Episode #2: McKenna Allison & Tyler Norkus

McKenna grew up in Madison, WI and graduated with her Master’s in Biology from Arizona State University. She loves to spend time outdoors and read, preferably both at the same time. McKenna has always enjoyed outdoor recreation activities like hiking, running, biking, and swimming. She started traveling domestically and internationally in college and has since become immersed in the world of budget travel, motivated by a fascination with natural landscapes and diverse cultures. Tyler Norkus grew up in Las Vegas, NV and recently graduated with his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State University. He now resides in Santa Fe, NM and just started an engineering position at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He spends his time reading, cooking, hiking and backpacking, and occasionally travelling across the world.

Tyler and McKenna as a couple: Tyler and McKenna met on a backpacking trip via the Adventure Devils hiking club at ASU and immediately became best friends. They started dating and traveling together around the US and the world. They adopted two cats from Tyler’s family during their last year at ASU and are currently in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Their most notable experience as a couple was their hike from Canada to Mexico on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2025, at the end of which they got engaged. Outside of traveling and hiking, McKenna and Tyler love to enjoy tea and good food together, a passion of Tyler’s which McKenna quickly grew to love.

In this episode, we discuss McKenna and Tyler's recent experience spending four months hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which spans from Canada to Mexico and winds through approximately 2650 miles of diverse west-coast terrain. They shed light on what it's like to push the limits of the body and mind on a daily basis, as well as complex social and ethical dynamics surrounding the phenomenon known as "thru-hiking." Our discussion concludes with a focus on the bittersweet experience of transitioning back into social life after spending a significant amount of time profoundly in tune with one's body and the natural world. 

© Hunter Langenhorst, creator of The Language & Life Podcast. All rights reserved. Episodes, audio recordings, original music, and artwork are protected by copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution is prohibited without written permission.

Transcript

Hunter 0:17

You hiked from Canada to Mexico on foot over the course of a few months. And that's just an experience that not many people get to have. So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you both today is to get some insight about what the day-to-day experience of something on that scale is like. Pushing your body physically, pushing yourself mentally, emotionally, all the all the above, basically. Um, so yeah, could you tell the listeners what the hike you did is called and where exactly it starts and ends up? Just one of you.

Tyler 0:49

Yeah, so the hike is called the Pacific Crest Trail, and we'll refer to it as the P as the PCT. And it starts at the Canadian border and it goes down to the Mexican border. Uh, and it goes through Washington, Oregon, and California. You can do it either north to south or south to north. We started at Canada and went down to Mexico.

McKenna 1:05

A lot of people think that it starts somewhere random in Canada and ends somewhere random in Mexico because when you say like you're heading towards Mexico or something, they're like, Where in Mexico? Or you're going from Canada to Mexico. So that's something we always have to clarify is Canadian border to Mexican border. It's all in the US.

Hunter 1:22

Okay. And is is this a popular thing that people do? Is this a thing mostly West Coasters do, or what draws people to do something like this? Because it's it's remarkable, it's extraordinary. It's not usual that people do such a long hike. I assume with jobs it's difficult. So, what type of person is drawn to do something like this?

McKenna 1:44

I well, I would start by saying that I'm probably not the most well-versed in the history of the trail, um, but I know it's become incredibly popular in the last decade or so, um, like even more so than it was when it was formed. I think it was it completed in the 1970s, something like that. I don't want to, I am that might be incorrect, but I know it was completed in the later half of the 1900s. Um, and I think in the past it was more so people that loved being out in the wilderness, loved just hiking long distances, challenging themselves to do something like that. Um, nowadays it has become very popular due to social media. Um, that's actually how I found out about it several years ago. I saw a picture on Instagram and I was like, oh, that's very interesting. What is this? And looked into it more on my own. Um, but I think that has definitely led to the increased popularity of it. And so now there's a really broad variety of people that are drawn to it for various reasons. Some I would say there's a lot of uh people that are drawn to it now because of kind of almost like chasing this fantasy that they see. And that's not even necessarily bad because a lot of people do find what they're looking for. Um, but there's kind of, I would say maybe a broader mix of people, which we can get into later, kind of the pros and cons of that.

Tyler 3:03

Yeah, it especially became popular because there was a really popular book and movie that came out about it. I forget the name of it. Do you mean it's Wild? Wild, yeah, we've never seen it. We haven't seen it and haven't read the book. It's it's not very representative from what I've heard of what we experienced. Um, but it was very popular and that kind of brought it to the public's attention. And then also just the you know, the wilderness is everywhere on social media nowadays, especially if you're in if you have any sort of interest in that, you're gonna see it on social media and it becomes it, it becomes very glamorous and very attractive to a lot of people. And so that's a big part of why there's thousands of people that attempt this hike every year. And there's actually a big problem getting permits if you're going northbound, because that's the more popular way to do it. And so trying to get a good start date can be difficult, and people every year aren't able to get the permits they want because it's so popular.

McKenna 3:52

And it attracts people from all around the world too. And when we've even traveled internationally and talked about preparing, because we went and trained around the world, and people would ask, like, what are you why why are you hiking so fast or things like that? And we'd say, Oh, we're training for the Pacific Crest Trail. And people would know what it is, like in Spain or in South America, they'd be like, Oh my god, I've heard of that. That sounds so cool, and stuff like that. And there's people that come from a lot of different countries to do the trail, and then also from around the US. Um, but there is it is more heavily skewed toward the West Coast, understandably, because people who've grown up in Washington, it's kind of their backyard and stuff.

Tyler 4:26

So and of the international people, a lot of them come from Europe, some from Australia, some from like Japan, but that's the majority of where the people come from. They don't really come from, you know, South America or most of Asia. It's not it's not very representative of the world, but still in the past, maybe it was the case that people would only seek something like this out because they already had this passion for hiking in the wilderness and it was just something they heard maybe mouth to mouth, or um by word of mouth, excuse me. Um, or you know, looking something up in a magazine. Um, whereas now you're saying people are exposed to this and it becomes a glamorous thing to accomplish, uh, even if maybe originally you weren't necessarily this backpacker and outdoorsman.

McKenna 5:09

And yeah, you didn't get as much recomm recognition, I'd say, in the past, in it from what I understand.

Tyler 5:15

I mean, there's a lot of like just forums, people asking online questions about the PCT. They're like, I've never backpacked a day in my life, but I want to do the PCT, quit my job and do the PCT. What do I do?

McKenna 5:24

Well, like, the PCT Reddit is a wild place, like actually wild. And like it's awesome because it's a way for people to learn about the trail, but it is quite interesting because you'll see people that are like, I'm 400 pounds and I hate hiking, and I've also I have no interest in doing day hikes. Can I hike the PCT in three months?

Tyler 5:42

Yeah, like But it's it's just become this like form of like escape for people and like a journey of self-discovery and escape from modern society and like the drudgery of life is how a lot of people see it. I think. So people are like, I'm gonna quit my job, do this amazing thing, even if they're not necessarily prepared for it, or like, you know, nothing against them at all, but uh it does end up with a lot of people starting the trail who don't know what they're doing.

McKenna 6:07

But then a lot of people learn on trail. It's kind of like sink or swim. You either learn or you don't.

Tyler 6:11

Because the threshold to do it is rather low. Like it's not a super high skill threshold, but still you need you need to do, you need to know some things.

McKenna 6:19

Yeah, we something we've talked about a lot is that the trail is not very technical, and the the the barrier to get into it is mostly in terms of gear and finances um rather than like physical skills or capabilities, because like you really just have to walk. So, I mean, that's good and bad. We can go into that more later.

Tyler 6:40

Yeah, there's like a whole genre of film that's like based on the idea of escapism, like you're saying, Tyler. Like this idea that we're so entrenched in day-to-day social life and it becomes a burden, and we watch people on film kind of go off in the wilderness in Alaska, and and there's one I'm thinking of where a guy lives in a school bus. And so is it this the idea that if I go out there it'll be easy, or just they're looking for the challenge to have something to overcome and feel that sense of reward and that sense of purpose. What I don't know.

McKenna 7:14

I think it's more that, and also just being disconnected from the the real world. I mean, I think for a lot of people, especially in America, the like nine to five capitalism grind, they want to escape that. And um, I don't know, I I would say that that uh has pros and cons. Like there, I would say one thing that I read before we started the trail that really kind of I don't I wouldn't say it changed my perspective, but I would say it definitely set the tone for me is I read online somewhere, someone was like, if you think this trail is gonna change your life, you're thinking about it all wrong. Like if you think you're gonna come out of the trail a new person, you're not doing it for the right reasons and you're you're gonna be wrong. Like you're gonna go home and you're gonna be faced with the same challenges, insecurities, problems in your life that you had before the trail. And yeah, it can be a really cool experience that does change your perspective on some things, but it's not gonna just transform you into a new person, which having done the trail, I can definitely second that. And I would say, like, there are some people who do it, there's a lot of people who do it who kind of think it's gonna change them. And then I think maybe that's part of why post-trail depression is such a big thing where people will go back to their lives and it's hard to get off trail, which we can talk about later just to begin with, but also when they kind of expect that they're a new person, or like I've heard people along say things along the lines of, like, oh, it taught me how to be kind to people. It's like, how would walking a bunch of miles make you into a good person? Like, it's just that doesn't make any sense. And so I think going into it with the expectation that it wouldn't change us as people, that we would still be the people we were when we started it was actually very helpful because we didn't put, we didn't have the expectation or pressure on it. We just were there to experience it. Um, and obviously there's things that ways that we think slightly differently now, or we have we just have this really cool experience that will forever stick with us. But it's you know, my irritations, my pet peeves, my strengths and weaknesses are still the same. They're not they're not any different.

