Somewhere near mile 2,600 of the Pacific Crest Trail, a hiker wedged a wooden clothespeg into a friend's backpack and started a running joke that would end with someone drinking champagne out of a shoe. That's the mood of the final week on the PCT, as one hiker's trail journal captures in vivid detail: rain, snow, golden larches and the giddy countdown to the Canadian border.
The writer, roughly 134 days into a northbound hike, hitched from Rainy Pass into Winthrop, Washington, for the final resupply of the trip. After months of the same instant-potato-and-tuna dinners, the group swapped to ramen out of sheer exhaustion, then stocked up on bubbly for the border celebration. Burgers at Three Fingered Jack's Saloon and a coffee stop at the Mazama bakery filled out a rainy town day — during which the hiker took their worst tumble of the whole trail, faceplanting on a bakery pavement crack rather than on any mountain.
Back on trail, the North Cascades put on a show. Light snow dusted the forest around Cutthroat Pass, where the larches — conifers whose needles turn brilliant gold in autumn — glowed against fresh white peaks. The group crossed the 2,600-mile mark, dried tents at Harts Pass, and camped at Hopkins Lake after watching the sun set on one side of a ridgeline while a full moon rose on the other.
Day 137 was the big one: a seven-mile walk to the border monument after four and a half months and well over the official 2,650 miles, thanks to detours and side trips. The notorious blowdown section near the border lived up to its scary reputation on FarOut — unsawn deadfall that cracked a kneecap on an old scab. At the terminus, fellow hikers snapped photos, corks popped, and the clothespeg's secret journey was traced to its final carrier, who honoured the tradition with a shoey. One quirk of the modern PCT: since walkers can no longer continue into Canada, everyone immediately turns around for a 30-mile backtrack to Harts Pass.
For anyone dreaming of a long-distance hike, this dispatch is a useful reality check wrapped in good vibes. The final stretch is logistically fiddly (weather windows, hitchhiking, limited tent sites at Hopkins Lake) but emotionally huge, and the North Cascades in early autumn — larch season — might be the prettiest backdrop the trail offers. Source: The Trek.
