Thank you for following us on our journey. We return to London very shortly where another will begin.
We will miss you!
This is everything I wore and carried in the final days on the PCT. I’m surprised by how much there is. Yasmin carried most of the food, cups, spoons and matches, with her own camping gear, water and clothing. My gear list is as follows:
If I were to do it again I would make the following changes:
When we finished we were carrying lots of warm weather gear including the extra layers and gloves we had to pickup on the way as the weather became increasingly colder and wintery. These clothes – the puffa jacket, base layer and long johns – we’d originally posted off the trail as we hit successive heatwaves heading south, only later to have them reposted out to us. This worked well and kept our load lighter for longer. Likewise with the bear canisters which we only needed as we headed into Yosemite and the Sierras.
We’ve reached Mammoth Lake and completed our through section hike from Cascade Locks at the top of Oregon to central California. Emotions of extreme tiredness, sadness and euphoria at completing what we’d set out to do pervade every non-hiking moment as we decompress before returning to LA.
Stats update with previous figures in brackets and new categories in italics:
From a few days ago as we walked into Tuolumne Meadows. Seated is ‘Maple’ who is another SOBO (southbound) hiker we keep crossing and meeting as we travel along.
On this day we’ve just caught up with him and ‘Charlemagne’ and his Dad, Colin, standing behind us who’s re-supplying food to him at this sunny early morning stop. It’s cold though. We’d just walked 5 miles and our water bottles froze.
Colin is a truly awesome Dad and he walked with us for a couple of hours up Lyell Canyon as we headed towards Donohue Pass.