Tyler 9:20

Maybe people are referring to the sense that the experience itself, because humans are at the end of the day, their identity is based on the culmination and the mix of experiences they've had throughout their lives. So I guess in one sense it it does change who you are from that perspective. But you're saying like there's not a monumental personality shift to where suddenly if you're if you're normally a jerk in your social life that you're fixed, and this this is a one-size-fits-all therapy for anybody who wants to embark on this journey. And it's not gonna it's not gonna make your life more fulfilled or better afterwards. And I think part of that does come from that book, Wild, because the lady who wrote that book uh kind of did it after like trying to get off of drugs and getting out of a bad relationship, and she talked about how it helped her a lot, like get clean, and she was like, I have a whole new perspective on life. And so I think that does affect some people's perspective because I think that it's the most popular piece of media discussing the PCT, and it just creates this false expectation that like you can fix your life, you can fix your problems, and then when that doesn't happen, when you have to go back to your life, you have to get away from it is a really freeing, amazing experience, and going from that to real life, it it really makes post trail depression and the post-trail experience worse, in my opinion. So I think it is a disservice to people because it you can't live that life. You can't be hiking, you know, thousands of miles for the rest of your life all the time. It just it just doesn't work. Um, at least for most people. Um, and so I think having to face that reality makes people just kind of sad afterwards. And yeah.

McKenna 10:54

Which is why you do find a lot of people who just kind of keep bouncing from through hike to through hike because they don't really have things in their off-trail life that make life worth living, in their opinion. Like they it's kind of like they almost lose their identity as someone outside of through hiking, and so they kind of to feel okay have to just keep year after year finding some through hike to do a lot. I mean, they repeat through hikes they've already done, which there's not it's not necessarily bad. I mean, it's a it's a cool way to live, but um I don't know. I feel I felt very lucky that we had so much to look forward to when we got off trail.

Tyler 11:31

Absolutely. So, what brought you both specifically? What reasons I I'm sure there's not one in isolation that brought you to the PCT, but what reasons, what collage or kaleidoscope of motivations, but to put it metaphorically, pulled you there? You said McKenna that you had been interested in it before maybe even you met Tyler.

McKenna 11:49

Yeah, yeah. I think I heard about it maybe a year or two before I met Tyler, and I think when I saw it, I was just I remember thinking I'm gonna do this. And then that was kind of that wasn't a linear um path to doing it for sure. There was a lot of times where I didn't think it was gonna happen, but um, I think for me, that one of the biggest like motivators was I love chipping away at really big tasks. Like I love endurance tasks when it comes to physical things and just mental things in general. For some reason, I really like things that feel kind of impossible when you look at them as a whole, but then breaking them down into smaller parts and doing it day after day. But then when you complete it, this huge sense of satisfaction. I don't know. For some reason, I really like that. And so that was really appealing to me. And then also I obviously love being outside. I really grew up outside, and so that's always been such a big part of my identity and just what I what makes life worth living for me. Um, and so I I think those two things were my main motivators for why I thought it would be really cool to do.

Tyler 12:52

And Tyler, did you have an idea of doing this before you met McKenna? Or was it that she brought it to your attention after? I actually remember reading about through hiking in general. It might have been an article in a magazine about the Appalachian Trail, not the PCT. But I remember, gosh, maybe in like middle school, like a long time ago, just reading about this and just it sat with me for a long time, not as something like, oh, I want to work towards that, but it's like it'd be really cool to just hike across the country one day. Um, but I, you know, before college, I I'd never backpacked and it was always kind of a, you know, like a, you know, pie in the sky sort of thing. But then I I started getting a lot more into backpacking, as you know, in college. Um, and then McKenna brought it up the idea of doing the PCT. Um, and at first I was like, I don't know, that's that's kind of crazy to just like up and do it. But eventually I was like, you know, it was my last year in college. After that, I was gonna have to go out and find a job. And, you know, the PCT is not something you can do with, you know, your regular vacation time. You know, we spent we spent four months on trail, and that's pretty fast actually to do the hike because it's it's 2,600 miles. I don't know if we said that already. And so it takes a long time to hike that many miles. And so I was like, she was like, this might be our last chance to do it either in a long time or until who knows when, or maybe even ever. And that kind of put it in perspective for me. Uh and I, you know, I I love hiking, I love being outdoors, and I just thought it'd be a really, really cool experience to do. So that was a big reason why I was like, okay, yeah, we should, we should do it because this is like the perfect time in our life. We're graduating school, we don't have a job, we don't have like a house that we need to like pay rent on.

McKenna 14:28

Yeah, that was a big one.

Tyler 14:29

Yeah, like we were, we were extremely lucky and fortunate in our situation. Like we were both financially secure coming out of college. We didn't have like we don't have kids, we don't have um property that we need to pay anything on, and like, you know, it just worked out really well. We were able to store like our belongings and our and our pets at my parents' houses. So it it just worked out really, really well for us. That was also a big factor.

McKenna 14:51

For sure. And we actually didn't know if we were gonna be able to pull the trigger on doing it until like a while later because it really was dependent on the jobs we had during the master's year of our time at ASU. And so um we ended up both getting the TA positions, which paid really well. And so then that was like kind of the the deciding factor for both of us. So we kind of we were like um, what's the word? Like tentatively? Yeah, tentatively planning on it. Um, but it was really we were waiting on that. And so once we both found out about that, it was like, okay, let's do it. And then we had to like start planning and prepping and all that.

Tyler 15:29

Yeah, it was training. It was what, like nine months of prep at least? About a year, actually. Yeah, yeah, a year before we started. What was that like? Hitting up the gym, going about jogs. I don't know, was it a focus on cardio? Was it a focus on building up your your leg muscles? What was it like?

McKenna 15:45

So, my main concern personally, I mean, I'll I'll let you share, Tyler, but my main concern was the my the daily mileage that we had to do going southbound. And we can talk about in a second why we chose to go southbound. But when you go southbound, you have a much shorter window where you have you can't start at the northern border um until the snow is clear or like you, you know, it's unsafe at a certain point. You you need to wait till it's safe enough to start. Um, and then you need to make it out of the high Sierra before the snow comes in the early fall. So October 1st is the known deadline for that. Um, and it's very dangerous to be in the mountains because usually the first snow isn't just a few flurries, it's like a full blizzard. Um, and that's incredibly dangerous to be in the backcountry, especially if you don't you're not prepared, you don't have the gear, like mountaineering gear, things like that. Um, and so we had to fit basically the first 1800 miles of the trail into um three months. Three months, yeah. And so um that was a big concern for me was I calculated how many miles a day we would need to hike on average without rest days. And that was quite scary to me because I, when I'd first started thinking about wanting to do the PCT after graduating, that was a couple years prior. And I challenged myself to go up to Isle Royale National Park in Minnesota, like in Lake Superior. Um, and I kind of didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have, I had all my heavy gear, I didn't have anything ultralight at the time, and it was like horrible mosquitoes, and I was by myself, and this wasn't my first solo backpacking trip, but I I tried to go uh like do way too many miles in a day. Um, and so I ended up just being in a lot of pain, like really overwhelmed, like I was crying every day on the trail, and I was just like, I hate this because I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, like my pack hurt really bad, and I just wasn't I was not enjoying it at all. I was like, this is horrible. And so then, and I was only doing like 18 miles a day. And so then only only, you say. But then later that summer, I went out to Glacier National Park with my dad, and I ended up actually meeting a through hiker that I've been following on Instagram for a while because she was hiking the Continental Divide Trail with her partner. So they had just started up at the Canadian border, and we were chatting with them, and they were like, Oh, yeah, we started kind of late, so we're having to average like 27, 28 miles a day. And I was shocked. I didn't know that like I was like, you can hike that many miles in a day. Like it just, I don't know. I I felt like it was so far from my reality and what I was able to do or comfortable with doing a lot of that, I think, was because I had way too heavy of gear. Um, but I think that was for me a big thing where I actually like backtracked and was like, I don't want to through hike ever. Um, and then I slowly came around back around to the idea of doing it. But I guess this is a long way of saying my biggest concern was being able to hike that many miles in a day. So most of our training was focused on ramping up our daily hikes to be longer. So, I mean, we also did things in the gym, like the stair stepper to get elevation gain practice. Like I would take my pack down to the gym in our apartment and go on the stair stepper. I would run, but then I ended up getting banned from running by my PT. But um, like we went down to Patagonia to do a lot of hiking. That was really helpful. That really got us, like whipped us into shape. And then we when we got back, Tyler was injured, so he couldn't do the day hikes with me for a while. Um, but I did day hikes like almost every weekend for a while. Um, like I started at 20 miles and did 21, 22, 23, 24, um, just trying to ramp up. And then I ended up um stopping doing some training for a while because I got really busy right before we moved out and graduated. I was doing like four major life things at once. Um, and that ended up being very problematic because then I got injured in Europe when we were doing we also went to Europe to train to do um through hikes there, which the through hikes weren't too, too long, like we did the West Highland way, which is about 100 miles, and then Tyler did the Primitivo route of the Camino, which is what like 200 in Spain. Yeah, in Spain. And um, I was injured for that, so very unfortunately I was not able to do that. But um, yeah, that that was that was like our last training stint to get ready because then we basically flew to my family's house in Wisconsin, and then my dad drove us out to start the trail.

