June 24, 2025

Glacier Pass to Windy Pass 

15.1 miles 

I’m awake long before my alarm again. Either I’m still on east coast time or the light wakes me up or both, but either way I don’t mind much today because I actually slept really well. Of course, there were still the obligatory moments when I contorted so that I was lying on my hand, which then fell asleep and took intense massaging to reanimate, and my back was in various kinds of agony, but all things considered, rest was had on my end.

For Andy, not so much. He’s dragging this morning. 

“You okay?” I ask. He’s standing there looking dejected, staring at the ground.

“Yeah. Just warming in the sun.”

“Like a lizard!”

The sun is really, really nice, to be fair. I pack up and go over to stand in it while he finishes getting ready. Then we’re on our way through the forest and farther up.

Confusingly, Glacier Pass wasn’t the top of this climb. It seems as though we reached the saddle of a valley, and now we’re climbing to the top of another one, making a hard turn for a different area. Andy and I walk together for a bit through the forested morning. Everything is so green and crisp and fresh. Blue sky and snowy crags peek through boughs of needles. 

Soon we begin switchbacking, and the trail leaves the trees. At one point Andy stops and points at a rock. “Is that a pika?” It takes me a while to see the creature he’s pointing to because it keeps scurrying out of sight, but then I see its little head poking up at me. It is a pika… maybe? It looks more like a tiny marmot than I remember pikas looking like, but I can’t think of anything else it would be. It is so incredibly cute. 

We continue to make our way up the side of a green, rocky carpet of a slope. There are yellow flowers everywhere. I recall them from the PCT. I used to know their name. They look like lilies—actually they droop downwards just like trout lilies, but they’re bigger and a uniform bright yellow. I search for the name for a few paces. Alpine lily? Glacier lily? That would make sense. I keep wanting to photograph one, but I wait for the perfect shot to arrive. It does. (Update from the future: It appears as though this is indeed glacier lily or yellow avalanche lily, but PNW plant people, chime in if I’m wrong!)

Pretty soon I lose Andy, between my slower uphill pace and my lollygagging with the flowers. I’m absolutely breathing in everything about this climb. Usually I’m not a big fan of an uphill but this one is a high quality uphill. Views for days that just keep getting better the higher I get. Flowers. Interesting plants that engage my attention. 

I’m panting and concentrating on my steps when I suddenly hear a panicked squeak and scuttling on my left. “Whoa!” I say aloud, and look to see a pair of eyes looking out at me from a tunnel. It’s another mystery maybe-pika! It disappears back into its hole and I hear more squeaking, but farther away. Then as I continue walking I notice just how many holes there are everywhere in the dirt. I bet there’s a whole city under there. 

Up, up, continuing up, until one switchback unceremoniously deposits me at the top of a ridge. I can immediately see across to another valley and back to the other one at the same time. “Yes! I love a ridge!” I say out loud to the ridge. There are a few snow patches but nothing crazy. I cross them, then as I’m coming down another set of switchbacks I pass another thru hiker. 

“Are you thru hiking?” I ask, almost giddy to see his tiny pack with a mat strapped to the top.

“Yeah, I am! You’re going to the border?” His accent is Australian. 

“Yeah! Finishing up from ‘22.”

We exchange a few more pleasantries and wish each other a good hike, then we’re both on our respective way. I wonder what his hike will be like. I wonder what wonders await him. I’m jealous, really. Even though there are thru hikes in my future, I’m specifically jealous of someone thru hiking the PCT. 

The ridge eases downwards, across more snow, and I pass another hiker who seems absolutely elated to be there. I don’t say much to him but later Andy relays that it’s this guy’s first thru hike and he’s stoked. 

Andy is sitting on a rock in the sun a little while later, and I join him for a quick break. It is an absolute treat of a morning and we both say so aloud. We haven’t exactly gone far yet, but we’re doing better than yesterday at least. 

For the next few hours the trail is a glorious ridge. It’s a little more volcanic seeming than the last one, with looser rock and more of a Sonora Pass feel. There are also a few very long snow patches which make us feel badass even though they aren’t really that scary. It’s sunny mostly, though some mean looking clouds start to roll in the distance. 

