September 12, 2017
Mile 2269.9 (Goat Rocks) to 2292.4 (White Pass)
Pacific Crest Trail Thru-Hike: Day 130

Here we are, stuck in White Pass before a road walk because our packages and Sam’s aren’t here yet. But we got a chalet condo with everyone, including Benny and Chill, and I feel like all my dreams are coming true. Every single one of my favorite people I’ve met on trail, all in the same place.

It was an incredible, nerve-wracking day. Views for miles of volcanic mountains rising up from far far away. Billows of smoke from the Norse Peak fire puffing up into the blue sky from far far away. Snow slopes that tumbled down hundreds of feet of rocky scree. A knife’s edge that lasted for what felt like miles of wind-whipped treachery with nothing to keep you on the mountain or stop you from flying off except your two feet and your trekking poles.

For right now, we are eating frozen pizza, drinking beer, watching bad movies, and cramming eight people in to a particularly smelly ski lodge to enjoy each other’s company for the last time. The Norse Peak fire is raging, and we saw that for ourselves today. We will have a road walk. It will be long. It will be very long. We will do it anyway. Benny and Chill will hitch around, and that’ll be it. But I never, ever expected to get all of these people in one place together. I never thought Vice, Boathouse and Sam would even get to meet Benny and Chill. And here we are.

For one night only! Yeehaw!