Tyler 20:08

Yeah, wow. I think people might be wondering or thinking to themselves, okay, they're going to Patagonia, they're going to Spain. It's a lot of travel. And I maybe, you know, I I know firsthand, based on knowing you both, that this you're very savvy at finding affordable ways to travel. So don't think everybody that you know Tyler and McKenna are just millionaires.

McKenna 20:31

No, we're definitely not rolling in it.

Tyler 20:33

We're so privileged, but you work hard and you find all these ways to make it affordable and doable, uh, at least more affordable than at least what I can find, because you know, I talked to you about what you're spending and whatnot and what your budget looks like, and I'm always shocked. I'm like, I must not be looking at the right places. So you have tricks and you you go out of your way to make it uh something possible.

McKenna 20:56

We also kind of put ourselves through a lot. Like I think I only spent like $200 getting down to South America, but I it took me like three days to get down there, which is horrible. Would not do that again.

Tyler 21:07

Yeah, she was calling me from airports if she's like sitting there for 12 hours overnight waiting for a flight in the morning, and it was it was bad. Um but yeah. But yeah, back to the the preparation. Um you said you both had injuries at different times. Did that worry you? With the with the imminent Well, I didn't kind of Yeah, I I was about to say I wasn't injured. I was injured. I got injured in Patagonia trying to do way too much, and I I got injured with my knee um and that stuck around for a couple months. So I was I was quite worried about that um because it wasn't healing and I wasn't able to do training hikes. Um and looking at like the miles we needed to hike, it was like I needed to be ready to to hike. Um but luckily that um got better. So before we left for Europe to go train, I was okay, which I was very happy about because that could have definitely stopped me from doing the trail.

McKenna 21:56

Yeah, injury is like the number one reason people get off trail. Makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah. And so that was quite a bit of pressure. I think we were we talked a lot ahead of time about how we you can't control what happens. And so we're not gonna make getting to the end of the trail the goal, especially because it's just the Mexican wall. Um, that's like it's not about the destination. about the journey. But it's like I at the same time, when you put so much time and money and kind of emotion too into wanting something so badly, it's really hard to not want to want to be successful at it. And so um I think that it was a really big stressor for like the better part of a year for us. Um and then we kind of traded our injury status because then on the West Highland way because I had not been training recently I got an overuse injury in my Achilles. I got Achilles tendinitis which was very stressful at the start of the PCT because I had that when we were starting. So like a few days before we started the trail I did not think I was going to be able to do the trail. Like I wasn't planning on starting the trail and then I ended up talking to um I'll give her a shout out uh Blaze Physio um she's a PT that specializes in uh through hiking and so she's incredibly helpful. Like most PTs very knowledgeable. Yes. And most PTs would be like don't hike like you know don't don't injure yourself more. But she's incredibly knowledgeable in knowing how to give you exercises especially isometrics that help keep you on trail in the sense that you're not causing permanent damage. And she knows when to also say like you need to take a step back. But basically you know doing exercises that can keep you not necessarily you're not always healing but you're at least not making it worse. But in my case I was able to heal especially because I started a um doing the exercises before we started the trail but it was quite stressful um doing that because especially to a big thing with doing it with a partner like starting with a partner is that you have that sense of like we want to experience this together. And so that was quite devastating to obviously Tyler would have still attempted on his own and I'm sure been successful on his own. But you know that was something that we really wanted to share together. And so that is that's a really hard part about at any point on the trail, especially let's say we're a thousand miles in and one of us needs to get off trail. That's like devastating or like 600 miles from the finish.

Tyler 24:18

Like it's yeah.

McKenna 24:20

And so and that's a hard decision to make because it's like the other person isn't going to throw away their chance at doing it. And we talked about that ahead of time like you know we should each have our shot at doing it. But it's something that we very much wanted to share together. And so that was there was a lot of pressure there not like from each other but just from the situation. And so yeah I I didn't think I was going to be able to do it. And then we we ended up well when you're doing southbound you kind of need to like shoot out of a cannon with your mileage but we ended up having to pull back um our mileage for the first few days but there was a lot of decision making at the beginning especially on my end where it's like do I push myself potentially making my injury worse but at least have a shot of getting to do the whole thing and sticking with Tyler or do I like get off trail and luckily my dad bless his heart drove us out there and was out there for the first month and a half that we were on trail which most people do not have that kind of familial support not on the trail with you. Yeah yeah familial support for sure but not with you yeah yeah oh he wasn't no he wasn't hiking with us he was in his van and he was meeting us at roads and trailheads to help us resupply and we would stay with him in his van um like maybe an average of like every third night or something.

Tyler 25:36

Which was really like that so much luxury for through hikers. So we were really really lucky for that.

McKenna 25:43

Yeah um but anyways that was that was really helpful for injury too but the I was having to make this the decision do I stop hiking when as my injury was kind of getting worse or fluctuating and have him like drive just stick with him for a few days while Tyler goes and then meet up with Tyler and try to keep going but then I'm missing part of the trail already. And so that was just a really hard thing to do and Tyler also was under the pressure of like I have to make the snow window. I have to get this mileage done and so we just had a lot of collective decision making to do at the beginning. And we ended up taking two rest days kind of really close to the beginning of the trail which is not usually what you want to do but um that ended up really saving me. Like that was I think single handedly what made it so I could do the trail because my injury every time it would start to get more painful we would take a rest day and then I would be in a much better spot. And I was worried that that would keep on going where it's like oh I can't be taking a rest day every three to five days. But luckily after the second one I was good. So and because I was doing the isometrics and all the exercises um that really helped but there's actually a lot of physical therapy and like non-hiking preparation that goes into a successful through hike or an injury free through hike.

Tyler 26:57

Yeah I will say on the topic of training the best way to train for the hike is to actually go and hike you know a lot of people online say you can't train for it um like they say you can't train for a through hike which I think is false. You know they're kind of saying like you can't do 30 mile days all the time when you're like living regular life but you can try to hike you can try to increase your mileage and that helps a lot. Like things like running it just isn't the same like going to the gym to doing like weight exercises or running it translates somewhat but it doesn't it's not the same as an endurance sport as hiking as hiking for 20 to 30 miles a day. It's it's very different on your body especially doing it day after day. And every step is uneven. The terrain is uneven at the gym you can go on the treadmill as long as you want but it's absolutely so yeah on top of that on top of doing hiking um doing PT exercises is a really really big thing for preparation for stabilization for helping your tendons not get tendonitis that sort of thing. Blaze Physio also has like an Instagram uh account where she has a lot of those um exercises posts we try to do those before we we started the hike which I mean hope ideally that I feel like it did help us but just try to make it so you don't especially when you're starting to hike 20 plus miles at the beginning you don't just immediately get an injury which is definitely a possibility. So and then I I mean I was also very fortunate to do three to do 300 miles of through hiking before we started the trail that was huge. So like if people can do through hikes before they actually start the PCT even just shorter ones that is a big a big part of training because I did feel myself getting just faster and better just over the course of those several weeks. How much of it is mental preparation or like getting accustomed to the feeling of what I assume to be pain as I imagine it like it's pain probably on your feet. It's pain probably in your knees and hips. It's just so different. Like the evolution of how you feel during a through hike changes a lot, especially after the first month. So it's really hard to prepare for that because the feelings you have of just like two weeks on trail are very different from how you feel after three months. It's it's not even comparable. Like you can't you can never I in my opinion you can never know how that feels unless you actually do it. It's just such a it's such a different feeling for your body.

McKenna 29:12

Which is I think where the confusion comes in online when people are like you can't train for a through hike because you won't know what it's like until you're doing it. I think people get confused because you totally can train for a through hike and you should train for a through hike but at the same time you'll never know what it feels like until you've done a certain amount of miles. And so I think people need to be more specific about that because there's a lot of people that are like I didn't train at all or I I did like a day hike and I just showed up thinking you know I'll I'll train on the trail. I'll just get whipped into shape over time as I start the trail. And no Northbounders or Nobos have that luxury but we didn't because we had that really tight schedule. And so I just I think that people get a bit confused there. But that is very true that you you can't really prepare mentally that much for like the physical sensations or even just like the monotony and boredom and just the the length of the days and all of that being dirty and smelly for that long.

