Pacific Crest Trail - Day 186 - Canada! 🇨🇦

Start: Mile 2638.7 - Holman Pass
Terminus: Mile 2655.8 🇨🇦 Canada! 🇨🇦
End: Mile 2644.4 (or Terminus-11.1) Woody Pass

We set out early, with 17 miles to the terminus another 30 miles back to Harts Pass because Canada closed permitted border crossings via the PCT due to [insert long list of the United States 🇺🇸 being a shitty neighbor to Canada 🇨🇦 : baseless accusations of fentanyl importation, threatened sovereignty, reneged trade agreements, generally being isolationist xenophobic unjustifiably arrogant dimwits clinging to an increasingly rapidly eroding post-WWII hegemony].

With dropping temperatures and precipitation in the forecast we were keen to tag the border and get out of the wilderness ASAP. The general wisdom is to complete the PCT (heading northbound) by the start of October due to unpredictable weather. We tentatively set September 30th as our target date to make it to the Canadian border all the way back in Northern California, and hit it right on the nose.

A bear got into some berries.

Is that why they’re called berries 🫐?

Is that why they’re called bears 🐻?

Amazing light dancing through the clouds.

Blue skies! Heaven!

Having learned a thing or two about seizing any and every opportunity to unload unnecessary baggage over the course of six months of carrying our lives on our backs, we found a decently protected campsite below Woody Pass about 11.5 miles from the border, and ditched most of our stuff.

We pitched the tent using sticks instead of trekking poles, and spread out our damp gear inside hoping that the sun would stay out long enough to dry everything out while we hiked 22+ miles to the border and back.

We caught up to a Belgian / British couple who we had been leapfrogging since Cascade Locks.

Apparently mountains extend into Canada 🇨🇦. Who knew?

A few glimpses of the terminus logbook.

Behind the scenes action from the Terminus.

A storm rolled in as we headed back to our campsite from the terminus. The weather went from sunny, warm, and breezy to stormy, frigid, and windy.

Someone immediately behind us put up Mike markers for the last 10 miles. These weren‘t there on the way to the border.

The last hints of sunlight for the day.

Nature making it very clear that it’s time to get out of the mountain wilderness.

Coming back up and over Woody Pass was one of the windiest stretches on trail. We feared that our makeshift tent pitch would be in rough shape but we found it still very much intact as the wind calmed considerably in the protection of the trees underneath the pass.

So that‘s the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico 🇲🇽 to Canada 🇨🇦 and post 156! on this blog.

Writing this post on December 31st, three months after tagging the Canadian border on September 30th is pretty surreal.

I carried a Fujifilm X-T50 for the entire trail and have yet to look at the picture I took with it. I intend to share some of those photos on here in upcoming posts assuming some of them are decent shots and probably write down some reflections and share upcoming plans at some point. For today, the last of 2025, I am stoked to wrap up this last post from the trail and to have shared photos from nearly every day of a six month adventure that without a doubt changed me at the very core of my being.

Cheers,

Will