You could walk inland trails between World War I-era bunkers and the Admiralty Head Lighthouse, depending on your mood. We went eastbound - reverse of normal, because why not? - into Fort Casey State Park. My hiking partner, Kate Fujimoto, and I parked one car just north of Deception Pass and another car south of Coupeville, beside the ferry terminal. Of course, this little piece of advice came after I’d hiked it over a weekend. “You’d have to be pretty excited about the trail, pretty die-hard, to want to walk through there,” Wollborg said of the Whidbey Island road walk. But it’s wasted time on a two-day trip, unless you’re a purist, a masochist or both. Paved road is a necessary evil on a thru-hike of the PNT, a big trail made up of many shorter trails stitched together. Part of it is 15 miles of regrettable, rural asphalt with scarce water, views or persuasive reasons to visit again. It rambles past two historic military forts, one very active (and very loud!!!) naval air station, five county parks and five state parks. The PNT truly is a patchwork in this region, as I learned well while walking the Whidbey Island stretch. The PNT dips out of the North Cascades south of Mount Baker it follows Skagit County logging roads into the Chuckanuts, where westbound thru-hikers get their first smell of salty sea air it turns into waterfront paths and inland community forest in Anacortes then it crosses the Deception Pass Bridge to 33 miles of Whidbey Island beaches, bluffs and bike paths, en route to a ferry bound for Port Townsend, the Olympics and the finish line. The Pacific Northwest Trail passes through popular Whidbey Island parks and landmarks such as Ebey’s Landing, where day hikers can follow the beach, or the bluff trails, or make a loop of both. In the lowlands of Western Washington, for example, you can explore more than 100 miles of the trail even in winter, when mountains are snowed over and hikers need somewhere to go. You don’t have to do the PNT all at once, if you don’t have the time, patience or knee cartilage. On the entire trip, I think we only saw one other thru-hiker.” “The route is incredibly well-signed along the PCT, for example, and the PNT just felt like a real adventure. “It had so many opportunities to have solitude, see wildlife and solve problems on your own,” Wollborg said. He and his wife completed the latter in 2016. There’s ample bush-whacking, talus-scrambling and road-walking.Įric Wollborg, a spokesman for the Pacific Northwest Trail Association, has hiked both the PCT and PNT. Many hikers rely on imperfect GPS to find the way. The weather window is as brief as summer in alpine along the 49th Parallel. It’s almost definitely an undercount, but you get the idea.Īt a pace of 20 miles per day, a typical thru-hike consumes two summer months and two pairs of decent trail runners. Over the past decade, the annual number of known finishers tells a story of its own: 1, 0, 2, 1, 2, 5, 17, 8, 34, 30, 29. The trail evolved piece by piece, and it was officially recognized by Congress in 2009. A small group of Oregonians thru-hiked it for the first time in 1977. Young conservationist Ron Strickland dreamed up a PNT route in the 1970s, when the official PCT was still new. The trail threads seven mountain ranges - from the Rockies to the Olympics - hugging the Canadian border from the Continental Divide in Montana to Cape Alava, the westernmost tip of the contiguous United States. Trail angels are common on the well-trafficked Pacific Crest Trail, but relatively rare on the newer, more rugged PNT. We do get a lot of experienced hikers, and then you get a few hikers where it’s the first thru-hike they’ve ever done.” “You see all kinds,” said Rebecca Roberts, 56, a middle school Spanish teacher. The couple turns the lower half of their 1½-story house into a hiker haven. As the trail’s reputation has spread among distance hikers, John Roberts stocks up on about 100 pounds of hamburger each summer in preparation for 12, 40 or even 80 guests, depending on the year, who are grateful for clean sheets, a hot shower and hearty plates of taco salad.
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