He stands there at the far end of the bridge and watches me go. My path leads steeply uphill in sharp, short switchbacks. At the end of each switchback, I turn and see him standing there on that beautiful bridge over the Yuba river getting smaller and smaller. His path leads back to Sierra City and a van ride to the airport and then home. We have walked the last 200 miles together, the longest I’ve ever had a consistent trail partner. The last 40 miles of the PCT lie ahead of me, and I will hike them in just two days, alone, the way I have hiked the majority of this 2650 mile journey.

Having hiked with Kurt for two weeks and now being alone, I can really feel the stark contrast. I hike faster and feel my strength and power, but when it comes to stopping for lunch, that lonely feeling catches up to me. I eat my lunch, and when I am finished, there is no reason to linger so I pack up and move on pretty quickly. Stopping by a creek to filter water or crouching by the side of the trail to pee, I feel small and vulnerable, like prey. This makes it hard for me to rest my body adequately. It’s a beautiful day, but so far the scenery is mostly forest and some logging scars which are even less beautiful than fire scars. I welcome this opportunity to be alone on the trail to go inward and reflect, something that is better done when hiking alone, but I am aware that it is not as much fun.

I know that some of my perceptions of last year‘s hike were distorted by the lens I was looking through, a lens of grief and loneliness which were beginning to mess with my neurotransmitters in a significant way. But some of my perceptions were accurate. There are, in fact, almost no thru-hikers left on the PCT in northern California at this time of year. Yesterday we saw no people at all. Today in 13 1/2 miles I’ve seen one horseback rider out for a day trip, no hikers. If not for Kurt, I would have hiked alone and camped alone every single night of the last 200 miles. Now, as I close in on the last 30 un-hiked miles of this journey, feeling more disciplined and efficient than triumphant or excited, I’m wondering to myself what it was all about. What have I learned and what has this PCT project meant to me? I know the answers to these questions will ripen with time, but I’d like to make a pass at them now.

Early morning climb out of Tamarack Lake

One huge part of this trip for me was the fulfillment of a dream and a promise I made to myself at 16 years old, a dream that many people would have chosen to pursue in their early 20s. I put off this dream and let it slip into the deep freeze of my memory bank in order to pursue a more family-sanctioned activity: education. In fact, I never deviated from the path of education and career, family and responsibility until this very trip. I’m pretty sure that this would have been a death bed regret had I never tried. I needed to dare. I needed to risk. I needed to try.

I learned, or I might say I relearned, that I love wilderness! I love sleeping outside, knowing where the stars and the moon are each evening and morning, listening to the sounds of the birds and the wind and being surrounded by nature all day every day. I love walking, and it turns out that I’m good at it! I appreciate the strength in my body, my balance, my sure footedness. Sometimes hiking down a rocky, root-filled trail feels almost like a dance, and I relish the pure enjoyment of knowing where to put my feet and how to flow over the rocks without losing my balance or hurting myself. I like being out on the trail for long periods of time.

Kurt beginning the descent into Sierra City

Before the PCT, I already knew that I was strong and independent. Friends cheering me on often called me a bad-ass as a compliment, but I think I’ve been more of a hard-ass toward my own self most of my life, and I brought that hard-ass with me on the PCT. Maybe it wasn’t true at first, but it became more and more obvious as the weeks and months wore on that I did not like being alone in the wilderness as much as I thought I would. My internal hard-ass tried really hard not to admit this. I guess she (the hard-ass) feared that it would be a sign of weakness or failure or something. In general, I need quite a bit of alone time, but not day after day, night after night, not camping alone in deep wilderness or by creepy dirt roads where unknown men in pickup trucks can drive by at 1am in who knows what state of intoxication. There was a hyper vigilance I had with me at all times. I fought hard to stay on trail, to not give up my dream. I called home, satellite texted my friends from my tent at night, hiked and cried and told myself it was probably normal. I hit my first wall in Burney, CA and skipped south 260 miles to try to meet up with some other SOBO friends I had met in Washington. My connection with that group did not last, but the skip allowed me to complete the Sierra before winter storms and walk about 200 miles of southern California before hitting my next wall.

