Legs and Borders

The walk is over, today I finally reached the terminus at the US/Canada border. I was waiting for this moment for the last four months, chipping away at it mile after mile until there was no more miles left. But now when it's over I can definitely agree that it was all about the way not the destination. It's still too early to come to some kind of conclusions about this whole experience so I'll just keep it simple and describe what happened today. I woke up early as usual, ate some excellent cinnamon oats with chocolate I cold soaked over night (it's definitely one of my regrets that I didn't start to cold soak breakfasts earlier). I walked three miles down the trail and managed to catch up with Camp Host packing up his tent. We agreed last evening that we would set up camp 15 miles from the border, and then slack pack down to the monument and back, which would give us only another 15 miles to walk down to Harts Pass the following day. We did just that, I've arr...

It was a fairly uneventful day. I went past Lucky's tent in the morning surprised to see it as I thought he would have pushed further with Tank Top and others. He told me later during the day that he took a wrong turn, lost few miles and decided to camp just before a big climb we've been doing in the morning. It was really hot all day but apparently it's the last day of heatwave and temperatures will be dropping tomorrow, thank God. I've been drinking water like an elephant all day, stopping at nearly every water source available. Speaking of water, we had a big stream crossings today which had to be forded, it reminded me of the ones in Sierra Nevada. It definitely wasn't fun, luckily there was few other people around in case something went wrong. This section of the trail seems very busy, we are overlapping with Southbound PCT hikers and day/weekend hikers which is quite cool, there's a lot of friendly faces I can say "happy trails" to. I got 22 mile...

We woke up at 7am at George's house in North Bend, had a breakfast said our goodbyes to Fomo and got a lift back to Snoqualmie Pass, Zohan decided to have a zero day as he got a slight shin split. George dropped us off at Chevron gas station quarter mile from the trail, I had a coffee, everyone bought bits and bobs of resupply they have been missing and we went back on trail. It was ungodly hot today and walking on open ridges wasn't helping at all. I stayed well behind everyone else and didn't make good progress today but it was just enough, on top of the above there was a lot of altitude gaining so I'm happy with where I ended up today. At one point during the day we've been going on the ridge where military F16's were flying over a long valley and right on top of us Top Gun style, it was pretty impressive! You had to spot them beforehand because when you heard their sound the plane was already gone over the hill. I took a video of it, unfortunately the pilot ...

["Who let the Dogs out" song playing] Zohan: Amazing song guys, it was my bar mitzvah song! Lucky: Was it? Zohan: No, not really.. As it is the last day for Fomo on the trail we made it a bit special. I woke up at 3:30am and hiked 12 remaining miles to Snoqualmie Pass to be at the trail head when his friend George will arrive and pick us up and take us to his house in North Bend ten miles away. We arrived just as he was rolling into the parking lot, waited for Tank Top for a while as he was supposed to join us up but he wasn't replying to our messages so we left thinking something must have delayed him and that he will join us later , George took us to his home, we took a shower and put our laundry to wash, then he drove us to Safeway before heading to work. We ate at Taco Time before resupplying and getting an Uber back to his place. After few hours others started to arrive, Chewy, Tank Top and finally Zohan. We watched some random YouTube videos of people hiking PCT thi...

Today in telegraphic short: Woke up early -  Fomo and Lucky pushing big miles - Fomo decides to goes back to Vancouver to support his mother before her operation - today Fomo's last day on trail - Dawid can still see Fomo tomorrow if Dawid also push big miles - everybody can stay at Fomo's friends house in Snoqualmie Pass but have to be at trailhead tomorrow at 9am - Dawid decides to push more miles and wake up early to get to trail head in time - day very, very hot, not many places to get water from - no snow but mosquitoes make a return - Dawid tired, tomorrow another hard day but at least can stay in town for the evening - trail goes on -  goodbye Fomo. P.S. Sorry I've been walking for 15 hours today to get to town in time for the above reasons. It was tough but also kind of fun.

Yesterday before I fell asleep a cricket decided to spend the night on top of my tents bug net, I really like them so I didn't mind it especially as he seemed to be hunting the mosquitoes in the perimeter. The only downside was it's jackhammer like sound, it's completely different when you hear them from the distance, three feet away it's a powerful sound! I didn't sleep too much until midnight when my guest and all its cousins got quiet, I actually found him in the morning while folding the tent not willing to move on with its life, I even took few pictures in the darkness. I started to walk early trying to get in time for Lucky's friend trail magic ten miles away on the Chinook Pass Trailhead. On the way there I saw a massive herd of elks grazing at the meadow by the trail, it must have been over thirty females and few young males, once they spotted me they started to run away over the hill and I took a very bad quality video of the event. It was the biggest p...

"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in" Leonard Cohen "I absolutely hate mosquitoes, fuck! Sorry I think I have a mosquito breakdown. Fuck, fUCK, FUCK, AAAaa!" Sonic It was quite an angry day, but it ended in a quite interesting resolution. While walking to White Pass I met Sonic who camped just few miles ahead of me on top of the ridge hoping that she will escape the mosquitoes there but sadly she didn't. She was quite cranky already when I met her but then we ended up walking through yet another mosquito hell, she was walking without a head net (which she lost a while ago in Oregon) and deet spray protection, so after couple of minutes she completely lost her temper and started to walk really fast trying to get to White Pass as quickly as possible swearing and shouting like a pirate. I could still hear her banshee like screams in front of me half an hour later, if I didn't know what it was I would have thought someone was getting...