I will conclude this blog with a music video I made to celebrate my completion of the Triple Crown of Hiking. Enjoy:
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And this is where the story ends. The last day, just four miles from becoming a Triple Crown.
As I understood it at the time, Jordan could come pick me up, but not until late afternoon. So I waited until it was fully light out to start getting ready, primarily because there were a couple of videos that I wanted to shoot. Jake was already gone down the trail by the time I came outside. It only took a couple of minutes to pack up after that (see video), and I was hiking by 8:30.
Moments after I turned the lights out the previous night, a headlamp light came darting across my tent. The wearer wandered around the area for a while but was very quiet and respectful, and I ended up getting quiet, peaceful night’s sleep. When I came out of my tent the following morning, I found out that that headlamp belonged to Shitshow, who was camped the other side of the trail. He was another sobo putting in 25 mile days, looking to head all the way past Breitenbush Lake that morning. I took a selfie and headed on to let him get to his busy day.
The first couple of miles was a climb, and while it wasn’t a particularly difficult climb, it did get the heart pumping. I started walking a bit after 8, and once I was at the highest point along Summit Butte an hour later, I knew I had an easy day ahead. The trail was mostly clear and rock-free. It was either downhill or level for the next 12 miles.
I woke up at 3 something, but managed to get back to sleep until my 6am alarm went off. I tried to pick up my watch to silence it, but something about the way I was sleeping made me lose all sensation in my hand.
While I was packing up in the dark in my tent, I heard someone walk around and start a truck and drive off. I was worried someone was going to come around at any time upset that I was camping there. After packing up completely, I learned that I was indeed in the area where they let PCT hikers camp when I saw “Day Use” written on the TP bar in the toilet. The day use area is the where hikers p for free. The toilet itself, while clean and kept in good repair, featured engraved graffiti from hiker trash going back as far as the early 90s. Dozens and dozens of hikers who just couldn’t bear to Leave No Trace and formed a little bit of history.
I woke at 4, went back to sleep, and started getting up and eating in the dark around 5:30, including a little blog work. I was working by headlamp until past 6:30, and I decided to stitch a couple more holes in my gloves. Found the ear tip for my headphones in my tent while packing, but probably won’t be using them much anyway to save battery. Since there weren’t any random people or deer in my campsite this time, I got started hiking by 7:30. It was light out, but just barely. The sun was on the other side of the mountain and I was in the shade all morning.
I woke up around 5:30 or so on my own. I’m still vaguely on East Coast time circadian rhythmically speaking. I woke up pretty sleepy and wanted to go back to sleep, yet I could not. I realized I hadn’t put the cap on my mattress air valve and the pain from lying there was because it had leaked down overnight. I reinflated it then kind of laid awake but sleepy until I could hear the muffled sound of my 6:30 alarm. There were vague hints of the outside world maybe eventually getting lighter, but I wanted a bit more light before I started. So I had breakfast, worked on this blog until 7, then spent another half-hour sewing up a couple of seams on my gloves and getting myself ready for the outside. The sun was actually up by the time I emerged.
In the past 5 months, I haven’t been home for more than a week at a time. Within 5 days of heading back home from Albuquerque, I was on a plane to Southern Africa, where I spent nearly a month. While I was there, the PCTA reported that the Lionshead fire closure–the only piece of the PCT I was missing–had reopened. I got back and started putting together videos and photos to make a documentary of that whirlwind tour, but before I had a chance to make a lick of progress on that, I was swept off to the lakehouse to work for two weeks. While I was there, I booked a flight to Oregon, and three days after I returned home, I was already leaving again. By the time you read this, I’m home again, but who knows for how long?
This post is purely for informational purposes. I wanted to show this map of all the North American Continental Divides to make it clear that there is still a lot of the Great Divide I could still hike. There’s a good bit in Mexico and beyond. But more interestingly, there’s a lot more in the Canadian Rockies and Alaska. A significant portion of the Alberta/BC border is on the Great Divide, including Snow Dome, where it meets the Arctic Divide. Potential plans for the future?
I woke up even before my 6am alarm went off. I was half packed up before I realized I was going way too fast, so I stopped to lie back down and stare at the map for a few minutes. I didn’t need to eat breakfast, so even with wiping red dirt off the bottom of my tent then washing it off my hands, I still was headed out onto the road by 7:15. I passed a lady setting up an easel and a bunch low dirt roofed huts that looked like movie sets if not for the screen doors. And then I was finally at the trailhead and not in the national forest anymore.
My plan to sleep out in the open with the breezes worked perfectly. I woke just before 6:30 with the sunrise. No condensation in the tent at all. I punctured a blister on my pinky toe and retaped it, then came out to another clear sunny morning. I tore the outer pull off my tent’s rainfly zipper when I zipped it to pack it up. In fine spirits, I rolled out of camp at 7:45 and promptly lost the trail on the brushy hill crisscrossed by cow tracks even though I could see exactly where I was trying to get to.