Last year, I posted the first instalment of the time that I spent on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2023. The post took ages to type in, and covered a week on the trail. That’s it. One week.
I don’t feel like typing in anything more about that trip right now – at least, not in the detail that I provided about the first week. In fact, not much detail at all.
So I’m going to provide a very quick summary of that summer:
I spent about 3 weeks on the trail before our dog Chester became very sick. He had been having kidney issues for several months previously, but the situation became much more severe. Just outside of Big Bear Lake, California, I decided to head home to spend the last quality time that I could with my little buddy.
I had just over three weeks with Chester. He had some good days, and he had some worse days, and then, on June 12, he was gone.
Four days later, I was back on the trail in Big Bear Lake. My whole cohort of hikers I’d begun with were about a month ahead of me. I saw a lot fewer hikers on the trail. It was getting hot.
On the fourth of July, I was in Tehachapi. It’s on the edge of the Mojave Desert, and it was hot. I decided to skip up to Oregon. A day and a half later, I arrived in Ashland, and began hiking north from there.
It was still hot. And my heart just wasn’t in the adventure any more. Crater Lake was cool, there were a lot of fine folks around, but my ankle hurt (I’d sprained it badly five years before, and it still causes me grief), I cried about Chester daily, and my mind was just constantly elsewhere. I wanted to get back to my boat, and back to my family, and back to my home where I could grieve for Chester properly.
A couple of days into Washington State, I called it. Caught a ride to a trail angel’s house, then a bus to Portland and from there, home to Vancouver.
After a total of just over 10 weeks on the trail (punctuated by a month off of it) and around 1100 miles hiked, I arrived late at night at the downtown Vancouver bus station, where Karyn was picking me up. Getting of the bus, I tripped on the curb and went down hard. Hurt my knee, whacked my chin on the sidewalk (my jawbone still has a big bump there) and broke the little finger on my left hand. The worst injury I got all summer was when I got home.
