Amelia's PCT Blog 2025

I ended up having a really great day, despite the stresses of yesterday. There is something very magical about the trail, and as much as I’ve tried to escape the human world by coming out here and being alone in the wilderness, there really is a type of magic in the people that you meet along the PCT and I have really felt that since I’ve been back on trail.

Perhaps these posts will be boring to some, without the drama, without the excitement of other people. Just me in the forest walking. I guess it’s kind of boring. I don’t know if it has to be boring though. I think I’ve grown a lot on some of the last sections, especially in the Sierra, and now this feels like my real hike has begun.

It didn’t really hit me that I was back on the PCT. I felt like I was just day hiking, but being alone in my tent that night was when it became very real that I was here, that I was doing this, that I was back on the trail. Well, almost. Technically, I was still camped on the alternate route, so I wouldn’t be back on the actual PCT until tomorrow.

This morning, the plan was to drive to Crater Lake, camp there and drop me off in the morning at the trail, but I got a desperate Garmin message from Lava, who is hiking southbound and was in Washington. She was sick, really really sick and was 20 miles to the nearest trailhead and could I please pick her up on a forest road somewhere.

Two men were sitting near me talking about investments and finance stuff. As I looked at the topography of the maps, calculating the elevation gains and what was realistic for me to hike for each section, I thought about the wonders of what I had seen so far on the trail. The sunrises, the snow covered peaks that went on forever, the sunlight streaming through the trees above me, the endless stars. Who fucking cares about an ROI when the world has all of this to offer?

I scooted back to my hotel, my last night in San Francisco before flying home to Seattle, and then back to the trail. My Garmin training readiness score is 98 out of 100. My body battery fully charged. Sometimes we need to sleep, to eat good food, and sometimes we need to recharge our soul.

I walked through part of Golden Gate Park. I didn’t know where or if there would be any bathrooms, so I walked off the trail into some bushes and peed. I could tell that people had used to live there, in the bushes, and had been forcibly removed at some point. I walked out of the trees back to the trail. I was wearing my rain jacket which is pretty dirty at this point. A woman was standing there with her dog and gave me a look like I was doing something wrong, like I was somewhere that I shouldn’t…