June 25, 2025

Windy Pass to campsite at mile 2647.3 

16.9 miles 

This morning feels nice. Chilly but not frigidly cold. I slept just okay last night; it could have been worse, but my hips and back still hurt. But no matter. I have my hot coffee and breakfast wraps. The stream rising from the surface of my cook pot makes me smile. Morning coffee in my tent has to be one of my favorite rituals in life, full stop. 

The hike today begins with an uphill across a rocky slope and through forest. The world is quiet and crisp and the views, naturally, are immediately great. 

We see a hiker coming down the trail. She’s wearing mosquito net pants, which Andy compliments, and she says that she made them. Extra impressive! She’s from New Zealand, which Andy is excited about because he hasn’t met anyone else from New Zealand on the PCT at all. We wish each other happy hiking and then move in our different directions. 

We stop at a water source, where we both do a bit of “laundry,” minus the soap. Normally I’m not fussed about it, but I’ve felt so gross so quickly on this hike. It’s fairly challenging terrain and I’m throwing myself right back into it with no warmup so my body is having to work extra hard and is therefore extremely sweaty. So laundry time it is. 

We hike together for a while after that as the trail works its way up the rocky ridge and then into the forest. Then I drop my poles with no warning.

“Oh, it’s time,” I say. 

“Cathole?”

“Yeah. Where should I meet you?”

“I’ll just go like 10 minutes up trail and find a spot and wait for you there,” he replies. 

It’s not an ideal choice of location because there are lots of what I think are huckleberry bushes everywhere, so I have to find a relatively clear spot and move some branches. Ok, this cathole is not as fun as the last one. But I survive.

I run into Andy again a little while later, sitting in the sun, drying out his wet items. 

“How was it?” he asks.

“Not my best work.”

We walk together again, talking. It is such a pleasant time and such a beautiful morning. There’s another steep hill through beautiful forest, and a downhill across a snow patch that begins with some horizontal trees that look like they were taken out by an avalanche. 

On the other side of the snow patch, back in the woods, we’re talking and walking when Andy walks over another bit of crusty snow. Without thinking about it I follow him. But then my left foot punches all the way through and into the little creek below. I’m shocked for half a second. Snow bridge. I know not to trust a snow bridge. That was stupid. I extricate my leg and survey the damage. There’s just a red patch where it scraped against the side of the snow, but it’s my left leg, the bad one, the one that had twelve veins taken out of it in November. The skin isn’t broken but it looks like it might bruise later. Ouch. But it could have been so much worse. At least this is a little one just above a small creek, not a giant one traversing a precarious ridge. 

Pretty soon we make it to the top of the current climb and then we’re switchbacking down to Holman Pass, our chosen lunch spot. It’s a very nice spot. There are lots of flat campsites and a large log on which Andy sits and against which I rest my back. I spread out my tyvek and have a veritable buffet.

As we’re sitting there, three thru-hikers and a dog come by. They introduce themselves, but… the names completely leave me. Man, I’m not yet back into the habit of remembering details specifically so I can blog about them. We chat with them for a minute, exchange beta about the trail conditions in either direction, and then they’re headed south, the dog trotting alongside them.

Andy’s ready to go far before I am, naturally, so he heads up the incline while I’m finishing up. A sunbeam breaks through the forest and it’s so quiet and sublime. The sign nailed to the tree marking the pass is covered with moss. If you buy into that lovely idea of everything happening all at once, I hope that version of me sitting in the sun-dappled Washington forest is still loving it. 

Whether it’s mental or physical or both, the post-lunch sleepies hit me as I’m walking up the 2.5-mile hill to the next pass. I listen to Dune and, once again, get utterly lost in the world of Arrakis and the Atreides. It’s early on in the story. Jessica has just discovered the room of plants and the secret note from Lady Fenring. Paul has just survived the hunter-seeker. I never used to like rereading stories because you know what’s going to happen, but it seems that as I get older I appreciate the smaller details in a story, noticing what I didn’t before, as well as the simple comfort of returning to a beloved world. 

I pass a couple SOBOs on the way up, and each of them mention having seen Andy ahead. Yep, that’s my trail bud! Yep, we’re finishing up our 2022 hike! Enjoy your thru! I tell them. I stop at a creek and leisurely filter water, then continue up.

The forest comes to an end and enters a wonderland of a meadow. This meadow is downright frolickable. I almost take my pack off and dance around like The Sound of Music, but I don’t want to hurt the flowers and mosses. 

I spot a hiker coming down and get to the side of the trail to let him pass. He’s got a big Osprey pack and is carrying a camera bag. 

“What a glorious meadow!” I say to him by way of greeting.

“Have you seen any little critters running around?” he asks, which I take to mean the creatures that are probably not pikas that we’ve been spotting.

“Yeah! There was one down there looking at me,” I say. “Do you know what they are? I thought they were pikas but they don’t really look like how I remember them.”

“Yep. They’re Columbia ground squirrels,” he replies. “I don’t know many things, but I do know that.”

