We had 8 miles left this morning to White Pass and a 20 mile hitch to Packwood. We caught a beautiful sunrise and as bad as the smoke of the wild fires is for hiking as good it is for good pictures and sunrises…

 

 

On the road by 9am, a hitch no 10 minutes later and in town before 10am. Boom! 💪

And then our whole list. I had to made sure the Fedex delivery driver wouldn’t leave without handing me my new toy and parallel doing all chores.

First stop visitor center and finding an alternate route around the fire closure of 23 miles off the trail. Once I had looked at maps and options I found a decent possibility which would get us around the closure, far enough away from the fire and still not on a too crazily long detour. Only downside: about 25 miles of road walking. But since these would be the only miles missing between Mexico and Canada I really want to do them. Just for me.

Next thing: coffee, coffee, coffee. We are in Washington now. Coffee is important again. And good…

I dealt with the post office and sweet talked the nice ladies to help me. So they would accept my package after I promised to also pick it up. Only thing I had to do was watch the post office during their lunch break in case the delivery driver would show up just during this hour. Deal.

Kaylee organised our amazing side trip which will come up in a few days. Therefore we will have to walk the 100 trail plus about 20 extra miles because of the trail closure in 3.5 days. We will have to be at a location in Washington on 5. September at 3pm – this requires a few hours of transportation and goodwill of people giving us rides. But we decided to do it!

My food came right when the post office closed so I got it in a take-away box and sat in front of the closed post office like a real hobo. People gave me looks – hysterical. And there were a lot since the entire town was a flew-market increasing the population from 1,000 to 10,000.

And then all these other things. When my new toy finally arrived at 3.30pm I had tried to fill out the Olympus online form for a repair/check of my old camera with I don’t know how many fields. Then your credit card gets declined because you can’t choose a billing address outside of the US. The workaround from the guys on the hotline also doesn’t work and at the end you have spent 1 hour filling out a form without being a step further… 👿

To my luck I have my buddy Jeremy in Seattle who I met in New Zealand on the Te Araroa hike. He has been my go to post office / gear storage room. So we sent everything we had to organise or couldn’t deal with now (eg my camera) to him. Thanks, brew! See you in a week 🤘🏼

Also my immigration papers to walk over the border to Canada are approved. The Canadians are just cool. Not that they have set up an easy process for us hikers (fill out a pdf form, scan it with your passport) and send it to a dedicated email address only for PCT requests. No, they also reply to you like this. An email with the approved form as pdf and look at the greetings they put in their mail:

Happy trails. That’s what you wish each other on the trail when you see another hiker. It’s an official reply from the border service agency and they greet us with “Happy trails.” You guys just rock! 🤘🏼

Food shopping by Kaylee while I watched all our electronics being charged in the coffee shop, getting some basics with my new camera organised and at 6.30pm we were back on the trail. 3 miles only so still a huge stretch for the next 3.5 days left… 🏃🏃🏃