PCT: Tough Decisions – Solo for Now

If you’ve read the last few posts you’ll know that Blue Lizard has had a lot of trouble with her knees since the steep descent from Glen Pass. It’s become obvious that her knees aren’t going to let us get back into the Sierra anytime soon, and will likely lead to slow, heavy food carries if we try to continue north of the Sierra. After a lot of discussion and weighing of options we come to the difficult decision to part paths for the time being. Blue Lizard will head to Portland to stay with our friends Matt and Jessi while rehabbing her knee. Jessi recently recovered from a torn ACL so will have a large repertoire of knee strengthening exercises to follow.

We go back and forth on whether to have the kids continue on trail or go to Portland with Blue Lizard. They’d obviously love to go hang out with friends instead of hiking all day, but the bigger issue with them continuing to hike is pack weight. We’d save some weight by slimming down to one tent, but Blue Lizard usually carries half the food weight which can be upwards of 15lbs on longer stretches. I’ve already been overloading my pack to the point of pain and discomfort on the longer stretches, and we don’t see a realistic way to spread the food weight across the rest of us without turning the hike into a misery fest for everyone on longer food carries.

Not lost on us during all of the decisions on planning is what the recent unplanned time off trail has done to our chances of finishing the trail. We’re at the point now where we’d need to cover about 20 miles a day and get creative with flipping to Washington early if we want to finish the trail before the end of my time off and the onset of fall snow.

Blue Lizard and the kids feel less of a need to touch the entire trail while I have a strong desire to finish. I’ll continue on my own, shooting for at least 25-30 mile days through northern California and Oregon to get on pace for a mid-September finish.  I’ll also skip a portion of the Sierra which I did two years ago on the John Muir Trail.

Once Blue Lizard gets her knees recovered she and the kids will join me on some sections as I get into Oregon and Washington.  A big part of this trip was to spend time together as a family, and we think this will still give us this opportunity, just not as planned.  One big unknown is how I’ll manage on my own mentally.  There are plenty of hikers on trail to hike with, but a lot of people quit due to missing family.  We think we can mitigate this with the family joining me for stretches, but we’ll have to see how it goes.