Reflections on the Pacific Crest Trail

I entered the PCT on March 19, 2025. The weather was perfect, the people were amazing, and I will never forget the feeling of being exactly where I was supposed to be.

We arrived at the northern end of the Canadian border on September 27, more than six months later. That feeling hadn’t faded, but he still hadn’t seen where exactly he should go after the trail ended.

Despite the best of intentions, I have failed miserably to keep up with this blog. Between filming as much as I could, adjusting to the lifestyle, and trying to be as present as possible, any written account of my days on the trail seemed like a chore. My first efforts were not brave and my failure was total, but I can only try to make up for it now.

When a trail ends, many things happen at once. Long-suppressed aches and pains catch up with you. Their diet changes dramatically, despite the persistent hunger of hikers asking for another serving, another snack, and what do you mean we can’t eat an entire box of macaroni and cheese in one sitting anymore? You return home, back to a realm of bills and news cycles and people who have never and will never dig a cat hole in their natural lives. You say goodbye. To the path, to the life you built in nature. To your friends and the freedom of spending your days outdoors. You advance, but you advance in It is a slower process. You miss it. You long to return.

In the weeks since I finished the PCT, it has been difficult to reflect on my time holistically. I feel an intense need to plan. When is the next tour? When will I see my trail family again? Willpower Do I see them again? I struggle to earn enough money to go out again, I struggle to sleep within the confines of walls and ceilings, and I feel my body softening now that I no longer carry the weight of my life on my back. Post-trail depression is a force I don’t feel prepared to deal with. The days, increasingly colder at the foot of winter, seem too long without the purpose of walking north.

So I return here, to writing, my first love, in search of a space to understand what it really means to finish the PCT. I’ve been in this position before, after completing Te Araroa and feeling like the world had turned upside down in the weeks that followed. My solution to that was to cling to the idea of ​​another hike, which got me to the PCT in the first place. But that’s not a sustainable cycle to fall into. I can’t pursue a life where I’m only happy on the road, and the time I spend off it seems less important. I can’t live in a constant state of longing, of feeling broken. I want to be whole wherever I am, but how?

How do you get back to work when you know what it’s like to follow the sunrise and sunset schedule? How do you worry about insignificant things like clothes, hairstyles and trends when a simple shower was your biggest luxury on the road? How to come to terms with a tumultuous timeline after six months off the grid? How do you wake up each day knowing that there will be no mountains, no rushing rivers, no chirping pikas, no elk bugles? How do you fill the voids left by the people you walked with, the people whose steps, lighthouses, and laughter were beacons to envelop your days?

The stillness worries me.

But it would be a disservice to those mountains, those rivers, those creatures we share the earth with, to simply wither away in this sadness. We know and have known that hiking is not a cure-all hobby. There’s no orchestral parting of the heavens when you reach the finish line, and there’s certainly no button you can press that will solve all your problems and transform you into the idea of ​​a perfect person. You don’t find all the answers and you may even be left with more questions than you had before. Enlightenment on the PCT, or any long-distance trail, comes with subtlety. The path is a patient teacher, even when you are not quite ready for the lessons.

Writing these words knowing that others will feel what I feel is no small consolation. We all lose track, and finding meaning in something we’ve missed is a natural human adventure. What did we learn? How do we change? How will we walk the world differently after arriving in Canada? Sometimes those answers await us on the other side, and now I find myself searching for them.

To quote a poetic icon, Winnie the Pooh once said:

«How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so difficult.»

Because that’s all, right? Even at the peak of the post-trail depression, even in the depths of the very intimidating What’s next? I feel lucky. How lucky to have left pieces of myself on an excessively long walk from Mexico to Canada. How lucky to miss people who made me laugh and took care of me. How lucky to be able to close my eyes and continue listening to the crunch of the snow under my feet and feel the desert sun on my shoulders.

The lessons will come. The sadness will calm down; he always does it. For now, there are simpler things in life to wake up to. It won’t always be mountain tops and valley bottoms. Sometimes it’s an old farmer sleeping in the afternoon sun. It’s the rumble of a truck. It’s a homemade meal. It’s rest, and it’s time and space to get to know this new version of myself on the other side of 2,650 miles.

How lucky I am.

This website contains affiliate links, which means The Trek may receive a percentage of any products or services you purchase using links in articles or advertisements. The buyer pays the same price they would otherwise pay, and their purchase helps support The Trek’s ongoing goal of bringing you quality backpacking information and advice. Thank you for your support!

For more information, visit the About page of this site.