Ch. 116 – Last Day… & Worst Day

With the upcoming wildfire closures, Boostie and I decided we would end our 2026 Pacific Crest Trail hike after the Goat Rocks Wilderness… but after today, I’m wishing we’d ended it sooner.

I didn’t sleep last night. The most I got was half asleep, just enough to annoy me when I inevitably awoke soon after. My achilles felt stiffer than yesterday, so I knew it would take forever to warm back up. I went ahead and stumbled carefully out of the tent, hopeful for sun. My hopes were unmet. I looked out around us – cloud. All I could see was the inside of a cloud. How disappointing.

My throat felt a bit dry and sore from all of the drainage overnight, and as soon as I stood upright, my nose began to run again. Once my belongings were packed, I put on my last pair of dry socks and begrudgingly slipped my feet into my soaked shoes. Boostie was still busy packing, but with the wet shoes on my feet, I had to get moving.

I slowly but surely made my way to the lake where Frodo camped last night. His last Garmin message to me let me know that he’d wait for us there, but when I arrived, he had gone. I hadn’t seen the most recent message, saying it was too cold to wait. Fair enough! Walking around the lake to see if any others were there, an off-leash dog saw me from one of the campsites and began to bark. At least the owner stepped in front of the dog and distracted it… but man, I’m sick of all the off-leash dogs on this trail.

Just before getting to the lake.

With cold, wet air and clothes surrounding my body, no one we knew in camp still, and now another dog barking at me, I felt overwhelmed and defeated. I love thru-hiking, but this year must have been the wrong year to hike the PCT. I’ve been coming to terms with not getting a full thru-hike over the last two months, but I wanted to end the experience on a positive note. At 7:30am, this day already felt very negative.

The fog cleared momentarily, and I saw Boostie waving at me from across the pond. Still feeling deflated, I drudged around to meet him. When he saw me, he could immediately tell something was wrong. That’s when I gave into the emotions and cried. I wanted the hike to be over, I wished it had already been over. Sleep had evaded me for two nights in a row now, I was dehydrated, I was hungry, my muscles and tendons were exhausted. I felt stir-crazy from not seeing the sun whatsoever the last three days. In fact, I hadn’t seen further than fifty feet ahead of me in the last three days.

Our lovely views.

I gathered myself and we kept moving. We had places to be, and my tendons would slow me down today. I needed to be vigilant about how I spent my time. Unsurprisingly, I struggled and slowed with each incline. As we approached Goat Rocks and the Knife’s Edge, I tried my best to conceal the shooting pain in my left ankle. My achilles seemed tight, but my ankles were the main issue. Usually they recover while I sleep, but considering I’d had little to no sleep in two nights, I had missed my recovery period.

At last, we made it to the Knife’s Edge, a treacherous ridge along Old Snowy Mountain. Nothing about the ridge felt especially treacherous in comparison to what we faced just before it – traversing the Packwood Glacier. These mountains recently got new snow, and rain on top. Through the fog, footsteps across snow came into view. To my relief, the snowy path looked well-worn and safe to cross.

Misery.

That was until the well-worn footpath through snow became ice, and steep ice. I stabbed my trekking poles into the ground, and refused to look to my left, down the mountain. It’s not like I could see past twenty feet away, but I figured looking into the abyss of white might make me vomit.

I felt a weight come off my shoulders as soon as we were across the ice, and carried on as usual… until the next part of the glacier. This crossing never looked easy from the moment we saw it. With tears in my eyes, I looked back at Boostie, wishing there was any other way out of this. There was no alternate. This was it. We had to cross. Slowly, I inched across the even steeper icy path, a death grip on each of my poles. Halfway across, I saw the fresh slip marks skidding down the glacier. Two feet, and eventually two pole marks. I froze. “I can’t do this! There’s no where to even put my foot!”

I gasped as tears rolled off my cheeks and onto the ice. Neither of us had the gear for this. No microspikes, no ice axes, geez, even my trekking poles are worn down to blunt nubs after hiking for the past four months! I tried to place my foot, and it slipped slightly. Finally, deciding one bigger step would be safest, I went for it.

My feet stayed steady, and we made it across. Later, we found out the slip marks were from a friend of ours. She slipped with her husband just behind her, and thank goodness was able to self-arrest to stop herself with her trekking poles just before the bottom. I can’t imagine how terrifying that was for both of them.

Sick of this weather & fog & glaciers.

Apologizing didn’t seem enough, so I told Boostie I owed him a hot meal. This was ridiculous. Goat Rocks is supposed to be one of the best sections of the entire PCT – and we were socked in by fog the entire time. We enjoyed zero views, only misery. It was my grand idea to even stay on trail through this stretch instead of throwing in the towel sooner. I hated myself in that moment for making that unintentionally masochistic decision.

When we arrived at the base of the last climb of the day, we checked the map. Ten miles to the road, and it was already past 5pm. We’d never make it in time for Gandalf to pick us up. Instead, we opted for the five mile blue blaze to a random trailhead parking lot. At least we were out of the fog now, and I felt the sun on my face for the first time in three days.

Our last picture on the PCT this year.

The good scraps of the day were mostly in this last stretch. We heard elk in the valley below, an owl perched in a tree nearby, and saw slugs inching slowly across the trail. The animal encounters were the only shining light of the day. Even on Old Snowy, we saw many squirrels, chipmunks, and pika. One of the estimated 25 wolverines in Washington state made an appearance through the fog, and that absolutely amazed and shocked us to witness!

We reached the end of the blue blaze around 7:30pm, and soon realized we would not be able to get into town tonight. Gandalf tried to find the road, but there’d been a typo in the instructions – not his fault at all! Instead, we set up both of our tents for one last night near the Pacific Crest Trail.

Pika!

It feels disheartening for it to end this way. On the A.T., we all felt so sad that the trail had to come to an end. With this trail, it feels like a relief that it’s over. We were never able to create the same kind of community we had on the A.T., and that has stung a little. Do I still want to come back and finish what we started? Yeah, probably. But would I rather spend that amount of time and energy on the A.T. instead? Yeah… probably.

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Note from future Starlight: To make all of the chaos worse… the next day had perfect weather and views from the Goat Rocks. We saw pictures from friends and it actually caused some physical pain to see how beautiful it could have been. Really, really rude of the clouds to have socked us in all day. The day after we reached our “monument”, the northern terminus reopened. Salt in the wound. But, at this point, I already had plans and a job lined up at home, so it’s too late for us. I don’t know if I’d want to this year, anyways. We both need a break in order to eventually come back and appreciate it. I’m so happy for all of our friends that will now be able to reach the border, though. They deserve to celebrate at the real monument after all of this! Oh – and here’s us the next day, living the dreams of our yesterday selves.