Two playful kittens entertained me last night, though I didn’t really want the company. Tabasco and Allison both got up around 7am and I got up and put away my sleeping gear, which served me well in Allison’s small, but cozy condo. She and Tabasco spent some time downloading new music onto his Ipod, then we loaded up the car for our drive to the PCT in Canada. We stopped at a neighborhood coffee shop where I got a cappuccino and a chocolate croissant to go.
Soon we were driving up I-5 north and I spent considerable time in the gear laden backseat writing recaps of several days activities for the journal keepsake. In about two hours we reached the Canadian border and underwent the border patrol process to enter Canada. We encountered no car search or heavy line of questioning, instead some general questions and a check of all our passports and drivers licenses and birth certificates.
In the next two hours of driving we passed beautiful countryside with pastoral farmland, open meadows, craggy snow laced spires of Northern Cascade mountains, and lots of waterfalls cascading down sheer faces of glacial cut mountains. We stopped briefly at a rest stop, then again at the west entrance to Mammoth Manning Provincial Park. We finally reached the Manning Park Lodge complex near the center of the park around noon. All three of us had the soup and sandwich special and we all ordered a locally brewed Canadian beer to celebrate and toast our return to the trail in Canada.
After lunch we made final adjustments to our packs, then snapped a couple photos and said goodbye to sweet Allison, who was so kind to take her weekend day off from teaching school to spend 8 hours in Tabasco’s car getting us to the trail. Around 2pm Tabasco and I hiked away from the lodge down a back road to the Canadian portion of the PCT. It took us a few minutes to positively locate the trail at its end point because there was no monument or plaque there; rather, the monument is located at the US/Canadian border.
We hiked fairly slowly in the afternoon chill and only met one hiker coming the other way – a day hiker who claimed he thru-hiked the PCT, but couldn’t remember if it was in 03 or 02. Hmmmm, we wondered about that after he passed us by. I think I wouldn’t forget the year if I had hiked 2,663 miles from Mexico to Canada. We reached the US border at 8.3 miles into the hike and stopped to take photos at this official northern terminus of the Pacific Crest National Scenic trail and signed the register hidden in the small Washington Monument replica. Despite the fact that this year’s hiking is far from over and I won’t complete it all, it was still a proud moment and I celebrated that I’m still out here pursuing the dream, despite that 42 day setback in July/August with the infected foot.
We hiked on another 4 miles and settled for a nice flat campsite at Castle Pass around 7pm. Quickly we erected our shelters and ate dinner on this cloudy, cold evening. I was exhausted from our city life stops in Portland and Seattle and journaled only briefly before going to sleep around 8:45pm. I know we made a great decision flip-flopping up here because it’s already cold and wet and I can’t imagine that being here in late October or early November would be very fun, if we could even slog through the snow by then. Today’s weather: cloudy, high 48. Today’s mileage: 12.2; cumulative 1326.7.
[Editor's note: Exactly four years ago from this day, Rabbit finished his thru-hike to the northernmost point of the Appalachian Trail. It seems fitting that he should be on the north end of the PCT on that anniversary!]