I’m elated. I thank him profusely. Human Google! I’ve been dying to look up what the mystery scamperers are, and it turned out all I had to do was talk to another human.

The meadow continues and so does my good mood. I have to listen to “Pleader” by Alt-J. I just have to. It’s green and glowing in the light, with the mountains all around me, the trail a little line of dirt working its way up through the gorgeous carpet. How green, how green was my valley! Ascending the meadow. Flush with sun and sky and wind and a sense of fullness. I recognize this. Listening to this music, breathing this air, feeling myself alive as I ascend—I’ve been here; it’s home.

I have the sudden realization that counteracts my regret: of course not all of my PCT was the pain that I seem to remember in my mind. It was mostly transcendence and self-fulfillment and joy, of course it was, because I feel it again now in my body, and my body remembers. Now, returning to this trail at this auspicious moment in time, I feel even more self-fulfilled and self-directed than I did then. I am not in a relationship and I don’t want to be; I have no crushes or prospects; I’m not pining after someone who doesn’t reciprocate; I’m not fantasizing about people real or imagined out of boredom. I’m one hundred percent on my own right now for the first time in a very long time, and I am one hundred percent happy about it.

I feel like this meadow was made for me in this moment. I feel connected to it, like I’ve been given a gift. The PCT knows me and knows what I need. I’m free, I’m alive, I’m thirty-two years old and I can do whatever I want! I’m rich! Rolling up this hill and dancing with the ground squirrels running around in the background. I came here looking for healing, but there was nothing to heal. Just forgotten wonder to uncover and revisit. This trail is my home and always will be whenever I return. 

Eventually, as is the way of things, the song comes to a close and a new song starts. My elated mood shifts closer to baseline. I keep pushing up the hill feeling the echoes of delighted transcendence gifted me by the meadow.

I meet Andy at the top, who looks like he’s been there for a while.

“Are you alright?” he asks, hunched over in his puffy. It is, not surprisingly, very cold up here. I feel a little bad that he was waiting here while I had my revelation in the meadow.

“Yeah, I’m okay! I was just enjoying that delightful meadow! And I’m slow on hills.”

Now that we’re over the pass and in another valley, the landscape has shifted again. The name Rock Pass is appropriate, because the trail is immediately comprised of loose rocks. The switchbacks work their way through these slanted hills of scree and it’s somewhat nerve-racking and also very tiring on my feet. I’m ahead for a while and then have to drop back, relying on my audiobook crutch. 

The switchbacks end and there’s a short stretch of larger talus, the kind you’d see in Goat Rocks or the Sierras. I know this is the pika zone, so I stop my book and look around. Almost immediately, as though it was waiting for me, I spot one! Sitting at the edge of the rock, staring outward! Then the longer I look, I notice two larger figures, splatted on rocks higher up, similarly looking out and staring at the world. Marmots. Marmots! Our favorite squishy rock kings! My phone camera doesn’t have a real zoom, so please see this reference photo for where one of the marmots was splatting.

I die a little bit on the hill, but I’m also consciously aware that it’s beautiful. It’s a Sierra-style rocky switchback between grassy areas and talus zones, with a towering mountain on the left and a stream cutting through the pass beneath it. It’s evening, and the light is golden, and even though I have to stop and eat a watermelon sour patch, like, every ten steps just to get myself to the top, it’s glorious. 

I meet up with Andy and Jared, a SOBO who’s also heading to the border tomorrow, at the top. I’m winded and can’t make words happen well, but we decide to go 2.5 miles further to a campsite below a viewpoint that’s referenced in the FarOut comments. 

The remaining trail is mostly glorious, save for some more sketchy loose scree cut into the side of a rock slide hill. On one of the rocky ridges we run into another hiker, Lucky, from Canberra, who is finishing up his 2022 hike just like us. Then there are more meadows and pretty trees and both Andy and I comment aloud on how beautiful this section is and how lucky we are to be here. 

We manage to find the campsite. It’s nestled into the crook of a hill beneath a ridge, and the ground is all lichen and moss and other tiny creatures. Sorry, tiny creatures, but my tent goes here. Andy and I set up side by side on the flattest point we can find, while Jared sets up his hammock—very AT of him—between two trees a little ways down the hill. It’s chilly, but nothing like the first night. 

Jared is setting off on his first long thru hike—“Or at least Washington; we’ll see”—so he has questions about our gear. Andy gives him a tour of his new Durston, and I sing the praises of my trusty old Duplex. Then we gather around an old fire ring (one must imagine the fire) and eat our dinners: the two of them with their Peak Refuel, and me with my ramen with various toppings and mix-ins, plus sriracha, of course. I have my Peak Refuel chicken coconut curry still, but I’m saving it for tomorrow night, as a reward for making it to the northern terminus properly.

After dinner we nestle in our respective camping shelters and settle in for the night. The ground is pleasantly soft and I fall asleep in no time, thinking of Canada.