PNC Days 30-32 – East Cascades

This stretch of trail took us over the Pacific Crest and into the East Cascades. They are drier than Western Washington, which has mostly been a good thing so far. We walked through Nlaka’pamux ancestral lands.

Day 30 – PNT Mile 555.3 – East vs. West

We started the day camped near some southbound PCT hikers who had just started out. We enjoyed chatting with them, and then we enjoyed walking the 12 remaining miles of the PCT that are shared with the PNT. We remembered some of the sights from our 2018 thruhike as well as from a 2019 short trip we also did on this section of the trail. We had no idea we’d hike it so many times! The PCT loosely follows a continental divide along the Pacific Crest, and we noticed that when we looked out to the west there was snow capping every peak, and when we looked to the east almost everything was dry. It was neat to observe geography in action like that. When we departed the PCT shortly before lunch we realized that the PCT is a much wider, more well-used, and generally better built trail than the PNT. The PNT is newer, so hopefully it will improve over time. At the end of the day we observed that the wet socks we hang on the outside of our packs are dry! — in Western Washington everything was always wet and never dried. We could get used to this Eastern Washington air! For dinner we had peanut butter rice with veggies and beans. Yum!

Day 31 – PNT Mile 575.3 – Burn areas

Most of the forest we walked through today was burned. We started the day with seven hard miles of blow downs in a burned area. Every 10-20 steps we had a down tree over the trail. Some were small enough to step over, but most were large and required at least one hand to get over, if not our whole bodies! It drained our energy! Then we climbed to 7,000 feet, and the down trees got fewer as we climbed higher. At 7,000 feet the trees were so sparse that they survived the fire and were still alive. We stayed pretty high for the rest of the day but continued to deal with the occasional blow down. We are 3 days in to the Pasayten Wilderness and have about 3 days to go until we leave it. We saw no people today. We haven’t crossed a road for 4 days. It is super remote out here, which we love! We saw tons of animal tracks and scat today, including bear, wolf, and elk. -R

Day 32 – PNT Mile 598.2 – High elevation

Today the highlight came in the evening — we saw a mountain lion! We’ve walked thousands and thousands of miles through mountain lion habitat, but until now we had never spotted one of the big elusive kitties. This one was on the trail in front of us and took off running ahead when it saw us coming. We had a great look at its body and tail, and it was neat to see the way it ran — it really did resemble a house cat bounding down a hallway. For about a mile we were hopeful that we would see it again, but we never did.

The rest of today was pretty great too. The trail was well-graded and had minimal blow downs. The east side of the Cascades remains wet enough to find water but dry enough to walk without getting tangled in a green jungle. Most of the day was between 6,000 and 7,500 feet, so we had constantly beautiful views into the valleys below and of the peaks above. We met three groups of people out today — one was a guided group (which included a professional a cook!) on horses celebrating a 50th birthday, and the other two were climbers enjoying big rocks in the vicinity of Cathedral Pass. We walked over the pass today, which is the highest point on the PNT! For dinner we had chili with noodles. Yum! -T