Tyler 30:08

It's it's the things you don't expect that get you. I mean because I mean this really surprised me because she didn't talk about it beforehand but McKenna expected like every day to be miserable on trail because of that fear of like not making our miles that fear of just like every day being a really big struggle to get through your miles. And that actually wasn't the case like especially after you get through the first like three four weeks your body starts to get acclimated to the day and especially before like I got injured um it was not hard to do like a 25 mile day especially if the elevation wasn't bad. It just you just start walking and you're used to it. And so um it's not what you expect but like the boredom the boredom is huge especially if you're by yourself that can be a really big challenge especially if you're in a a place where it it the terrain is not very exciting or you're dealing with you know mosquitoes, you're dealing with heat um rain. Rain. Yeah rain it sucks. Um and yeah even just being smelly because we we did really long food carries where we would go you know six plus days between picking up food and you know we went up to like what 12 or 13 days without taking a shower. And when you reach that point like you just smell awful your clothes are really uncomfortable because they're so like sweaty they have like salt stains on them and you know you don't really think about that when you're planning out your hike.

McKenna 31:28

My skin would hurt after a certain number of days from the salt that was embedded in my clothes from sweating especially because it was really hot at in NorCal.

Tyler 31:35

I would literally get like rashes and things on my skin because I was joking she was like a salt farm that she had you could just see like this crystals of salt like accumulating on her clothes like wow it was so much salt. It was horrible just kind of wring out your shirt over your backpacking meal and then you got some extra sodium.

McKenna 32:01

I hate smelling myself and I hate that feeling of wearing dirty clothes and so having to wear the same clothes for six to 12 days in a row because I mean you only have one outfit we didn't have we didn't even have pajamas and so like you know it's just that's all you have and so it's it was brutal like day seven looking you just look at your shirt in the morning and you're like please I'll do anything to not have to put this on.

Tyler 32:24

And my feet my feet by the end of the trail started smelling so bad. It was awful it was so bad. I I can unpleasantly imagine that yeah almost too vividly I think to the point where like I was like I need to burn these shoes and I'm drinking them.

McKenna 32:43

Yeah. No we'd have to be like he like we could he couldn't really walk in businesses sometimes. I was like I don't think you should go in there.

Tyler 32:49

It's that bad like it was like rotting meat. I don't know what the smell was especially when it rained because I mean yeah if you have wet shoes like we wore trail runners um which we can talk about trail runners are something that most BCT hikers wear not hiking boots um and so they are meant to dry out a little bit easier when you get them wet which is really important when you're hiking day after day so your feet don't like rot in your shoes. But even then even though they're supposed to dry out pretty fast especially when it was cold outside they wouldn't dry all the way overnight and it would just it just got really bad. So yeah it just things like that you don't you don't think about it's not something you're like expecting to have happen unless you actually do a through hike. So that's that's the sort of challenges you ran into that were unexpected and those were actually what kind of were you know more challenging for us.

McKenna 33:35

So yeah. There's like a there's a well known two week hump at the beginning of a through hike where your body hurts every day for like the first I would say for us it was more like three, three and a half weeks it wasn't until like southern Washington that we started to feel better um where you're kind of just getting into it. But then the rest of the hike there's still other challenges that arise they're just different and I do feel like you become better at dealing with them mentally and physically um but that was a big thing. I felt I felt so much better once we got past that point. And for us too it was a huge relief to hit like the 500 mile mark which is right before you cross into Oregon when you're going southbound. That was such a relief. It's like okay we've got that under our belt so that just really increases our chances of like getting through that the injury like you're you're most likely to get an injury in the first like five to eight hundred miles of the trail. And so that was a immense relief. But I I would say yeah there was continually new experiences as we continued on the trail just like oh like you know we didn't hit 12 days without showering until after my dad left and so we were like oh wow this is really bad.

Tyler 34:43

12 days goodness and I I will say most people don't do that. We we we tried to avoid hitching into towns um just because we we shipped all of our food to ourselves and so we wanted to make sure we could get to where we needed to go when we were planning to because we planned out like everything on the trail like our days are our day by days our camp spots our water our miles which is also something that most people most people don't do. But we were trying to be as prepared as possible and you know since I'm gluten free I had you know restrictions on my diet and it's a lot easier to dehydrate your own food and send it to yourself and cheaper and cheaper tell people more about what you did to do that because that's also remarkable in and of itself having a job and working simultaneously being in school and a master's degree yeah all this at the same time. Yeah so we were having to get enough food and prepared in advance for about four months about our total days was like what a hundred twenty hundred and twenty ish days on trail. 114 something like that.

McKenna 35:41

I don't know I think 113 was like hiking days but then we took 120 total with rest days.

Tyler 35:45

Yeah. So anyways it's a lot of food for two people for both of us. And so what we did is we got a dehydrator off of Amazon and then from January to May so like the spring semester I was dehydrating food every day. So I would like you know make rice, uh make like you know lentil soup, make you know just put beans and fruit and whatever in the dehydrator like every day. And so it took that long to make enough food for both of us over the course of the trail. Well so it was a lot of preparation and so um and primarily for for a couple of reasons. One I'm gluten free and when you're in just this random town in the middle of nowhere that has a general store it's not very easy to get a full amount of calories and nutrition gluten free. Like it's it would be really hard. So that was partly why we why we did it and also because of expense. It's a lot cheaper to go to Walmart and buy beans and rice than to go to a trail town and be stuck buying you know bars for $4 a piece or jerky for $3 a piece. You know it's it's food is a huge expense for for people. And if you don't I mean postage is also an expense to ship the boxes to ourselves um but you know we had a lot of help you know McKenna's dad gave us a lot of boxes um just out of his van and then we also had some help from my family who are based out of Las Vegas, Nevada to able to help us later on in the trail. So that helped a lot with postage. But even then it's usually cheaper to to make your own food and ship it to yourself.

McKenna 37:15

Especially because we weren't stopping that often.

Tyler 37:17

Yeah um so that brings me back to why we weren't hitching is because we wanted to make sure we could get to a town pick up our package and not depend on the whims of people picking us up and bringing to town because you know it can in some places it can take several hours to get a hitch. And with the schedule we had that we wanted to keep that wasn't something we wanted to have happen. And also just I don't know we we we we never hitched before it was something we didn't really want to rely on and so that's why we we only really went to places we could hike into um and that's why we sometimes we were stuck you know 12 days without a shower because you know you could hitch to a place that was 40 minutes away but we didn't want to do that. And so we just went on through and and didn't shower for 12 days. Yeah. So that only happened like what once or twice?

McKenna 37:59

Uh something like that. I think 12 days was the longest but we definitely had like nine day stretches and other other long stretches without showering but yeah I I would say for the reason the motivator to not hitch was not oh I'm scared of hitching like that wasn't a concern for me especially because it's so normalized around the Pacific crest trail like huge hitching culture. Everyone knows what you're doing like everyone that lives around there. They're not like who's that? They're like oh another hiker um but I think for me it was just the uncertainty of it. So like for example there were times where like we we would be getting to the end of one resupply so we would have like our snacks that we would eat during the day um with us and then we would plan let's say we're it's 20 miles into our day to get to get our food. We don't have our dinner with us. So like we have to make it there otherwise we're out of food. We don't have dinner and talk about pressure.

Tyler 38:49

Yeah and so and then especially with like businesses closing yeah not being open on certain days like like we need to make our window to get our food otherwise we are SOL.

McKenna 38:59

And our feet we're more reliable than we're depending on strangers to drive us long distances and especially on highways that are like hit or miss on when whether you can get a hitch.

Tyler 39:11

Yeah. Wow yeah so you carry with you this this hope that I hope the the business holding our food is hasn't thrown it away or something or somebody is it a thing where people can come in and claim your food. No it's the the culture isn't like that but there is the chance the post office loses your package and it doesn't just doesn't get there.

McKenna 39:31

Yeah that happened actually to a lot of people and one the main reason that happened was either people sending it too close to when they need to be there because a lot of these are really small towns in the middle of nowhere. And so you need to send it at least two weeks in advance um which Tyler's mom was a huge help in that she sent all of our packages that were mailed out to us um on time she like she had it down like it was it was amazing. And the other reason why people sometimes don't get their packages is they don't pay attention to certain carriers because certain carriers don't deliver to certain towns or to certain businesses. So you have to pay really close attention do you use UPS, USPS or FedEx um to get to a certain business and then you also need to write on your package please hold for I wrote Sobo like Southbound PCT hikers so that they weren't confused because our packages were getting there after the hiking season because you put like a date rage on there for when you expect to arrive. Yeah the ETA um to make sure that they don't get rid of it. Because they do I mean we we saw okay one at one of the resupply stops that was very disorganized the the guy made Tyler just like rifle through this huge room of packages and Tyler saw packages from like what a couple years ago or like they just had sat there and people had never picked them up. And so we were you know you don't want yours to be thrown out with some of those when they do cleanouts and stuff. So yeah um you you it is like a little bit risky especially in places where there's not really an option to resupply like sometimes it's a place where it's like a restaurant where yeah you can get one meal but you can't get five days worth or a gas station like yeah even a gas station you could resupply if you had to but like there were some places where it's kind of like it's a restaurant like you what are you gonna do? And so then it is like you're really banking on your package being there.

Tyler 41:11

And luckily we have snow like nothing else for days. Like even if you hitch it's like hours away to like the nearest place you can actually buy food. So yeah you're depending on your package being there. So some people have to just get off trail and if I mean in the event that they don't find their package there they their only option is to go those extra miles and get a hitch, go buy food and come back.

