finale

2026.09.29

This is part of my PCT Series.

Final rays of sun illuminating some lakes at Castle Crags State Park

Like I alluded to in the title, this week was the true “spiritual” end to my PCT hike. The season finale. There were lots of termini this year (Plural of terminus. I hate this word. Like “datum” as singular for data. Can we please workshop this?).

“Officially” the end for me was Rainy Pass on August 11th. But that was so anticlimactic and I felt like I still had unfinished business with this trail. These past few days with Lim have been key in getting real closure. Emotionally, the terminus, as in the true ending of my PCT journey, was the pavement outside 3 broken restrooms at a gas station near I-5 on September 26th.

Celebrating in true hikertrash fashion outside a gas station bathroom with multiple types of sugary drinks

But before we reached this true ending, we had a few more miles to cover out of Etna.

Once in a while, if you are lucky, and really scrutinize the maps, you will find a dirt road paralleling the trail. Some purists shun the taboo act of a roadwalk during a hike, believing in the sacredness of a continuous footpath on the official trail. Some do it only out of necessity or practicality. I fall into a third camp, as does Liminal. We fucking love road walks.

Whether they save time, elevation, or distance is not really important to me. I actually couldn’t care less. I’m not doing it for the shortcut. I will even do extra mileage if it’s on a road. Something about the broad, flat expanse, increased top speed, ability to walk side by side with a hiking partner, and propensity for passing cars to hand free food out the window makes me a huge fan.

Look at these clouds! No wonder people see so many UFOs here

So this is all to say when we see a road walk out of Etna, we take it. It saves Lim and me no time and is not a shortcut; it leads to a crazy near-vertical scramble up a steep headwall, but we enjoy anyway because this is all in a day’s work.

Once again we become enthralled by the sunset and keep walking past the last viable campsites for many miles ahead. No problem at this time of year, we have not seen a soul for what feels like many days. So we decide to just sleep in the middle of small spur trail. Nobody is around to care.

Setting up camp in the middle of the trail (the only flat area for miles)

He politely waited and sat still while I took his picture

I’m surprised to see pitcher plants the next morning. I had seen them last time too, but they feel so incongruous in this relatively dry and mountainous environment. It feels to me like they should grow in a jungle, not here. But they do.

Cobra Lily pitcher plants in Trinity Alps Wilderness

I’m trying to pay more attention to plants in particular. My tree ID skills are weak but growing. I’m determined. Botany, a subject I have been passingly interested in since childhood, is overwhelming in its scale and complexity. Still, like learning a new language, it’s great to be able to ID a few species here and there, and I am adding more to my collection all the time.

California Incense Cedar, a host plant of wasp *Syntexis libocedrii* that will pretty much only lay its eggs on actively smoldering wood after a wildfire

Greenleaf Manzanita. One of the lamest names ever, have we totally run out of ideas? Doesn’t every manzanita have green leaves?

We didn’t plan for Castella to be the end. But the night before, Lim and I had a transcendent and frankly I would say magical experience walking the ridgeline in Castle Crags State Park. Under a pink and lavender sky, the chill of fall creeping in, an oversized moon rising and taking up what felt like thirty to forty percent of the entire sky, time stood still.

We both became so emotional and taken by the scene, so cinematic, so much the perfect culmination of the entire hike, that it felt right to end it there. So we did.

It was an unusually good night of sleep in the cold despite both of us being gripped by abstract and terrifying dreams. The final few miles into Castella were spent reflecting on how far we had both come, how we were ultimately mostly the same but also subtly and irreversibly changed in some way.

After hitching to Dunsmuir and having a quintessentially all-American meal at a burger stand, we tried to process all that had occurred. Our train wasn’t until 1am so we wasted hours doing stupid shit. Unable to resist the pull of the local Dollar General, we made one last round as if to resupply, scrutinizing the calories per ounce of every viable vile processed packaged “food” we could find.

In the DollyG. The next big ultralight food trend could be anything, you have to keep an open mind.

Eventually so tired, by force of habit, I pitched my sleep setup in a parking lot next to the train. Upon reflection, this forsaken spot did not even crack the top 10 worst places I camped on the trail.

Mixed reviews on the sleep setup but it was better than nothing

My hike on the PCT this year was simultaneously almost NOTHING what I expected it to be like, but also one of the best things I have ever done. I appreciate you coming along for the journey.

As I wrap up the PCT, I’m grateful for what this first major thruhike has taught me (post on that forthcoming), but also very stoked to plan my CDT effort next year. That trail, seeing less than 1/10th of the number of hikers as the PCT, notorious for its roadwalks, is literally and figuratively much more of a “wild west” and I could not be more excited.

I’m taking a break for two weeks, and then heading to the desert to start the AZT. A key section of the Arizona Trail remains closed after the flooding in the Grand Canyon. It seems like many hikers will skip a large section of northern Arizona and start south of the closure, which is frankly a sound financial and logistical decision. Not me, though. I’m going to try to hike every mile that’s open. Life is too short to run from obstacles. I’m sure I’ll find a way. See you at the terminus!