Backpacking: Then and Now

Six years ago I went backpacking for the first time on the Olympic Peninsula. We were greeted with sunshine and blue skies at Cape Alava – an unexpected luxury for visiting the coast in mid-March. Timid deer crept past our tent, and sea stacks crouched like silent giants in the distance. The pools left by the low tide caught the reflections of the clouds as the sun slipped beneath the horizon. The beauty and awe was almost enough to chase out the fear of sleeping outside. Two days later I was trudging through the rain along the North Fork Quinault River on the way to Wolf Bar camp. A herd of elk thundered past us, their fading echoes mixing with the steady stream falling from the sky. I woke in the middle of the night, and outside the tent the valley had been rendered in monochrome by the pale moonlight filtering through the clouds. When we reached the trailhead the next morning, we found ourselves completely and utterly alone.

This was the beginning of a fascination, a passion, a life-long love that would lead me to attempt something incredible: walking 2650 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail, from the Mexican border to the Canadian border.