We pass another couple of hikers. These guys are day hikers, one doing some trail work and the other considering going to Grasshopper Pass, which we‘ve just done, though he worries about the clouds. After we tell him about finishing up our thru from 2022, he randomly comments, as though dying to share, “See those green trees? The ones that are brighter than the rest? Those are larch trees. They turn golden in the fall and there are tons of people out to see them.”

We look. “I guess we would have seen them if we’d been here at the right time, eh?” Andy comments. 

“Yeah, but this is a good time too,” the guy replies. 

The trail makes a turn around a rocky corner and starts to go down, leaving this particular ridge. Bye, ridge! Thanks for a great morning! We’re in the trees again, hiking together and chatting, and soon we arrive at an unceremonious parking lot by a forest service road with a sign indicating all kinds of PCT waypoints. The Canadian border is on there. We’re getting close.

We stop for a quick break here, but Harts isn’t much farther up the road and there’s a pit toilet and a campground there so we decide to keep pushing a little bit for lunch. I’m still snacking, but Andy is clearly ready to go, so I tell him he can go ahead. 

“See you at Harts, yeah?”

“Yeah. Listen to the lizard band for a while.”

“Always.”

Actually, I listen to Dune. It’s nostalgic and engrossing. I love this audiobook version with all the different narrators. Now that I’ve watched both movies a bunch of times, it’s interesting to note the changes to the story they made, and impossible to picture the characters as anyone but the actors who played them. Timothée Chalamet IS Paul Atreides. I get lost in the world of the book and seemingly before any time has passed I’m at a gravel road, then I see the pit toilet and some picnic tables. Harts Pass!

I grab a table as Andy emerges from the pit toilet. 

“Good one?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah.”

I go in after him and similarly make good use of the very well maintained privy. Listen, I don’t have a problem with a cathole, but I can’t pass up the opportunity for a classic Forest Service toilet. 

The picnic table is nice except that the mosquitoes instantly descend and then it starts spitting rain. I manage the mosquitoes with a DEET wipe and throw my tyvek over myself and my gear until the rain slows and stops. But lunch is still cut a little bit short, in my view. Andy’s not a long, luxurious lunch kind of guy. I guess that’s part of the reason he was able to do so many more miles than the boys and me on the PCT. Hike your own hike, I suppose. 

“Have you been thinking much about 2022?” I ask him while we eat. “Or are you mostly just vibing in the present?”

He thinks for a moment. “Well, at first I thought about it, especially since I’m with you, and that’s how we know each other. But not that much. Really kind of just vibing. What about you?”

“The same, really,” I reply. “I thought I would be so… not sad, but maybe wistful? Melancholy? when I saw the Rainy Pass sign, but I didn’t. I just felt happy. And I’m really just kind of happy to be out here.”

“I wonder what it will feel like at the terminus. I’m not sure what the emotions will be.”

“Me neither. I really don’t know how I’ll feel.” I’ve pictured it hundreds of times and still can’t predict.

“I think I might feel a little sad then,” Andy muses. “It’s been three years, I’ve been thinking about that monument so much, and I’ll finally be there, and then I’ll really put this trail to rest.”

“Yeah. Closing the book.”

It’s weird to think about. I don’t think I’ve been as fixated on the monument as he was, because I did make it to Canada in my own way. But I have wanted to rewrite the end a little bit, superimpose my present mindset on my past one, revise the way the hike ended in a way. I also have more miles missing from my thru than Andy does, so I don’t know that I really feel the sense of finality that he does in terms of miles of trail completed. But I also don’t feel that bothered by those miles. I’m going to do the PCT again some day anyway, so I’ll get to them then. 

There’s a well maintained trail register by the guard station, and Andy and I both fill it out. He leaves an encouraging note for Hollie to find later—she should be around Sonora Pass by now, and just crossed 1,000 miles—and I note how it’s nice to be back on trail with my first PCT friend. 

It spits rain on and off for a while after lunch, but never really truly pours. It’s still kind of chilly though, so I keep my rain jacket on. I’m a little obsessed with this jacket actually. It’s Montbell, the iconic Japanese outdoor brand, and my mom got it for me as my birthday present from the the Tokyo Shibuya Montbell store a few weeks ago on our Japan trip. It’s got two chest pockets and pit zips and it’s Goretex, but it’s still pretty light. It’s also a very pretty shade of blue. I just love that I got it in Japan. I still can’t really believe I went there. It’s another place I’m dying to go back to one day. This world contains so much! Infinite adventures! So many beloved and treasured places and memories and people! How fortunate I am.