McKenna 41:33

A lot of times people don't rely on those places as much for sending packages and a lot of people don't send that many packages.

Tyler 41:39

The majority of people send like I think two or three packages at most to like the places where it's either really expensive or really hard to get food. It's very rare to have people do all of their food via packages. And most people then just buy food at restaurants or these little gas station places because they don't have food restrictions. Well they they stage their stops differently so like we were stopping in this place that you know on two days on either side is how long it takes to get to a place with a grocery store or like a general store or something. But we picked up there because they have packages most people would resupply two days in advance and then go four days and then resupply the next place by buying from wherever is there.

McKenna 42:13

The best example I can give of that would be for um we the stretch of at the was it like the beginning of the yeah okay so the beginning of the Sierra for us was we hit Sierra City um we picked up a package there and we picked it up for seven days worth of food and about was it maybe three days into that was South Lake Tahoe or maybe five days in something like that. So we could have really shortened that carry and hitched into South Lake Tahoe where there's a safe way there's like grocery stores, hotels all sorts of things. And I think we looked at a survey where like 90 something percent of people go to South Lake Tahoe because it it really is like one of the only places to resupply in that section but we chose to push all the way through to Kennedy Meadows North which we took a shuttle to get down to this like ranch in the middle of nowhere in the mountains um which is also a very popular resupply point. But we were willing to do longer resupplies than most people are um for the sake of just keeping on going, keeping our pace, um keeping our schedule but people I think were kind of shocked that we didn't stop in South Lake Tahoe and um I mean it was just because it was it wasn't that long of a hitch but it was a hitch and and also because it's like off of a major highway where you can't just like stick out your thumb.

Tyler 43:27

You have to call trail angels from South Lake Tahoe to come pick you up. So you have to arrange with them to like come and get you and then a lot of times they ask for money and you have to make sure you have cell reception to arrange with them or you just have to sit on the side of the highway till they're able to come out and get you when you have your cell reception to be like hey I'm a PCT hiker come and get me.

McKenna 43:45

And then everything in South Lake Tahoe fairly spread out. Like it's not some of the like Sierra City for example where we picked up that seven day carry is like one street three businesses.

Tyler 43:54

So it's so easy to what a mile and a half off trail?

McKenna 43:58

Yeah something like that. So it's so easy to access and you can do everything you need. Like we were we were simultaneously ordering food, picking up our package showering and doing laundry all charging our devices charging devices all at the same time within the span of like two hours.

Tyler 44:11

That was the other thing out in in like a very short period of time.

McKenna 44:14

Yeah we that was the other thing is our stops were a lot shorter than other people's Of people do really enjoy being in towns. I do not. I hate, hate resupplying. Like I would much rather be on the trail. Um, it's it's so I wouldn't even say jarring, it's just like there's always weird people, there's weird vibes. Like, I just do not like resupplying. And so, and because we were always, you know, still doing like 27 mile days. Um, during that, we would oftentimes try to get in and out in like two hours. And there's a lot to do in that amount of time, especially if you're taking a shower and doing laundry and you're you're texting your family to be like, hey, we're still alive seven days later, and things like that. So, and there's and there's always like someone who needs you, like your bank's emailing you about something, and you're like, Oh my god, I don't want to deal with this right now. And so um, it was like resupply days, in my opinion, were very stressful. Like, I would dread them. It wasn't like, oh yay, we get to pick up food, especially because our food was the same. It wasn't new food, uh like it was just more food, but it wasn't new things. Um, and so I was much happier when it was just a hiking day, not a resupply day.

Tyler 45:14

Whereas a lot of people they would be like, oh, like I'll get a hotel, eat at a restaurant or two or three. Um, maybe I'll spend like an extra day in town just because I feel like it. Um, especially because, you know, Nobos, they have that flexibility, that ability to be like, oh, I'll just take a rest day. Um, like I we there's a survey that goes out every year for PCT hikers and asks about all their experiences. And the average longest period without being on trail was five days. Like some people the average, the average, consecutively. Consecutively. Like, yeah, like I think it was five days where like they would be off trail for five days just at some point on trail. Wow. Yeah. Whereas like we never took more than a day. That's kind of surprising. Five days. I've at that point I feel like you would lose your rhythm or lose the sense of like I don't know. At least if I don't go to the gym for a few days and I come back and get back on a treadmill, I'm like, oh man, I feel that. So I can only imagine it's more pronounced being on a trail going 30 miles a day.

McKenna 46:08

Yeah, I would imagine. I mean, I wouldn't know because we didn't do that, but just my imagination.

Tyler 46:12

Yeah, just for what you know, whatever reason, one one one thing or another that that did happen, but yeah, you know, we didn't do that.

McKenna 46:18

One thing that's also important to note is that that survey um shows uh re in recent years, like this year and last year, that the average cost that people average, not even the max, that people spend on the PCT is ten thousand dollars per person per person. Oh my gosh. That's average, which is crazy to me. Uh like I would estimate that with everything, I think we've we've talked about it. We we didn't we didn't track it closely, so we don't know for certain, but we because we had so much help from our families and because we did things very differently than a lot of people do them, I think we maybe spent 3,000 each. Like, because I mean we spent a thousand in shoes alone, because I had to go through seven pairs of shoes and they're 155 each. So wow.

Tyler 47:00

Well, you yeah, that's probably the most important thing, I imagine. Shoes were like the single biggest expense for us, really. I mean, I guess maybe outside of food, but even then. No, food was not that much. Shoes were really expensive. Is it possible that that that the $10,000 number comes from people calculating like losing income or something like that? I don't know. No, it comes from because people include all the cost of their gear, they include flights, and then they include everything on trail, like paying for like transport with trail angles or shuttles or what have you. Hotels is a big one. Hotels are huge and eating out all of these things.

McKenna 47:34

Yeah, like that's what I was about to say is that we we f forwent a lot of the luxuries because um, because of money and time, um, I mean, like we were on a budget. It wasn't we didn't have unlimited funds, like we were in a good place financially, but definitely like like you were talking about with our travels before, it's like a combination of you know hard work, but also being in a good place to do it and trying our best to do it for kind of as cheap as possible without suffering immensely.

Tyler 48:01

And so a little bit of suffering, not too much stuff.

McKenna 48:03

But so because we would talk to people who are like, Oh, I get a hotel every five days, and some of these hotels are not like a hundred bucks a night, they're like three or four hundred bucks, like because they know they're desperate, exactly, and they're in the middle of nowhere.

Tyler 48:14

Yeah, it's like mountain resorts or like middle of nowhere where you have no other option.

McKenna 48:17

So we would like we would get fast food or like um restaurant food occasionally, especially as we got really low on calories, which we can talk about later. But like we would get a burger for like $13 or something, like a burger and fries, like you know, whatever. And then other people would like be in town for I don't know, overnight, and they would easily spend like $100 on rent on restaurant food going out like to get like three or four different meals because you have the hiker hunger. So it's really easy to just blow like we talked to people who sp we we talked to one couple who spent four hundred dollars at one resupply stop. And so like if you continue I don't think that was the norm for them personally, but like complaining about how expensive it was. But like if you if cost is no expense to you, then like it's very easy to spend a lot of money, um, especially when you don't have the support that we did from our family.

Tyler 49:06

That was huge. That cut down the cost a lot for us, is that that support? So wow. So walk me through in the first few days what it's like waking up in the morning after having hiked over 20 miles on this rough terrain. I don't know how rough it was at the very beginning, but walk me through the difference between how it felt at the beginning waking up and feeling that that soreness in your body versus maybe three months in. Do you have more motivation? Do you have more of a routine now? What are the differences? Um I'd say the first few days for us, they weren't that bad actually, because we were going only like 15, 16 miles for McKenna's injury. Um and then it picked up after that.

McKenna 49:46

Well, yeah, by day what, day five, we were doing 26 miles.

Tyler 49:49

Yeah, it's true.

McKenna 49:50

So it picked up very fast.

Tyler 49:52

Yeah. I I mean, at least for me, the soreness wasn't that bad. Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't like my whole body was aching. There was aches and pains, but it wasn't like, oh my god, I take I can't take another step. Um and we did start out in Washington, which a lot of people say is like the hardest part of the trail. So we were going, you know, a lot of high elevation stuff. Um so it was it was difficult, but it wasn't it wasn't that bad. I didn't find that much difficulty in motivation because it's Washington super beautiful. We're like, you know, we're doing the thing, we're we're doing the trail. This is really exciting. Um I would say some days it was harder to motivate myself three months in. Definitely it was three months in because at that point you're like, I just hiked 30 miles yesterday, I have to do 28 today. Like maybe it's super hot, maybe it was raining. Um, like you just get so dead tired three months in. It's it's you get really, really tired and you can never recover because even if you're getting eight, nine hours of sleep a night, you just are tired all the time. Um, at least that was our experience. And and then, you know, I had an injury by that point three months in. So my like, you know, I had hip, I had hip flexor tendinitis by that point. And so I was, you know, having to stop every hour to do isometric exercises to relieve the pain, um, and just having a lot of difficulty. And then, you know, it was it was hotter because we were in the desert at that point, and just some days I was just like, I just really don't want to be doing this right now because you're three months in, you're over 1,500 miles, however many miles it is, into this hike. You've been doing this for three months and it wears you down. So it was actually harder for later on, I think, in my opinion.

