My cousin Travis is now officially 1000 miles into his 2650 mile hike from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific North Crest Trail. He sounds pretty excited:
Let me tell you, the Sierras were absolutely some of the most amazing
hiking that I’ve ever done. For those of you who don’t really know
what I’m talking about, the High Sierras are the mountain range in
California that contains Mt. Whitney (the highest mountain in the lower
48 states), and the John Muir Wilderness. This is the area where Ansel
Adams took all of his pretty pictures. Is everyone with me now? It’s
just amazing, everywhere you turn there are mountains, lakes, streams,
flowers, it just has everything. There were days when I was looking
around thinking, "wow, I can’t believe I’m here", "Wow, I can’t believe
how beautiful this is", "Wow, I can’t believe I get to hike through
this for 2 more weeks",
He had some nervous moments as well, trying to find the trail in a bunch of snow.
Then, I hit my first snowfield that actually covered the trail and so
began a little game that I liked to call… "Ummmmm…. soooooo….
where’s the trail?" Because, as you can imagine, it becomes a bit
difficult to follow a hiking trail when it’s covered in snow,
especially when you’re above treeline and it’s just snow and boulders
everywhere you turn. So the object of the game is simple – if you win,
you find the trail, and get to happily hike along for a few minutes
until you hit the next patch of snow. If you lose? Well, there are a
few options, you either have a nervous breakdown and collapse into a
puddle of worthlessness right there, or if you’re on some sort of steep
slope, you’ll likely fall and end your thru-hike in a dramatic blaze of
glory. When I hit the snow, I frantically bounced around looking for
the trail, I’d find it, hike along, lose it again, and so on. At this
point I had the brilliant idea to just read my map, find the pass, and
hike over it without actually following the trail. This plan probably
would’ve worked if I could actually read a map, but I soon discovered
that my map reading skills are about on par with my dancing abilities,
in other words, they’re both hilariously bad.
Needless to say, he made it through and found a computer on the internet.
I’m pretty proud of him. He stayed with us the week before he started and he spent each day hiking around town with his backpack on. He said our neighbors thought he was crazy … but our dog loves him! Walks all day long, every day!