Oblivion // Journey’s End

Part 6 of the Pacific Crest Trail picks back up at McKenzie Pass in Oregon, nine days after leaving the trail and being hospitalized for a throat infection.

I returned to the trail (courtesy of Dave, again) in fairly high spirits, determined and with a decent enough plan to stitch together a worsening California fire situation into a successful thru hike. Alas, the cards would not be in it for me.

One thing that caught me that first day was just the loss of my trail legs. Nine days off left me atrophied and put twenty mile days as steep challenges. I generally met them but paid a price for it, developing Plantar Fasciitis in my left foot by day three (was it the lava rocks of Sisters?). No one said this hike would be easy but talk about adding injury to injury!

The rest of the days hiking with that pain would follow a pattern of morning agony dulling by midday following an aggressive ibuprofen regimen. I believed that the malady could be managed with a mind over matter mindset, but as I’ve written about this trip extensively, hiking through pain rapidly saps your spirits.

I was also mentally reeling from two more detractions: severe smoke and isolation. Most days involved compromised views and some amount of miles hiking masked in an N95, with one particularly wretched night leaving me to try sleeping with one on and subsequently having a nightmare about suffocating and stripping mask after mask off in my dream before jerking awake and deciding to just breathe smoke the rest of the night.

With regards to the isolation, it was utterly ridiculous to meet just one other SOBO in the week I was out for. Alas, I wasn’t on his pace, so the idyll of Shelter Cove where I met him and a handful of the last NOBOs was about it for thru-hiker camaraderie. I didn’t come out here to be alone in the woods the whole time. Even though I’m adept at going it on my own, it was just getting to be too much. Finding the occasional log book showed that the people I knew on trail were all days ahead and had already skipped to the Sierra in all likelihood.

So, my plan was to get to Ashland, Oregon’s southernmost PCT gateway, by September 6th and be able to evaluate there how much of NorCal I would need to skip. Instead, on my way down, the Caldor Fire rapidly deteriorated, while the Dixie Fire remained undeterred, these in addition to myriad small fires that could blossom into their own conflagrations, so California closed all forest lands statewide for the second September in a row and functionally ended my PCT hike. I felt a palpable wave of relief when the news broke. Suddenly, an honorable excuse to exit! I’m an incredibly stubborn person (you have to be to thru-hike pure), so despite it all, I would have kept going. The choice was made for me though, and I can accept this resolution (and even anticipated it, when I wrote about intentions and risks beginning this journey).

So, after a week of pretty peaks and luscious lakes, I wrapped things up the next day with a walk on Crater Lake’s rim, which gloriously combines the two (and was smoke-free!). I had sought to see it for a long time, and got denied on last year’s road trip because of fires. I was pretty happy to make this my stopping point. Should I resume the hike another year, I’ll have an epic finishing spot. I hitched out in minutes, got to Medford, slept in the airport & flew out of unhealthy air the next morning forever.

Only “should“; not “when”?! Well, I feel a little traumatized from my hiking this year. There’s 100 miles or more of freshly burned trail, I’m not exactly jazzed to just hop back on and deal with that. Hopefully the trail can be rerouted. Next year just seems unlikely simply stitching it together (I oughta be working!). The Sierra shall remain a mystery still for some time.

Right now, I’m in Minnesota, uplifting my spirits in good company and licking my wounds (figuratively). I’ll be spending the month venturing further East, and seeing all of my good friends I haven’t had the chance to since before the pandemic. If my foot heals up satisfactorily, I am game to spend October and November on the postponed Arizona Trail. My home in Tucson is sublet until December so although the PCT is over, the adventure continues by circumstance. I shall do something good with this warped time.