McKenna 51:29

That's super interesting, actually, to hear your answer because I feel like mine is different. And I feel like we we sort of have talked about that, but not really. So that's super interesting. Because for me, I feel like at the beginning it was a lot harder for me. Obviously, I know at the end I got very like, I want to get off trail, like I'm I'm done with this, um, especially in the desert. And I I just missed being a person outside of a hiker. Like, I don't, I didn't expect that, but I was like, I miss being a multifaceted person who can like your identity just becomes subsumed.

Tyler 51:55

Like you are solely a hiker. That is all you do every waking moment of the day. You're that's all you are.

McKenna 52:01

Especially because you don't have cell reception, so you're not like in contact with other people. You're you're not you don't know what's going on in the world, you're you're just hiking. And so I missed like being a person who could curl up on the couch with a book and a cup of tea. Like that was my fantasy when I'd be hiking and really bored. I'd be like, Oh, I want to do that. That would be food. Well, yeah, obviously. Um, but just I missed like being someone who had different interests and different like connections in my life. Not even connections, like I was I was happy to not talk to people for a while, but just I don't even know how to explain it. But I I did want to get off trail at the end, and I did get quite bored and um just tired of like the physical sensations of it towards the end. But I would say, like at the beginning for me was harder. Like there was a lot of days I remember when we would go with my dad in the van where I would just be like, I don't want to go back on trail, like I really don't. And it would be really difficult to like motivate myself to actually like get out of the van and leave. Like it was like ripping off a very painful band aid. But once we got out there, it was much better. Um, but I think it was just it wasn't even like the physical pain, it was just, I don't know. It was just it just was just an adjustment period. And um, I think we were also just coming off of a very weird time of our life. Like we had just graduated, kind of had no place to live. We were just getting back from international trip and under a lot of stress to try to make this trail happen. And like I just wasn't in my rhythm yet. Um, and I think very quickly after that, though, like I for me, I'd say maybe like Oregon through NorCal and into the Sierra was like my moving and grooving section of the trail, where I think it was very different than Tyler because I wasn't dealing with an injury anymore, and he that's when his injury was starting and picking up. Um, I think that's where like why we had different experiences where for me, I was like, it was so easy to get up in the morning. Like I was tired, but I was sleeping really well on trail. We were both sleeping really well, we're having vivid dreams and stuff. I forgot about that actually.

Tyler 53:55

My dreams have become a lot less vivid.

McKenna 53:57

Yeah, I noticed that the other day. I was like, wait, I haven't dreamed like I did on trail in a long time. But um, and I have a really hard time sleeping, just in general, um, especially off trail. I always sleep so much better outside. So that was amazing to have four months of like really good sleep outside. Um, but I would say it was easier to wake up in the morning when I I was feeling good by that point. Like it just felt you know, it didn't even feel like, oh, like, do I have to do this? It was just like, of course. It's just the which is what you do. It's just what I'm doing. And I didn't really think about it. It was just kind of like, good morning, we're going.

Tyler 54:31

I will say, like, it's not that every day was miserable for me, but I did have some tough days later on, especially I got really, really underweight later on. That was a and I think part of that was why I got injured, but I got really, really unhealthily underweight, um, just because I was, I I got what's called hiker hunger.

McKenna 54:49

Um, where like everyone well, everyone has hike hunger. Like yours was that's different.

Tyler 54:53

Yeah, everyone has hiker hunger where your metabolism just picks up and you start to get hungry constantly. You can just down like 1500 calories, 2000 calories in one sitting. And then a couple hours later you're like, I'm hungry. Um, so that was something, and then um I just I had a lot of difficulty getting enough calories. And so um I was really underweight, and some days I was just so miserably hungry before I started to I started carrying around just entire jars of peanut butter and just downing peanut butter to make sure I got enough calories later on in the trail. Um before I did that, it was it was rough.

McKenna 55:23

Yeah, yeah. I would say like to to emphasize like how bad of shape that was like bad of shape, not physically like your fault, but like bad situation. Yeah, bad situation. Like that it was different than just regular hiker hunger, which everyone gets like, yeah, it was like very concerning for him. And that's a that's a very con a very big concern for men of his age. Women oftentimes don't experience the same underweight concerns, um, especially and older men too. I mean, ever everyone, it's still a concern for everyone, but it's especially a concern for his age group, which we actually knew, especially because he has a high metabolism, we knew going into the trail that that was going to be a problem, and we were trying to do what we could to prevent it from becoming even more of a problem, but by just downing as many calories as possible when I went into town, like eating as much as I could. It was hard because we were only stopping like once a week, and so he just wasn't able to get in and that's I guess I'll like touch on uh the the calorie aspect of the trail because that was another thing that was incredibly hard, in my opinion.

Hunter 56:20

Please.

McKenna 56:21

Um like you're so you're burning. I think we we estimated because we did some research, we estimated that we were burning about 6,000 calories a day because of our high mileage. Wow. Um, some days were probably closer to like four to five thousand when we were doing lighter days, especially like lighter elevation gain and things like that. Um, but generally I think we were burning about six thousand calories a day. And so it's very difficult to carry enough food to replenish that. And so we were eating still like 3,000 calories a day, which is obviously in real life, that's a lot of calories in normal life. Um, but we were just, I mean, you just feel this like visceral hunger. I don't even know how to explain it because it is so different than I mean, I've been really hungry other times in my life, and it is so different. It's not the kind of hunger where your stomach like cramps and you kind of maybe start to get a headache because you haven't eaten in a while, or you're just like, wow, I could eat a big meal right now. It's like you are so uncomfortable and it's almost like on a metabolic level, like you can feel your body screaming for calories, like you can feel that you just do not have enough fuel to like function at the way that you need to. Um, and so that was very difficult. I for it's really interesting too because um, usually for me, like when I exert myself physically, my appetite goes down. And so for the first couple weeks of the trail, I was like force feeding myself. Um, and then one day, it was about like 250, 300 miles into the trail. Um, a switch just flipped one afternoon, like literally in the course of an afternoon, I just became hungry and it never stopped. And it was so weird to me that that could just happen so fast. Like it wasn't a gradual thing. Um, and obviously it ramped up from there. Um, but like we got back to my dad's van after that stretch, and I was like, I think I think you need to buy more food, please. Um, because we were just like downing food like crazy. Um, and that continued to be more and more and more, as especially as we started pushing longer miles, like doing 30s consistently, it's like your body's just screaming. And so um I made the mistake of because I was trying not to spend money in towns, I did not eat enough, um, especially as we were approaching the high Sierra, which is a very difficult section of trail. Um and so on that seven-day stretch that I was talking about before, that's actually good that I used that as an example. Um, the stretch from Sierra City to Kennedy Meadows North, I was so hungry that I was crying myself to sleep every night and not sleeping, like because I it was so uncomfortable. And again, it wasn't like your stomach cramping. It was like, I just like you just don't feel okay. Like I was miserable. And it it's so crazy the way it consumes your brain. Like I would try so hard. I would listen to music, I would try to talk to Tyler, I would think about, I would try to get myself thinking about something else. And just every single thought is about food. And it's it's like an almost like so involuntary, which to me was just a weird feeling. I had never felt anything like that. And I like, yeah, it's just not something you experience in your life.

Tyler 59:18

Some days our conversation should be about food for like several hours out of the day, which wasn't good. We tried to stop doing that because it didn't help the situation. But we just talk about like, what do you want to eat? Like, what do you want to, like, what are you thinking about? And it'd just be food.

McKenna 59:29

Yeah.

Tyler 59:29

Um, it's gotta be a deeply embedded human instinct to have that psychological shift after reaching that point, like for so long. Is it that you didn't have food, or you're like, hey, I have the food, but if I eat it all now, I'm gonna be screwed in three days.

McKenna 59:46

Yeah. So we had Tyler had a watch that he wore, it was like a $10 watch from Walmart, and it came in handy because it was chimed every hour, which we would eat every single hour. So we'd wake up and we'd eat breakfast, and then we would start hiking, and we'd go maybe a couple hours because we would start hiking. It depended on the section of trail and the amount of daylight, but maybe on average we started hiking around like six a.m.

Tyler 1:00:08

Yeah.

McKenna 1:00:08

And so then we would eat our first snack of the day starting at nine, and then we eat every single hour with a bigger snack in the middle for lunch. Sometimes we would stop for maybe 20 minutes for lunch, and then a lot of days though, we didn't even take a break. Especially later on.

Tyler 1:00:21

Yeah.

McKenna 1:00:21

Like we didn't take breaks most days.

Tyler 1:00:23

We just we just walked the entire day.

McKenna 1:00:25

And you just walk while you you eat while you walk.

Tyler 1:00:27

You just I mean you stop if you need to go to the bathroom, like, and then you you stop for like a couple minutes and then you just walk. So you get up, you walk, you don't stop.

