10/23/2023
Section: Milepost 2644 to 2663.2
Total Trail Miles: 2533.9 Miles
Distance: 19.8 Miles
Moving Time: 07:57 Hrs
Elevation Gain: 2064 ft
The mice were at it again last night. Hate to keep bringing it up but they wont stop either. Think one or two actually got up on top of the tent but at least none of them decided to try chewing through the side wall. Everything was frost covered when we finally got outside. As had been the case on so many mornings, I expressed a deep gratitude for my puffy pants which are perfect for these early-fall starts. We were getting out today so packing up was a little less careful than in past mornings. We weren’t just getting out today - we were finishing. 160 days after leaving Campo, we have come 2600 miles to finally cross into Canada and complete the greatest journey of our lives.
We ate and cleaned up, as we had so many times before, and worked together to get the tent put away. It had accumulated a thin layer of ice throughout the night and we whipped it up and down to try to remove it before rolling it up. Powder Mountain was beginning to light up as we took a last look around, completed our warm-ups and got underway.
The final stage of the PCT starts with a short climb to Woody Pass, before continuing up along the western slopes of Three Fools Peak, finally reaching the high point of the day on the north end of Lakeview Ridge at Devil’s Staircase. From here, about 3.5 miles in, the trail descends 2800 feet over 8 miles. On its way down, it passes Hopkins Lake, Hopkins Pass, and parallels Route Creek all the way to the low-point at the US-Canadians Border. From the border, the stage makes a slow ascent along the lower reaches of Frosty Mountain Ridge until it reaches the top, at Pacific Crest Campground. From the campground, the trail makes a two mile descent to the banks of Similkameen Creek which it follows an additional two miles to the end of the PCT at Gibson Pass Road.
The morning was incredibly brisk as we made the short climb up to Woody Pass. Most of the trees were encased in ice and glittered in the early morning light. The sky was cloudy and the early fall light just barely put a dent in the growing darkness of the season. At the pass, we turned north and continued along the ridge. The morning light illuminated the eastern faces of Joker and Freezeout Mountain. Ninety minutes more brought us to the top of Devil's Staircase, at which point we began the long descent to the border.
For such a momentous stage of the trip, the day was fairly bland. The forest in this section of the Pasayten is like much of what we have been in since Snoqualmie. We hiked on through younger growths of pines. The day was quiet and we saw no one as we made our final descent to the terminus and then, just like any of the other millions of steps we had taken before, we rounded a nondescript bend in the trail and came face-to-face with a wooden monument, the likes of which we had not seen in over 5 months.
Like the southern terminus, the northern terminus is a series of 12x12 wooden pillars, decorated with an American, Mexican and Canadian flag. We hugged and congratulated each other, huge smiles on each of our faces before breaking out a set of airplane shots we had picked up in Winthrop. It’s customary, at the end, to take what is called a shoey. In completing a shoey-shot, a hiker completing the Pacific Crest Trail pours a shot into their shoe before taking it, usually sitting on the top of the monument. For this occasion, Amanda had packed in a Screwball Peanut Butter Shot and I had brought in some Tequila - shout out to the southern terminus! I fired up the GoPro and we celebrated our triumph in the growing light of the late morning with a very gross feeling shot out of the soles of our shoes. After grimaces still on our faces, we removed our clothes and took some bare pictures on the monument before, re-clothed, we ate some snacks and perused the terminus log. We found Amy Lu’s signature as well as many of our other friends reporting in at different points throughout the late summer and early fall.
Eventually, having spent all the time we could at the great closure of our journey, we reshouldered our backpacks and continued on into the great wilderness of Canada. I took one look west at the great swath of cleared timber before we disappeared into the woods on the northern side. We hiked on, crossing a sketchy bridge at Monument 78 Campground, an ode to the 78th Monument at the PCT’s crossing point, and then continued on. We hit heavy blowdown as we made our way through the last 5 miles of trail. The Canadians, evidently, did not have the same interest in keeping the path clear as we do.
In the afternoon, we finally reached Pacific Crest Campground after a surprisingly annoying ascent through very dense forest. We stopped here briefly and I put down the last crumbs of the bag of potato chips I had been nursing the last 3 days as well as some jerky links that I had been keeping in reserve. We took some time to read the informational signs that the Canadian Government had been kind enough to bring out to the campground. We left 7 hours after starting the day, snow beginning to pour out of the sky.
We descended on trail that quickly turned to an old road grade, wide and clear. Still, we saw no one as we dropped further and further down to Similkameen Creek. The snow began to fall harder and we eventually began encountering side trails associated with the resort. It was not much farther on that a brown shape came bounding through the snow. It was Ted, whom we had left 3 days before when Ray and Sandy left us off at Washington Pass. We laughed as they came into view and gave them hugs before turning back down the trail with them and continuing our descent. We descended further, eventually running parallel with Similkameen Creek.
Thirty minutes more brought us to Gibson Pass Road, the end of the PCT in Canada. There, Ray dolled out some classic Canadian beer - Molson, the finest beer of the great white north. We cracked our cans open and got some pictures in front of the informational kiosk before loading our things up in the back of their great beast of a truck. After, Ray drove us back to the resort where Amanda had secured two rooms, one for us and one for her parents. We unloaded our things in the room and got cleaned up. Afterwards, we headed to dinner where I enjoyed some extremely burned nachos. Definitely had the D-team working at this ski resort in the early fall. After, we returned to the room where we turned in - totally exhausted from what is an incredible journey and finally able to revel in the joy and sadness of being done.
