Me 
We left Stehekin at last and are now firmly on our last stretch to the border. One more muffin from the bakery and I was good to go.
Lucky Joe, Angelhair, Rigatoni and I walked tightly together almost all day. We talked about all manner of stuff and generally passed the time through an unexciting section. The highlight of the day was the wasp nest Lucky Joe spotted. He stepped in to the bushes to get a photo while I waited for my […]
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So I’m not quite yet on my way to the border. I stayed in Stehekin all day and I’m glad I did. There’s no need to end my holiday just yet and I know I can reach the border, it’s just a matter of choosing the right days to be out there.
I took the shuttle (one of those typical American yellow school buses) to the bakery and ate my way through three excellent goodies. Lucky Joe came in from the trail. He’d […]
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I’ve taken five months to walk this far. Something that could be driven in a few days or flown in a few hours and I’m still as impatient as ever. Proof of this comes from the fact that I woke every few minutes from well before dawn, desperate for it to be 6am, the time I judged right to break camp and walk to High Bridge Ranger Station where a bus would take me […]
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We’d been warned that the first seven miles of today’s trail were the hardest. There were certainly a lot of blown down trees. Some as wide as 7ft fallen right across our path, or piles of trees making a up-down-around climbing frame that slowed us down considerably. Vista Creek was wide and shallow. A tree had fallen in almost exactly the same spot as the bridge had once been so we hardly even paused […]
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Today there were only three of us. Three woke up under the clouds. Three had lunch high above Milk Creek. Three did 59 switchbacks down to Vista Creek and camped here. We saw no-one else at all. Tomorrow we’ll reach the point where the detour and the road-walk rejoin the official PCT and I expect to see more people then. Until then it’s just me, the […]
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As soon as it began getting light I could see the low cloud above us. We hadn’t walked far when a light shower came through but it stopped before we bothered with rain gear. Not much later we had reached the ridge and were looking down on thick white cloud that stayed in those valleys all day. On the other side of the hill it was totally clear and we criss-crossed the ridge a […]
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The Noodleheads and I are alone on the trail for a few days we think. Others set off yesterday and today but most seem to be taking other routes. Today’s trail has been a lot of ups and downs, with about half a mile of really nice ridge-top stuff just before lunch. We commemorated the 4,000km mark by writing it in rocks by the stream and tonight we’re camped at 2,500.2 miles.
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Another restless night and another starry sky. I think it was the rustling mice that kept waking me up but when I noticed Orion coming up over the trees on the other side of the lake I didn’t mind so much. Every hour after midnight I woke and peered over the log next to me to check the movement of the sky.
Finally it was light and we all started packing up for the 8 miles to the road. There weren’t any spectacular views or hard bits, just walking up and […]
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I had trouble sleeping last night. Perhaps it was a fraction colder than it has been for a while or perhaps the ground was lumpy. Whatever it was I got plenty of chances to observe the moonless night and the milky-way sparkling above me. As always I had trouble keeping my eyes open for any amount of time, but I was awake enough to observe the stars rotating throughout the night.
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This morning’s hike was brought to you by the letters U and P, and the number 2,200. After that things got nicer. Great views across the valley and my fingers were coming back to life. The ridge didn’t last nearly long enough and soon we were switchbacking down to Waptus River.
The river was […]
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