McKenna 1:00:34

You know, like there was days I didn't even sit down. Like you would, you know, you just wake up in the morning, you leave, and then you sit down when you go to bed at night. And so um it was helpful though, because then you had kind of an a constant stream of calories going in. But like we would look at the like, let's say you're eating a pack of fruit snacks or something, and you're like, I just burned that in 10 minutes or less. Like it was so depressing. You're like, I I can't you can't keep up with how many calories you're burning. And that, and like you were saying, you have an allotted amount of food for every day, and we had a system where every day was the same in terms of food, which is uh going back to the like the way we did our resupply boxes, that is a risk because you can get really sick of the food that you're having. And by the end, I was sick of some of our food, but it wasn't to the point that I like couldn't eat it because you're just so hungry, it doesn't matter. Um, but we ended up eating basically the same thing every day, but the dinners were different. We had like eight different dinners on rotation, but um had the same set of snacks, and so like you can't eat snacks from the next day, otherwise, you're gonna be in even more pain the next day. And so, like, especially during that stretch, because I didn't eat enough before the stretch and I didn't bring extra calories on that stretch of trail, like I was so miserable. Like, I could bring myself to tears just thinking about food, which is crazy. Wow. Um, and then after that, I really got scared and like I ended up eating so much when we stopped in town that I like I was sick for like two days. It was so bad.

Tyler 1:01:57

That's the problem. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. It's like we almost felt like our stomachs got used to having small amounts of food continuously, and it was really, really difficult to stuff ourselves in town. Like we would get so sick trying to eat enough calories in town.

McKenna 1:02:11

In like two hours.

Tyler 1:02:12

In two hours, yeah. And it would be uncomfortable to eat that much food at once. And like we would try to, but it was just it was just really hard. Um, and so to to bring up an experience of mine much later on the trail with calories, um, later on in the desert, and at this point we're like 2,000 miles into the trail. I started getting so like food deprived that I was like really, really lethargic. Like to the point where like I was like really struggling to get our miles in because I my body just was like, what are you doing? You need to have calories. Like I had burned through enough of my fat stores that my body was like, you don't like you are in trouble. You need to eat food. Um, like there was this lemonade mix that um some trailing thles had left. Um, and I had like I took like 2,000 calories worth of lemonade because I was that, that in trouble. I was like, I I need food, I need calories now.

McKenna 1:03:04

We were considering doing an emergency hitch into a town that's difficult to hitch to because like he was not okay. I was really concerned actually.

Tyler 1:03:11

Yeah. I and yeah. So very luckily I had that, and then I I randomly found some food in a trail register. Um, it was really weird, just randomly sitting there. I was like, sure, I'll take this. Um, and then the next stop is when I started eating peanut butter, I think is what it was. Yeah, um, in order to get enough calories. And after that, I was fine because I was oh go ahead.

McKenna 1:03:29

Sorry, I hadn't mean that.

Tyler 1:03:30

Because I was downing like I had like several thousand calories with the peanut butter in my pack that I could just dig out and eat. So after that, I was okay, I was okay. But it it got to the point where just the deficit over months just it really got to me. And it's especially with longer resupplies, you know, anything more than three, four days, it's really hard to carry more than like three, thirty, five hundred calories a day. Um, because the weight is just so much. You it it's it just makes it it's more trouble than it's worth trying to carry that that much weight for that over that period of time, because yeah, it's really hard that wears on you.

McKenna 1:04:03

Especially with an ultralight pack, it's not made to carry like 60 pounds or whatever.

Tyler 1:04:07

Yeah, it hurts. It hurts a lot when you go over the weight limit and which break. Yeah, which oh my gosh, I can't imagine that disaster. Like in the Sierra, we did um was it eight days at the at the end of it? It was eight.

McKenna 1:04:19

Yeah.

Tyler 1:04:19

Yeah. Um, so that was unfortunate. But wow. What is it like taking steps trying to go up a hill with that feeling? Like, I mean, McKenna is describing you as like seriously in trouble, and you yourself said it was like so rough. You felt lethargic. What I mean, is that something you ever experienced in your preparation in Patagonia or in in Spain? Or you just didn't get to that point because you hadn't been burning as many calories that long? No, definitely not, because it's it's something you can't it you can't really simulate that. It's not the same feeling as just being tired, it's it's different.

McKenna 1:04:53

Um yeah, it took us like two, two and a half months to reach that point on the trail.

Tyler 1:04:58

Of like sustained, you know, calorie deficit. Wow.

McKenna 1:05:01

So And I was oh go ahead. No, no, you go ahead. No, I was gonna say I was really lucky that I didn't have issues being underweight, but like because I had that really uncomfortable experience, I like bought I I brought more food on trail with me, which did make things heavier. Um like I noticed the pack weight was heavier, but at the same time I was feeling a lot more comfortable. So for me, the I struck a balance that was worth it. Like I'm at the end, I discovered um bringing frosting because I I like for me, I would not be able to eat peanut butter straight, but I could eat frosting straight. Well, I like peanut butter, but I couldn't eat it straight like that. But I I I love frosting, so I would like I would have to restrain myself because every night I would want to eat an entire tub of frosting. And like you can, you can eat whatever you want on trail because you're burning so many calories, they just fall right off. Like that, I mean, I guess this is like a like relevant for me. I think that was a very difficult thing mentally um to kind of realize that I had sort of deprived myself of a lot of foods, not necessarily foods that I should have been eating because they're like processed and not good for you, but um, foods that I had not had since I was a kid, or that foods that I had not let myself eat for a long time, having the freedom. To just be able to eat them with no guilt was a really weird experience. And I think in some ways it was really nice. In other ways, I think that caused a lot of like unintended or like unexpected thoughts, consequences.

Tyler 1:06:33

Like you're feeling guilty or something because you're carrying that weight from the past. Like, oh, this is a bad food I shouldn't be eating. But then you're doing it like in in terms of high quantities that you need to do.

McKenna 1:06:43

You have to. Like it's it's like you're like, this is I need to do this because I can't like it's more unhealthy to deprive myself of calories. Yeah. Your your metabolism literally changes, like it shoots up. And so you have to fuel yourself properly. But I think for me, like this as that aspect of the hike was probably actually the most difficult mentally. Like out of all the trials and tribulations, I think that was um the most difficult part for me, which I did not expect at all, especially because I I think I think I told you I was a competitive dancer growing up. And so, like for me, I thought, oh, it's been like four years since I was in that world. So I felt like my issues with like body image and my relationship with food, I thought it had improved. And so that was, I think for me, really disappointing and like just disheartening and to realize that I still had a lot of work to do in that area of like I think my package just arrived. I'm sorry, I got really distracted. Oh, all right, anyways. Um, I I think it was just difficult to realize that I was not in the place I wanted to be when it came to that. And so um yeah, I I actually feel like every day a good chunk of like my mental load was thinking about that. So like I would feel joy at being able to eat whatever I wanted, but then I would feel uh right after that, guilt at like eating what things that I didn't feel like I should be eating. Um, and just it was weird to feel like because I mean you you experience such rapid weight loss no matter what, pretty much on the trail, especially right at the beginning. It was really, really, really fast. And so that was just like it really messed with my head a lot, where it was like, oh, I like this. But then I was like, but I shouldn't like this because it's not really healthy or natural. But then it was like, wait, how can I make myself lose more weight by like underfueling myself? And I think that that was part of the issue as I was like underfueling myself to try to lose more weight, and that was like you know, as not a body, your body's gonna tell you, I don't know if that's yeah this is the right move. And then in the yeah, and then it's just it was like kind of bringing up like disordered eating habits from like my teenage years and sort of like just like a lot of just a lot of like kind of a heavy place in my mind to be when it came to that. So that was really disappointing. Um, definitely have to like, you know, do more work in that category, but yeah, that sounds difficult.

Tyler 1:09:08

And to make matters even more complicated, you're you're not any longer in that social network anymore. Like you're not in the dance, uh competitive dancing anymore. You're not with the same people who are also trying to maybe have similar diet habits as you to accomplish similar goals. You're doing something that's profoundly difficult. Profoundly unusual isn't the right word, but in if you break down what the word really means, it's just not usual, not typical. So it makes sense to be having uh atypical or unusual um diet habits, I guess, on trail, because you you gotta feel a difficult process. I mean, I eat an entire container of Oreos in one sitting. I like multiple times.

McKenna 1:09:49

I ate an entire cake by myself.

Tyler 1:09:50

Yeah, an ice cream cake from Walmart. Sounds awesome.

McKenna 1:09:53

Yeah, it was so fun. Like every trail town or like every stuff, I'd be like, what thing, what new thing can I try?

Tyler 1:10:00

We made a list of all the foods of like what can we eat normally? What can we not eat normally that we can eat on trail?

McKenna 1:10:04

Fettuccini, Alfredo, like so much stuff that's just so calorie.

Tyler 1:10:08

We we ate an entire half gallon of ice cream hiking out of a town one day back to trail just together.

McKenna 1:10:14

Like we were on the side of the road walking.

Tyler 1:10:15

Yeah, in like what 20, 30 minutes, we just downed an entire half gallon of like triple chocolate ice cream, whatever random brand they had in the town.

McKenna 1:10:23

Some woman at the trailhead was like, it's kind of cold, why are you eating ice cream? And we're like, don't worry about it.