South of Tehachapi, I was mechanically walking the trail alone every day, listening to an audible book that I didn’t like very much when I decided to text Mr. Jingles and find out where he was. He answered back right away saying that he had left the trail because he simply wasn’t having fun anymore. He literally wrote “All I was doing was walking down the trail alone listening to podcasts”. That blew my mind! Like, can you actually do that? Stop something like this that you planned for so long and put so much effort into doing simply because it’s not fun anymore? Between the simplicity of his statement and the deep realization that not only was I not having fun anymore, I didn’t even feel like myself anymore. I started to think that maybe I could go home. Maybe I should go home. So another thing I learned, and I really had to fight for this, was how to be softer with myself; how to let myself go home when I needed to go home.

I found out that for me, deep grief is a path that should not be traveled alone. It is impossible to know how this trip would have felt had it not taken place so soon after the death of my mother. I will never know. I do know that the grief I felt and carried was crushing at times, and I needed someone who loved me to scoop me up and hold me. We all need that sometimes, even the hard-asses among us.

So in 2025 I had two sections of the PCT left to cover: 478 miles of southern California from Mexico to Green Valley and 260 miles of northern California from Burney to Donner Pass. Over these past two years, I have been able experience the PCT as a SOBO, as a NOBO, and as a section hiker, and I am glad to have sampled all the options. The SOBO journey is that of the rugged individualist. Hike your own hike, and don’t bother showing your vulnerability, fear or sadness because no-one has time for that. SOBOs are in a hurry to get through the Sierra before the winter storms, and after the Sierra they are just racing for the finish line. The NOBO journey is more social and affable, more self disclosing, and more like a litter of puppies gamboling up the trail in spurts and then stopping abruptly for naps. They admit to not knowing everything, ask each other for advice and camp in large groups. The section hiker is a island unto themself. They belong to nobody, seldom get incorporated into trail families, and appear and disappear at random. They tend to hike shorter days and have more off-trail support than the thru-hikers which makes them seem like ‘others’.

In northern California I have been a LASHER, long-ass-section-hiker. At 17 miles I stop at a spring and load up with 4 L of water for my very last camp of the entire PCT. This is probably a little more water than I need, but my trail name is Dipper, and I need a bath every night. I hike another mile and pitch my tent on a ridge with beautiful 360 degree views vaguely wondering why no one seems to have camped up here before. As the sun sets, I realize that I have made a rookie mistake. It is windy up here, and my tent rattles and shakes all night long sounding like it might rip into shreds. I didn’t get much sleep, but the stars were amazing outside my screen door. I woke early and was out of camp before dawn.

The last day, the very last day, the last day of the last section of the whole thing was pretty beautiful, but I was moving efficiently without much emotion or reverence for the scenery. It is anticlimactic not to finish at one of the terminal monuments and to finish alone. I arrived at Donner Pass rest area, where the PCT crosses I-80 at about 5pm. Yes, its a freeway rest stop, a bathroom with trash cans and not even a sign that the PCT goes right underneath this massive arterial of motorized vehicles whizzing by. I needed to get back to my car in Quincy which I had learned last year is basically impossible without private transportation. But as Trail Magic would have it, my friend Bootstrap, the one I met on day 5 of my SOBO hike in Washington, the same one I saw on my other last day in Green Valley, CA, came to pick me up. He drove all the way from the Bay area to Donner Pass to give me a high five, a hug and a ride.

Bootstrap, you are solid gold! I’m so sorry we forgot the selfie.

I don’t think I have seen the last the PCT, but when I go back I think I’ll leave the hard-ass at home and bring a friend instead.

The Last Last Day

Meditation with Varied Thrush