them on their back porch and ended up giving me all this fresh fruit plus an avocado and a tomato. Without their generosity it would have been graham crackers and frosting for me too, I'm afraid! Thankfully, Stehekin was the only place where the food shopping has been such a nightmare. Hiking north out of town, my pack must have been back up around 40 pounds, but the fresh produce was worth it. I couldn't imagine subsisting on candy graham crackers and frosting as I hiked. During this whole last section, the indian summer we'd been blessed with continued to hold steady, and the days were sunny, warm and basically perfect for hiking comfortably. The nights weren't even that cold. The moon was full -- so full in fact that we could barely sleep for a few nights. The last night on the trail, the moonrise was still super-full and that night it was blood red. It was actually kind of creepy, but still cool. We were cowboy camping at night, lined up like pencils in a box. Geoff had brought his iPod, and we were watching episodes of the Office before we went to sleep. We were having campfires every night -- a treat for me, because I'm usually too tired to bother with them. Life was good.

Blueberry bushes lined the trail for most of the way to Canada, and its foliage had already started turning various shades of deep purple, red and flourescent pink. It was like someone had rolled out a red carpet for us as we hiked toward toward the monument. After particularly hard sections, we would stop and have a berry burst -- a fanatic berry picking session where we took 15 minutes to graze the bushes.

On the fourth day, we met a thruhiker who'd already finished a week ago, and had returned to the woods with his dad to do some bear hunting. A little further on, we ran into his dad on the trail, and ended up talking to him for almost a half hour about hunting, and the trail. There were SO many hunters out, scouting deer/cougar/bear. It kind of ticked me off that someone would want to kill a cougar, especially since they're so hard to spot. I really don't understand why anyone would think it cool to hang a dead animal's head on his wall. The guy offered me a huge Cadbury milk chocolate bar, which we promptly split and made disappear. (As in, "You hand me that chocolate bar, and I'll show you a really good magic trick...").

Around lunchtime, we reached "Pleasant campsite with a spring", as advertised in our data books. The spring was stagnant, and the site was filled up with hunter's gear and a hotel-sized, poorly pitched and sagging canvas tent that the hunters had mule-trained in to the campsite. They walked back into their camp as we sat by the trail, resting. Kindly, they offered to make us grilled cheese sandwiches since they were about to fry up some for themselves. I love this kind of spontaneous trail magic. It's really the best kind. Like Halloween and Christmas rolled into one. I'm definitely going to drive out to the Appalachian Trail next summer and perform some food-related trail magic for the A.T. class of '09. Maybe barbeque up some hamburgers and keep sodas on ice one night. We'll see. Thruhikers aren't very picky eaters, so I'm sure they'll love whatever I provide.

As the grilled cheeses were being made, one of the hunters showed us the bearmeat they'd brought back from their hunt. Enough to fill one backpack, and that's about it. Surprising, since they estimated that the bear weighed about 300 pounds. It seemed wasteful, really, to kill an animal for a few steaks...but they swore that bear meat was delicious. They'd brought back the head and forepaws, too, and they were sitting on the ground a little ways from camp. I wandered over to look at it, and it looked like they'd buried a live bear in the ground up to its neck and paws. No blood. It was strangely, sadly beautiful, really. I appreciated being able to see the teeth and claws that close-up. The claws were each as long as my curved pinky finger. I wouldn't want to be cuffed by a bear. I think that would hurt a lot more than being bitten, actually. The mouth was no larger than a dog's. Not as impressive as I would have thought. The paws were far scarier.

Ben and Geoff had met on the trail the very first day out of Campo, CA. They ended up hiking together the whole way, and they picked up Joeffy at Crater Rim (in Oregon). Partway through the last section, I watched as they began to deal with the fact that the hike (and their partnership) was going to be ending in a few days. Honestly, I felt honored that they accepted me into their group for these last 5 days, considering that they knew it was going to be an emotional time for them. There were lots of "last moments". Last sunrise, last campfire, last night on the trail, last poop in the woods (oh, did you forget? I was hiking with men). Reaching the monument was an emotional moment for everybody, but tears were deflected by Geoff's naked momument climb. And we were all too busy holding our noses, because he hadn't showered since Skykomish. As we hung out there, we got to watch as more thruhikers poured off the trail, and each celebrated in their own way, then wrote their final entries in the trail register. Everyone whined about having another 8 miles to hike into Canada to get to Manning Park (where the PCT officially ends, and where Greyhound runs a shuttle to ferry people to Vancouver). So there was much good-natured Canada-bashing and singing of "Blame Canada!" (ever see the South Park movie?...) as we hiked toward Manning Park. We decided that no one, not even the Canadians, knew any of the words to the Canadian national anthem past "Oh Canada...". Geoff decided it would make a sassy end to his PCT trail video to interview Canadians in Manning Park and ask them to try to sing their national anthem and watch how far they got with the words (answer: not very far!). It was hilarious.

I'm happy that I still have the 530 miles to hike, but part of me is a little worried that I might feel lonely after enjoying hiking with Geoff, Ben and Joeffy. I'm just grateful that I got to be with them for as long as I did. Down south by Ashland, OR, there probably won't be any thruhikers hiking north. Maybe a few stragglers like me who skipped over the smoky section and are now going back to finish it now that it's clear again, but that's about it. It's going to be a much quieter hike this next month -- a good time to reflect back on all that's happened, I suppose, and write more in my journal. I'll be thinking of you all as I finish up northern California, and I'll be looking forward to coming back home and visiting New York City when I'm done!

Love,
Dawn