Stehekin to Manning Park

The Last 89 Miles of Trail: 
We took the first bus out of Stehekin to the PCT trail head.  Using the greatest of self control we both remained seated when the bus made its 5 minute stop by the bakery. We were dropped off at High Bridge at 9am.  With our bags full of food for the last time I looked at Tiffany, "Shall we finish this?"


I love the characters we meet on the trail and we kept meeting them to the end.  Halfway through our first day we took a snack break with Hiker Box Special and Yeti.  Yeti is also known as Joe Barbera. He is a lawn chair pilot.  Yes, believe it or not there is a whole community of people out there trying to fly their lawn chairs.  We found out not only was Yeti one of them, but he could quite possibly be one of the most famous lawn chair pilots of our time.  In an attempt to break the distance record in a lawn chair, he ended up breaking the altitude record (21,000ft).  The wind was not in his favor and a mishap in filling the weather balloons left him very short of his distance goal and high in a tree.  No joke, look him up.

We only intended to hike 15 miles on our first day, but the terrain was easier than we thought.  The first night we made it to Rainy Pass.  Yes, it did rain on us at Rainy Pass.  We went to bed hoping the forecast for one day of good weather on this stretch would be true.

The second morning it was overcast and a bit dreary.  We climbed to the crest line.  As we climbed higher the light rain turned into light snow.  The tops of peaks along the crest line had a dusting of snow that had lingered from the evening precipitation.  The clouds looked lighter the more we hiked and like they were lifting, but we had been so lucky with weather in the last 2,500 miles we knew it was probably only a matter of time before our time was up.  Maybe we wouldn't get our last day of sunshine after all.

We worried too soon!  We were delighted when we got to the Harts Pass ranger station.  The skies were clearing and the sun was poking through.  The nice ranger there let us into the residence for tea and to hear an updated forecast.  It looked like we would get two days of good weather on this last stretch.

Yeah! We hiked on from Harts Pass with a lighter step.  We already had some amazing views of the mountain rangers and there was more to come.  Again, I am not sure all the words I could put down would do justice to our crest line vistas.  Hopefully the soon to come pictures will be able to give you an idea.

Over the two days from Rainy Pass to Manning Park we saw more and more hikers who had finished.  Instead of crossing the northern terminus of the PCT into Canada and hiking 8 more miles to a highway some hikers choose to turn around and hike back to Harts Pass or Rainy Pass to get out.  Some, like Broken Toe, decided to turn around with no finishing destination in mind.  He spent a couple days at Manning Park, then decided he simply didn't want to stop hiking.  So for now, he is just headed south.

Several times we got, "Congratulations, you're almost there."  It made me feel excited,  like I was in a race, that moment when you turn the last corner and you can see the balloon arch marking the finish line.  We were truly on the home stretch.

The Finish Line: 

I had been to the northern terminus 8 years before, but this time it felt a little different.  It is actually a bit of an awkward, maybe anticlimactic feeling.  There is no crowd of excited spectators, no rock and roll theme music in the background.  You simply hike up to a wooden marker similar to the one you started at, and you are done.  We finished at 1:20pm with Hiker Box Special.  We made a couple whoops and shout outs telling the trees around us that we had just made it and high fived all around.  We signed the trail register and took a long break.  In some ways it was a bit of a relief.  I knew we were capable of completing the PCT, but at the same time I wondered, could we do this?  So to know that we HAD done it, felt good.

After our break we significantly slowed our pace and sauntered on to our last camping spot only 4 miles away.  We had a fire and drank hot chocolate reminiscing life on the trail.  In a strange way I think I was already beginning to miss it.  At dark we crawled into our sleeping bags for the last time.

Manning Park and Beyond: 
Our last morning we let ourselves sleep in and were slow to pack.  We were only 4 miles away from the trail head and we were trying not to be too early for our ride.  Despite the leisurely manner in which we went about the morning we had done this too many times before.  Our bodies are programed to wake up at 6:15am regardless.  Everything has a place in your bag.  We hit the trail at 7:30 to cover our last 4 miles.

We arranged for my parents to pick us up in Manning Park, BC.  Luckily they arrived early as did we!  Just as quickly as we were dropped off at the Mexican border and put into the PCT world, so were we whisked away in the car and put back into what we refer to as "society".  Thank you Mom and Dad for treating us to such a wonderful re-introduction back into society.

What comes after the PCT? I have come up with quite a few ideas over the last two states. You would think that with all this time to figure it out I would have chosen an idea and have a good plan. Nope, that is what these next few weeks are for. Decompressing, weaning myself off half & half, and figuring out what comes next.

I will follow this post with another one including a slideshow of photos from the trip.  Between Tiffany and I we have to sort through just over 3,000 photos.  It might take a week or two to narrow it down to decent number that will not bore everyone, but still provides a good sense of what the trail was like.  For the number geeks out there I will also include another post with complete trail statistics.

Happy Trails!!

Trail Statistics:
Miles: 2,660
Days: 156
Through Hikes: 1