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PCT Day 28-33 — The Night Hike Express
Nightcrawl 29/5 — Day 28 — 14 mi / 22km Grace is never, ever ready before I am. Our walking paces are not dissimilar, but our pack-up speeds
PCT Day 24-27 — The Apostles of Flith
Grace and I trudged like the slovenly missionaries of a defiled world. A world where dirt is frankinsense and filth is a virtue. We smelt like dead animals left in the sun. Florence Nightingale, who devoted her life to rectifying the hygienic shortcomings of physicians, would have revoked Grace’s medical license.
PCT Day 17-23 — Trouble at the Deep Creek Thermal Retreat
From two thousand feet below rose the antique complaint of the trains and the rise-fall of far off sirens and the petrochemical thrum of the traffic on the I-15. In the darkness the red and white lights of cars moved like blood cells through the great artery of America.
PCT Day 11-16 — The Banshees of San Jacinto
We battened down the hatches, punching in all our tent stakes and reinforcing some with rocks. The wind rushed mightily through the trees and the trees thrashed their tops like kids headbanging at a punk rock gig. Inside our tent, the walls went jitter-snap with each gust, sails straining in the wind.
PCT Day 6-10 — Too Hot to Trot
Plants and rocks crouched protectively over their shadows as the sun turned its remorseless, monocled gaze upon the land. The day itself sat witless and panting on the hill. Only the cold blooded inhabitants could make anything of it; everything else just had to endure.
PCT Day 2-5 — Desert Chill
The wind picked up, scouring the huddled desert plants with cold. Tristan and Katie receded into the mist behind us as we barrelled through the weather like geese beating their wings home to roost. I asked Grace how she was enjoying the desert. She said, “I can’t feel my face.”
PCT Day 1 – Kiss the Border Goodbye
We took photos with the monument in a daze. It was nearly midday. Overhead, huge power lines crackled with electricity and the day swung gently in the blue hammock of the heavens.
Imagining the PCT
In 2017, my good friend Ned told me he was going to walk from Canada to Mexico on the Pacific Crest Trail. I’d never heard of it. Walking that far seemed excessive.