Oregon!
At exactly noon today, I finished walking the entire length of California – 1,700 miles! After 83 days on the trail, through deserts and snowy mountains, I’m now forging ahead into my home state of Oregon. It sure feels good to be on familiar territory!
Honeybuzz and I celebrated by covering 35.8 miles by 7:30 p.m., finishing just past Mount Ashland. We were able to run a 12-mile section this afternoon while my mom drove our packs up to the next road crossing – it was nice to cruise at almost three times our normal hiking speed for a couple hours.
I saw 164 species of birds on the trail in California, only 13 of which were waterbirds of any kind. Should add a few more in Oregon and Washington; 200 might be possible on this trip (?). Anyway, very happy to have made it this far, and looking forward to five more weeks of hiking.
Just joined your PCT blog, Noah, and am reading your adventure backwards. Congrats on making it to beautiful Oregon! Reckon it will still be cold in the mountains but hopefully not too much snow. Good hiking… and birding… to you! Thanks for sharing your story and photos with the rest of us.
Yay! Worth celebrating up and down the entire length of the trail. Keep on trekking!
Been following your blog, have enjoyed it thoroughly.Had a question maybe you could answer in your next blog: Re: poison oak – how have you dealt with it on the trail as I hear it runs quite rampant in Northern California. Appreciate any input.
Happy trails.
Alex @ HI
WTG Noah – I just came across your OBOL post. I’m in the class of 1980…except I only made it to Santiam Pass, the 2000 mile mark. 1980 was another heavy snow year. A few weeks ago i met a woman at Cape Arago who also hiked the PCT in 1980 – what a small world. We didn’t remember meeting each other so after reading back thru our journals (I hadn’t read mine since I wrote them) Robin found that we had met at Echo Lake above Lake Tahoe. It was just a brief meeting as she and her sister were going south after skipping the Sierra’s as most hikers did that year also. Amazingly Robin dropped out after going over Forrester Pass by herself. Then she and her sister went up to the OR-CA border and went south. They ended up completing the whole thing in a round-about way by Thanksgiving I think she said lol. I just got out some of my slides (nothing digital back in those days, no GPS, i-phones,etc) when my brother came by the other nite and your photos from the Sierra’s brought back many memories as well as many look identical to mine. Its all incredible scenery. Sorry to hear about your Binoculars. I was fairly new to birding back then and didn’t even bring any binocs along but my most memorable bird was my first and only Scarlet Tanager in Whitewater Canyon . Good luck and keep on having fun – i will be following the rest of your journey….Rick
Wahoo, Noah! Welcome back to Orygun! So impressive that you’ve hiked the state of California, especially with the extra tough snow conditions.
Happy hiking!
Hey, when your dear Mom picks up your backpacks and gives them to you miles later, what would “purist trail hikers” have to say about that?? Is it like birders- some count “heard only” birds on their lifelist, while others would never dream of doing that. (I list heard birds!) Glad you made it to Oregon!