On our third day of this trip we hit a very significant milestone, one that we'd known was coming, one that we'd looked forward to, and one that we'd heard stories about. We hit the halfway point; halfway from Mexico to Canada.
But first we had to get started. The four-leggers and I woke up early to get the morning going. If anything, our "Lassen on the front porch" campsite was even better in the morning light:
The hiking started cool and easy and soon we reached a point where we could look back and see Vicki at our campsite:
Hiking mostly on open ridge-tops, we got our first ever view (from the PCT) of California's Central Valley:
The trail then took us up. Up onto an "east/west" ridge where we encountered a side trail to this:
One of the fun things we've seen on the PCT is all the unusual, funny and clever geographic names. As I've said here before, "who names these things?"
Soon we wrapped around the ridge and started north and downhill. We didn't know what to expect of the halfway point, but we knew it was close:
Would we see a sign? Would it be sharpie marker on a plaque? Maybe a cairn? The answer we saw (from a distance) was: "none of the above." To our surprise there was a fairly formal marker, much like those at the trail's start and end points:
The concept of a "halfway point" is pretty interesting on an adventure that is this long. For our part, we've been at this now for years (more than half of Tricia's lifetime, and nearly half of Katie's). Through-hikers have, by this point on the trail, been hiking 20 or more miles a day for two to three months. Halfway? Halfway to what? Canada for sure, but what else? Enlightenment (certainly some of that no matter who the hiker)? Exhaustion (bodies wear out; more critically so do spirits - although most through-hikers just smiled and kept on going in the days to come, we saw more than one such hiker that seemed just a little numbed by the concept that all that effort had only brought them halfway).
Anyway, we looked at the halfway point like this: We are on an adventure. We've been on it for years. The ostensible "goal" of the adventure is to reach Canada (the real goal is to have fun and grow as a family, and I'm going to cry like a damn baby if/when it ever ends, but I haven't told the girls that). A halfway point is just that much more fun along a long, long path.
We kept hiking, gunning for Highway 36 and the end of a 19.4 mile day.
On our way we got our first view of Lake Almanor:
We hiked through mostly forest now, some of it fairly shattered:
And, lo and behold, as we neared the highway we could see across it. And there was our trail angel, chatting with various through-hikers:
On this afternoon, having finished at Highway 36, we were only six miles from the town of Chester. We decided to go there for the night rather than look for a campground. After "shuttling" us into town, Vicki was able to give rides to six through-hikers in two groups going into and out of town (she gave several more rides the next day too; she's really gotten into being part of the trail, helping and visiting with lots of the long distance folks, some of whom she sees several times each as she leapfrogs farther up the trail tracking our movement).