We emerge in a meadow on another ridgeline and it is just lovely. “Today has had such great ridges,” I say.

“Yeah! High quality ridges!” Andy replies, taking yet another photo. “I just love these trees. Pretty little pine trees in the meadow.”

There are stands of trees interspersed with open meadow, and in many of those trees we hear, but do not see, grouse. In the meadows there are a few wildflowers but it seems that most are yet to burst into full bloom. I bet in a couple weeks it’s going to be absolutely popping off with wildflowers.

We pass a trailhead with a required wilderness registration. Neither of us can figure out the math on how many nights we’ll actually be out there, so we do our best with estimating and carry the bottom half of the form with us, as instructed. After this the trail climbs for just a bit and then dips down, and we can see our campsite in the distance, which we recognize because there’s a large yurt, which is described in the FarOut comments as “very much locked, and very much private property.”

There are more cute conifers in the meadow and along the ridge. “Look at those trees. Some of them have skirts!” Andy comments. Indeed, the bottoms of some of the trees flare out like billowing fabric. It looks kind of trippy from a distance, like the trees are melting onto the hill. As we get closer it appears as though these skirts are actually branches on the tree and not other plants. Huh. I wonder what the evolutionary function of these tree skirts are. 

We pass a small stream and collect enough water for camp here since it’s unclear whether Windy Pass has water. Suddenly it is very cold, and then it’s raining again, but it doesn’t rain for long. A little while later we end up in a flattened meadow between trees. Many of the potential tentsites are in depressions that look like they would become soup if it rained, but eventually we find a suitable sheltered spot among trees and set up. 

There’s a nice fire ring with some logs so we cook dinner there. Andy opts for a chicken Knorr pasta side AND an entire box of Parmesan couscous. Man is HUNGRY. I cook a Mexican rice Knorr side, grazing on various snacks while it reconstitutes.

“I have to say, the one thing you have on me is that you have much better food for hiking,” Andy admits.

“HA! I am better than you!” 

“Just at that!”

Almost as if to prove my point, I guide him through the best practice for couscous: pour it in a plastic bag, then add the seasoning, shake it up, and add the hot—not boiling—water into the bag along with olive oil. Massage it, wait a few minutes, add whatever toppings and protein you want, and voilà. Perfect couscous. (To be fair, I probably got this from watching Tribute or Jumbo. We don’t make it through alone, do we?)

It’s still early by time we finish, so we sit around chatting for a bit. Andy has plans to attempt the CDT SOBO right after this, but we both share some apprehensions about the trail, and we discuss those. For me, I have a vision of being completely alone in the wilderness of Montana, on an exposed ridge, with a hailstorm rolling in, freezing cold. Then there are the grizzlies. But my biggest concern is probably the solitude. Andy agrees. While it’s nice to have some time alone to think, in the end, not a single favorite memory that I cherish from the PCT is from a time when I was completely alone. It was always shared with someone else. There are people on the CDT, obviously, and more every year. But going SOBO just inevitably sets you up for extra aloneness. The timing of a southbound hike works out better for me, so that’s my plan for next year. But I’m still scared.

In the end, we settle on the idea that it’s not a bad thing to just attempt something. Either Andy will love the CDT and continue, or leave and go do part of the PCT with Hollie instead. Either way is good. There are no rules in hiking—other than leave no trace and hike your own hike, anyway. Life’s all about choosing your own adventure. And that’s what makes it great. 

Eventually the mosquito swarm is annoying and we’re both getting sleepy, so we retreat to our own tents. I write for a bit, but being horizontal is simply too comfy, and I slide into sleep. 

I wake when I hear Andy. “Passport? The weather is going to be bad for the next few days.”

“Hrrgg?”

“Yeah, it’s going to be like a high of 46 Fahrenheit until we’re done.”

“What? During the day?”

“Yeah. At this current location anyway.”

Well, that’s lovely. I guess all those manic FarOut comments about the weather between Harts and Canada weren’t far off base. We’ll deal with it. At this point, I’ll do crazy shit to make it to Canada at last.