October 8

Distance: 20.8 miles | Ascent: 5030′ | Descent: 4250′

Mile marker: 1888.4

Lunch: J&A – jambalaya (A, A)

Dinner: J&A – mac n cheese (A, B+)

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Ohhhh nelly. It’s the big one. Forester Pass is the high point of the PCT at 13,200′. Today was the day. Honestly, it was not as difficult as we feared. The trail was incredibly well groomed in that there were few steps, minimal talus, and a fairly constant slope. It was a nice surprise! The climb was still hard, of course. The air is thin, and we have our full backpacks. When we did 14ers in Colorado, we only had day packs. Our backpacks now are probably double the weight. We also didn’t do 14ers after several consecutive days of hiking 20+ miles. We were puffing hard almost the whole way up the ascent.

In any case, we made it to our peak by late morning.

We rested at the top where Alex ate a Hershey’s cookies and cream bar she had packed for just this occasion.

The view from the pass revealed a different scene than we had seen on the prior passes. There were more plateaus and more rolling hills and gentler mountains. This truly felt like we were entering a different world.

Once we came down from the pass, we looked back up to see the notch in the rock from where we had emerged. It was hard to believe we had come from there! The rocky trail of the pass was brilliant and invisible.

The wind on the south side of the pass was fierce. We covered ourselves from head to toe to avoid windburn in the dry air.

The landscape was much more expansive than any we’d seen from the other passes.

We dropped into the trees, which stifled the wind. But, it was short lived as we climbed onto a high plateau.

As the sun faded, we bounced over a few small ridges on the southern flank of a mountain before descending into a meadow for the night.

These last few days have been tough, and our legs and lungs are feeling it. Tomorrow should be a slightly easier day with less elevation. We’ll miss the high passes, of course, but with a possible snowstorm on the horizon, we want to put on as much distance as we can in the next few days.