The Sierra Nevada of California marked new challenges and excitement for most PCT hikers. It marks the most beautiful section of the trail but also the most challenging one. The general planning and execution of each day’s changes quite a bit on this section, you can’t do as many miles because of the amount of elevation, the tremendous amount of weight you might be carrying due to longer food carry, a bear can and more winter gear. You have to plan your days around the passes you want to do, due to the snow at the top of each of them, you need to traverse the snow early in the morning while it is still hard to avoid post holing (meaning breaking through the hard surface snow and falling usually hip deep into the snow).
But what I want to talk about in this section of the trail, what was present for me comes from the challenges that everyday on trail offered me. First, the cold. I am not a big fan of it, I mean, I am Canadian, but I have been spending most of my winter near the equator since I was 17. Second, the wilderness, once you are there it is quite different, but understanding the sheer remoteness of where you are creates a certain amount of strain on your psyche those first few days. You are in high mountains, hundreds of kilometers away from the closest service road, if shit goes south, you have to figure it out. Third, and I can’t stress this enough, food! For this section of the trail, you are doing 7 days of food carry, you must calculate your calories, your cravings and how many kilometers you need to do carefully to stay fueled to get to the next resupply town. In those sections, I realized how much of a crutch food is on our ability to regulate and deal with emotions. A chocolate bar, or a pack of candy, can boost one’s morale and forget the pain, the discomfort, the miles ahead. More than once, the thought of bacon and eggs at a small local diner located near the trail helped me push more miles at the end of the day and to get up early to make sure I didn’t miss breakfast.
Once again, I am shining a light on these challenges that I faced, but, with where I am sitting now, I wouldn’t change a thing, these challenges changed and molded my life. I now seek challenges on a regular basis to keep pushing the boundaries and the limit of who I believe I can be. The strain that walking this much puts on your body also opens new doors mentally. I showed to myself, everyday, that I am doing it, I simplified my life to be able to accomplish the goal that I set for myself. I now understand, in my life outside of hiking, that to build confidence and the necessary skills to accomplish my desires, I must show myself everyday that I can do it and that I am doing it. The simplicity of the journey is another aspect of this experience that changed me forever. You wake up, pack your things, walk, eat, drink, sleep and repeat. Anything that is not helping accomplish more miles is not relevant and that aspect, that feeling, that understanding is helping me right now, as I am writing this, building a business for myself.
Coming back to the challenges of the Sierra Nevada, the cold, the exposure, the weight, the altitude, the remoteness, and our food situation pushed me beyond my limits. After the first resupply in Bishop, I had to take three days off to heal a sore hip. Those nights where I could barely sleep because of the pain, I could barely walk, and I am not even a thousand miles into my journey, made me question and doubt my capacity. Fortunately, I was able to continue onward, but there was now doubt that crept in me, could I trust my body for weeks at a time? Knowing that if I get myself in a pickle, I must get myself out of it, meaning potentially a lot of hardship… These thoughts were present when I got back on trail after Bishop. The only thing I could do, and I learned it well, is to take one step at a time, to worry simply about where this next step is going to be.
Here, I am sharing my story, but the perspective… the perspective looking back, the perspective of what these hardships molded me into. That is the gift. The gift of the trail is this moment in time. It is selfish because you are doing this for yourself. And the beauty, the sheer wonder that it provides happens because it is so ephemeral. Writing this today, also helps me have perspective on the challenges that life is throwing at me, and figuring out how I will come out of this new mold. Once again, in the blink of an eye, you finish the Sierra section of the PCT to end up in a wonderful little camp called Kennedy Meadows North. Just enough time to resupply, ditch that bear and enjoy the Golden state Warriors win their 4th championship in a remote bar full of cowboys, before moving on to tackle the biggest section of the trail so far which is NorCal.