“Hiking is not escapism; it’s realism. The people who choose to spend time outdoors are not running away from anything; we are returning to where we belong.”
– Jennifer Pharr Davis
In July of 2021 me and two Friends embarked on a 165km (103miles) adventure through three countries. A trip filled with ten-thousand kilometers accent/decent, rough weather, (semi-)legal wild camping, a 500ml tub of yogurt lovingly named Blanco and lots and lots of laughter.
We started off in Les Houches, in France, on a cloudy day and immediately got treated to a steep uphill. I'm gonna be honest I would have preferred a slightly more gentle first few miles, but as it was my very unprepared self was in for a rude awakening. Before taking my first few steps on the TMB I had climbed a total of one mountain that year, had quit smoking a week ago and had basically zero idea of what was to come. The original plan was for me to spend a chilled week in London, meeting friends and visiting the city I lived in for so long. This was however thwarted by this pesky virus going round - not sure you heard of it - minor deal, really - Anyway, I couldn't fly to London, so instead i spontaneously agreed to go hiking for a week, because why wouldn't I? My plans to hike the PCT had already been in the making for a year at that point and I was looking at this as the perfect opportunity to test out my new gear and get a little taster of what adventures would await me.
So here I was, packed up with approximately 10kg on my back, huffing and puffing up the mountain trying to keep up with my significantly fitter friends. One of them had a 500ml bucket of yogurt strapped to the outside of their bag, which we bought for breakfast and were panning to eat along the way. In the delirium of walking uphill in the July heat we came to the conclusion that we definitely need to name our little buddy, hence the bucket of yogurt was christened Blanco.
Sadly we had to dump him at the end of the day due to a dubious smell.
After roughly 26km of hiking we arrived at our first campsite, promptly set up our tents and subsequently realized we had all, independently from each other, made the same rookie mistake.
We had bought the wrong gas canister for our stoves.
Turns out there are screw on and clip on canisters - who knew?
Thankfully, there was a lovely person at our campsite who took pity on us and let us use their gas. Now we were just hoping we would find some the next day so we wouldn't have to go hungry. Lo and behold a tiny sandwich shop in an even tinier town sold canisters, so our mistake turned out to not be too big of a deal.
Speaking of sandwiches, you gotta give it to them - the french really know their cheese and bread! I rarely looked forward to anything as much as to the sandwiches at the french refuges along the way.
Sadly our luck with the weather wouldn't last forever. On our third day around 1pm it started raining, and I mean relentless, pouring, cold rain which lasted solidly into the next day.
We however, took it in good spirits at least until we got to the second refuge of the day at around 7pm, where all we wanted was to sit in a dry room and have a warm meal, and got turned away again for being too wet.
The last little bit of our hike was a steep accent to our wild camping spot. At this point we were in Italy, where wild camping is technically illegal but as long as you're high enough up the risk of getting caught is quite low.
So we set up the tent in the pouring rain and crawled inside to prepare for what would turn out to be one of the most miserable nights of my life.
On the climb up I kept checking my phone to see how much further it was, which resulted in it getting soaked and consequently dying a horrible wet death.
So, there I was, in my tent, freezing, wet, with a broken phone muttering a constant stream of profanities to myself as to why I had ever thought this was a fun thing to do.
The temperatures dropped to 1° Celsius and with my quilt having a limit rating of 0° I was in a for a rough night with absolutely zero sleep.
After a while though I started to look at the situation in a different light.
“This is training for the PCT” I thought, “This is a learning experience!” “You will have miserable time while you’re out on trail, so the only thing to do it to pull yourself together and focus on the positives”
So, what were the positives? Well, I learned that I definitely needed a different quilt! And that I need a waterproof case for my phone. And also that I know a truly astonishing array of swear words - so that’s not nothing. In the end the sun came out around midday the next day, our moods rapidly changed, my phone dried up and magically revived, and we had a good laugh about it. So yeah, everything is PCT training and hiking that trail is my dream. Training is part of it, rainy days are part of it, miserable nights are part of it but most importantly all the fun times, belly laughter, awe-inspiring nature and memories that will stay with my for a lifetime are also part of it, and that’s what I decided to focus on.
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