Day 100 – Halfway done! – 25 miles


Halfway done, distance-wise! It better take us fewer than 100 days to do the second half or we’ll be hiking in an awful lot of snow.


We brought celebratory “halfway” sodas alllllll the way up from Belden, but some rude people drank them last night. I guess the 5 beers already soaking in the cold spring weren’t enough for them. Now I know how vegetarians feel when the meat-eaters take all the veggie dishes at a buffet. This is why we like to be on our own, away from other people. So, we had no bubbly of any sort to celebrate with when we reached the midway marker but even that couldn’t dampen our spirits too much.


The marker claims 1325 miles each to Mexico and Canada, but because of changes to the trail this is inaccurate. The marker itself is nearly at mile 1327 and the actual trail midpoint is around 1330. Neither point stopped us from celebrating. It feels strange to be half done – like it’s taken us forever to get here, but we can’t believe we’re already here. It’s frightening to think that we only have half the trail left before we have to return to the real world with all its stresses and crowds. How am I ever going to go back to driving a car – steering tons of metal at 60 mph around a bunch of other hunks of metal?


The first few steps in our journey feel like they happened last year. I’m amazed at all we got done before we left, especially in the last week: a blur of last-minute dehydrating, weighing, and packing of meals and snacks; packing up our belongings so our house sitters could move in; and a hundred minor things you need to do before skipping town for 6 months.


Our first few weeks on the trail feel like they happened much longer than 3 months ago, but I can still remember our campsite for every single night of the trip. Part of this is because of lack of input – I have fewer things to keep track of so it’s easier to remember the details. But when they’re laid out next to each other in a sequence it’s easy to see that we just haven’t been out here that long in “real world” terms. Even fairly recent events, like arriving in Tahoe two weeks ago, seem like they happened much further back than thy actually did. When you’ve got nothing to do but hike and think all day, time slows down.

Not necessarily in a bad way. We’ve gotten good at zoning out, in a way – just letting our thoughts drift as our eyes scan the trail in front of us and feed the information to our bodies. We hike without really thinking about it, like reading a string of words and visualizing the concept it represents. Our bodies are used to the motions and the pull of the packs now, the subtle shift they cause in center of gravity. This all makes it easy for our minds to just drift, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells around us. We’re beginning to think more and more about what it will mean for us to be done and going back to reality. How long will it take for this trip to feel like just a wonderful dream?

We’re camped about a mile from the highway to make for a short trip into Chester tomorrow. It’ll be another long layover instead of a full day off but if we get in early enough it should give us enough time to rest up.

– Posted from the PCT

Location:Pct mile 1334

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