PCT - Northern California

When I arrived in Kennedy Meadows, I had a decision to make. A few of us made it to the end of the desert on 1st May. More than a month earlier than the suggested start day of the Sierra Nevada. I could either wait it out, skip ahead and come back later, or skip the section all together. The decision was made without much thought. I was in the US on a Visa and therefore had no time to wait for a month. I also did not want to skip it entirely. So my now trail family and I got together, and we decided to skip ahead to Truckee. From there we would hike on towards Canada and come back at a later point to finish the section we had previously skipped.

The idea was that we could skip the majority of the snow section and avoid the high elevation. The idea was good...the result not so much.

When we arrived in Truckee, we were faced with two dilemmas. To our "surprised" there was still snow and the second issue was that we were now trailblazing for the class of 2019. Only a handful of people had either braved the extreme conditions in the High Sierra and made it through or had skipped the same as we did. But most of the PCT hikers this season were still making it through the desert. We had no information to go on moving forward. We went to several tourist information to ask for the upcoming trail conditions and were told that there wasn't any snow below 4,000 feet, and we should be fine with microspikes. That sounded great at first, but in the end we realized that most of our trail was above said line, and so began the weeks and weeks of continues snow hiking and traversing. 2019 was a record snow year, and we found the perfect location to show you how much snow it actually was.

We soon realized that our idea of walking every single mile on the PCT, taking every switchback and following Guthooks to the books would not be an option! 

“This is not the time to be a PCT purist!” Oreo

The trail was still covered with 4–20 feet of snow at times and that made it impossible to find it! So we decided to change the plan and backcountry it! We would check Guthooks and our GPS, find a reference point, walk towards it and check again after 5–10 minutes to see how far off the trail we were to then readjust! And we would do that over and over and over and over again until we would be done for the day! Streams and Rivers were covered in snow, campsites not visible and switchbacks too steep to take! We would get to a mountain knowing that taking the switchbacks was impossible, find the least steep section and just go straight up and over, fully AT style!

We would also do the same for the way down! Switchbacks are usually great but if you dump 10 feet of snow on the poor little dirt path, it turns into a steep wall of snow, which is very hard to traverse! So we would find the least steep section and just had to “Send it!” As Sunshine so nicely puts it!

We climbed up steep Mountain sides and ran, skied or glissaded down the other side. We fell, slipped, tripped, face planked, had to self arrest and flamingoed (a new version of postholing). We laughed, I cried, we talked and walked in silence for hours! We pushed through days we didn’t want to hike and did 12-hour days almost every day to reach our goal! We bushwhacked, crosses rivers, cleared the path of spiderwebs (you are welcome), has a snowball fight and ruined our twister board riding it down a hill for fun! – Note: Twister is not a 4-Season Game. We hit 1200 miles, then 1300 miles and then the Halfway Mark (which was under feet of snow, left for the imagination) and celebrated every day that we finished another day in the snow.

Sierra Buttes was one of the sketchiest parts of the entire trail. It was a really steep section with nothing to break your fall but rocks all the way at the bottom. Two times made it across when sunshine made it halfway before his foot slipped, and he slid down the mountain. He managed to self arrest, but we honestly thought he was a goner. He cut some steps into the section where he ended up and made it across. I was not utterly terrified to follow the same route and scrambled down to a bushy area where Sunshine had just ended up on and followed the more narrow way across where he had just cut steps. My legs were absolutely shaking and when I made it to the other side you could hear a collective sight. We all met up and had to sit down and took a break and breather. We laughed it off, but I could tell that we were all utterly terrified by that moment and needed a moment to reset. I am to this day so grateful that those two were by my side, and we took care of one another. In such an environment it is crucial to have somebody with you to provide support, safety or simply call for help if somebody falls. Sunshine and TwoTimes were the support I needed going through this section of trail. They were patient, understanding and as I was the slowest hiker in the group made sure I always caught up with them. This is why a good trail family is so important.

"The only reason we hike with you is, because you are slow enough and can act as food for the mountain lion" -Quote Sunshine

We did see quite a lot of footprints of bears and mountain lions in the snow, which made hiking a lot more fun. Now we were not paying much attention to rattlesnakes but were worried about being cat food. Despite all the snow, it was incredibly difficult to find water. Melting snow is a tedious task, and most of the water sources that showed up on our Topo map were under feet of water or frozen. When you find a little stream and start crouching down with your water bladder trying to guide the little drops of water into your bladder, or stop for minutes in absolute silence because someone hear a water drop, and you are now trying to figure out where the sound came from, you know it's hard.

Heading down to Belden (the best milkshake I ever had) gave us a small snow break with felt incredible. Finally out stuff had time to dry, the sun felt nice on my skin and my toes did not need hours to warm up. With the sun and lack of snow came the river crossings and again higher up in elevation a snowed in PCT midway point.

After hitchhiking to Chester and waiting it out for a couple of days, due to a severe weather warning (thank you again to the trail angel who gave us completely soaked hikers a ride into town) we hiked on into Lassen National Park. And by no surprise we were welcomed with more snow. There is nothing more frustrating than to find a spot to camp and wake up the next morning with being snowed in again. But besides all the snow, froze socks, wet shorts, cold fingers and frozen shoelaces in the morning we also had a few really magical days on trail. Walking through untouched nature with its snowfields where nobody had ever walked through felt like right out of a Hallmark Christmas movie.

Hiking up Castle Crags was the mos difficult climb for me up until this point. My backpack was full of food and just extremely heavy. It gave us an opportunity to hike on a nice dry covered with greens hiking path again before, you guessed it, we are back in snow. Most of my journal entries are labelled something like "The one where I am back in the snow", "The white stuff", "Snow again", "The white stuff". I don't know why I was even surprised anymore. But heading into Etna was the one section we actually skipped and never got back. It was way too sketchy with the danger of falling badly onto rocks or being buried by a glooming avalanche. We really did not want to skip this part but after sitting there analyzing the entire path we could see in front of us we decided it was not safe, and the best option was to bail out, walk the road to Etna and resume the trail after and walk into Oregon, for the next big part of our adventure.