the end ...

2026.08.24

This is part of my PCT Series.

I’m writing this from a point not too far from the PCT (off mile 780) in Sequoia-King’s Canyon National Park.

There is surprisingly okay cell service here.

Heart Lake -a good place to write emails…?

On August 11th I finished the trail. Or finished what I could. The final section was somewhat anticlimactic, but I was assured the section to the border with Canada was also poorly maintained so I wasn’t missing all that much.

There was no other way we could have ended it other than with Dr. Pepper

I’m not sure doing the trail changed me as a person, whatsoever. If anything, I have returned to a more “real” version of myself that I had been temporarily parted from during my time living and working on the East Coast.

What I know now is that I want to keep spending as much time outdoors as I can.

Yesterday, on the way here, I picked up two grizzled hitchhikers from Tuolumne Meadows. They were both 79 and had served in the army together. They had hiked all the way from Mammoth Lakes to Tuolumne over the JMT, which is a particularly technical and steep section. Impressive even for a young person. And they didn’t look very fit at all. Far from it. Over the car ride they reminisced about old army buddies they had lost touch with and had surely passed away over the years. No real plans on how to get back. But of course, the trail (in the form of me this time) provides.

As for where I am headed next, the wide open skies of desert Arizona have called out to me for a long time. The red rock country of the southwestern US has a certain mystique that has captured the minds of artists and adventurers for time immemorial.

I hope you will join me on the next chapter, on the Arizona Trail. As soon as the monsoon season there lets up ;D