Tyler 1:10:29

8 a.m. in the morning, and like we're just like pulling up to this trailhead and with a giant empty container of ice cream.

McKenna 1:10:36

But yeah, I mean it was like it was fun, but it was just weird, and yeah, I don't know. It was a strange experience.

Tyler 1:10:43

What was it like going from such different uh going through different phases of the trail, different geography, different landscapes, different um you know, rain patterns, dryness, humidity? Did it become apparent to you on a daily basis having hiked so long throughout the day? Or did it did you was it just suddenly like, oh, we're we're in a desert now? Or I don't know. I'm just trying to imagine at what point you're like noticing these geographical changes in landscape. It happened really often, actually. Like, of course, there's the broader differences, like northern Washington is different from southern Washington is different from Oregon is different from Northern California, etc. But even within like the span of a day, if you hiking 25 miles a day, you see a lot of geography changes. Like we'd start um in one place and then end up like someplace look completely different at the end at the end of the day, which was really interesting to me because I'd never done that kind of long distance hiking. The most I'd done was, you know, I'd just driven in a car, done road trips, and you notice a landscape changing, but you expect that when you're going 60 miles an hour on a on a freeway. You don't expect it when you're, you know, going by foot for just in the span of a single day. You you notice some, I mean, so a lot of times it wasn't, it was the same, but some days it'd be like, wow, this is like so different from where we woke up this morning, which was really interesting.

McKenna 1:12:02

It happened a lot in Washington where we'd all of a sudden be in like a volcanic area or something, or like a meadow, and then like uh it would get really dry, and then all of a sudden it would be really lush again. Um, and I I vividly remember the day that we entered the desert. We we were coming down from I think we woke up at like 9,000 feet. We were it was our last day in like the high Sierra before we hit Kennedy Meadows South. And the second half of the day, we just it was like boom, like within the span of one hour, we were down in the desert. Like it was so crazy. It was like I felt like we were in the mountains, and then I was like, we're in the desert. And I remember it was such a cool feeling because I felt like because we we've both lived in the desert now for a while, like I was like, oh, we're home. Like where we just walked home. It was such a cool feeling. And then, of course, after like two weeks, you're like, get me out of here. This sucks. But just it was a really cool feeling because it was so familiar to us.

Tyler 1:12:52

It was it felt like just being back in our element and it was warm and it was a really drastic shift because you're going from like 9,000 feet to what, like 5,000, something like that. Yeah. A drastic elevation change going from like granite, like pine trees, whatever in the Sierra.

McKenna 1:13:10

Yeah, and it had poured the on us the night before. So we were really cold. All of our clothes were wet. We actually, to be safe, we got up and we couldn't put on our clothes. Like we we had to wear like our puff puffy jackets and I think like our rain pants for a while before we felt warm enough from hiking to put on our like safely put on our wet clothes without getting like hypothermia. So like that morning we're like shivering on the side of the trail, putting on soaking wet clothes in like 30 degree weather, and then like waking up from underneath a tree. Yeah, that's like the tent soaked, everything's soaked, and then we're getting down and it's like scorching in the sun. It was such a like such whiplash.

Tyler 1:13:47

Dried off quickly, I guess. Did any geographical formations or parts of the trail catch you off guard in terms of things like compared to different things you've seen in the past? You've been to South America, you've been to Europe, you've been to Iceland, right? You've been to Japan, all sorts of places. So, did anything, given that it's right here in in our quote backyard on the West Coast, did anything surprise you or in that it was so different from anything else you'd seen? I would say the Sierra like even though I've lived in Nevada all my life, I did I really didn't do much in the Sierra. Um I went to Yosemite, you know, like two times, something like that, but I hadn't spent very much time at all in the Sierra, especially the high Sierra. Um it was not what I was expecting, but it was really stunning. And it was and we kept talking about how you can't really capture the high Sierra very well in pictures because it doesn't really because the granite, um, especially higher up where there where there's where there's no trees or above the tree line, um, reflects the sun. And so it's just this huge expanse of like kind of white, just bright stone, just off in the distance. You can see like alpine lakes, you can see like shrubs um and some trees. Um, and it wasn't what I was expecting. It was really, really beautiful, but yeah, you just can't really capture it very well in pictures. None of the pictures I took turned out very well there.

McKenna 1:15:09

Yeah. I I yeah, that was a bummer. I would say I wasn't surprised to find it in the US, like like your original question, but I would say um I it was a lot better than I was expecting. Like everyone raves about the high Sierra, but I kind of was like, especially after looking at pictures, I was like, I feel like they're over um, what's the word? Like overestimating. Overrated. Yeah, yeah, I feel like it felt like it was overrated. Um, and then when I got there, I was like, oh no, I get why they had this has all the hype around it.

Tyler 1:15:36

Like it was like it was the highlight of the trail.

McKenna 1:15:38

Yeah, it was gorgeous. And I mean, I I do wish that we had been able to enjoy that section better. We were incredibly stressed during that section because we were cutting it really close with the snow window. Like the weather was starting to turn and get really cold. Um, we weren't we didn't have enough like warm clothes to be safe if things turned much more. Like we actually, the the night before we went over the highest pass, that was like the big relief where it's like, okay, we're we're done with our last major pass and the highest one on the the entire trail. Um, it hailed and thunderstormed really badly on us the night before. Like we were like we our tent leaked, like everything. It was so bad.

Tyler 1:16:14

Lightning and whatnot.

McKenna 1:16:15

Yeah, like for our tree line. Um, we were like at the treeline. We were like at the tree line.

Tyler 1:16:20

We were like eight or nine thousand feet, which that that highest pass is at 13,000 feet. It's called Forester. It is like it's a big deal on the PCT because if you've made it over forester going southbound, you were out of the Sierra, whereas coming northbound is like like you're entering the Sierra, it's like this huge barrier of getting over this 13,000 foot pass. But a little side note there.

McKenna 1:16:39

Yeah, and and we actually found out that we barely kind of made it. So we talked to some friends who went over. So it was actually cool. We were the first people over Forester Pass of the Day, which is not not that exciting, but it was it was just a cool experience. Like you could tell because of all the hail and snow, like you could see that there was no footprints, and we did it first thing in the morning. I think we actually camped closer to like 10 or 11,000 feet because it was like maybe two hours or three hours before we got over it. Um booked it up there, yeah. But we were the first people over of the day, which is not actually that noteworthy. It was just a surreal experience, especially because we were like on cloud nine, being like, oh my god, we might actually finish this trail. Um, but we talked to some friends who went over later that day. We didn't know this until like a couple weeks later, but they said that literally as they crossed over the pass, it started snowing. And so, like, we barely kind of made the snow window. I know there were some people that still went after them, but they talked about um like the temperatures were really low. Like we would not, yeah, like we would not have been okay. We wouldn't have had the gear to be okay for that. And so, um, and then there was more like snow and um just inclement weather, like the thunderstorms, afternoon thunderstorms in the high Sierra are a really big concern. There was some days where we weren't sure if we could get over a pass because it's really dangerous to be that high up when there's like exposed to LM.

Tyler 1:17:54

Like we were really stressed. Like every day we're like, okay, can we get over this pass or the next pass? Like sometimes we did like two or three passes a day, and every time to be like, is there gonna be thunder? Is there gonna be lightning? And can we get over safely? Horrible. Yeah, it always was like looked like it was threatening rain. And so we actually um were satellite texting Ken's dad to get weather updates to see if we could safely make it out, because one thing about the Sierra is that there's not that many what we call exits, which is like getting off trail. Um, there's not that many of them. And to exit, you have to hike like sometimes like 13 miles just to get to a parking lot where you hope there's somebody you can hitch with. So if you're in the Sierra, you can be stuck in the Sierra and not be able to get out if you're you can be like in a day or two days from an exit. So you want to know what's the weather? Am I gonna be okay? Am I gonna be safe? Um, so it's Sierra's no joke.

McKenna 1:18:45

Yeah, especially at that time of year.

Tyler 1:18:47

Especially, yeah, we were we were, you know, in late September, which is like you you want to be getting out of there in at that time of year.

McKenna 1:18:55

Yeah, so that was incredibly stressful. So I do wish that we would have been able to enjoy it more. And the northbounders have a very different challenge in the high Sierra because they're going when there's a lot of snow already on the ground, but there's no risk in like May or June of it snowing on them.

Tyler 1:19:08

Um it's not super cold temperatures.

McKenna 1:19:10

Yeah, well, yeah, probably yeah, it's always relatively cold, but not yeah, not the same as like when it's turning into winter. Um, and so yeah, it was difficult as we were kind of approaching and passing exits to make a decision like, are we gonna do this or not? And like my dad sent an ominous text that was like, Yeah, a ranger said that there is something, some weather event gonna happen on the day that we were trying to go over, I think, Forrester or something. And so we were like, what does that mean? What do we do? Um, we ended up just keeping on going because we had had good luck so far. Um, but it we we ended up being okay for everything, which we're we're very thankful for. But it was there's a lot of most of the trail is very much just you just walk, but uh there are times where there's like really big decisions to be made that affect your safety and stuff like that.

Tyler 1:19:55

Isn't it nice that we have the capability to satellite text people now? What a luxury that was huge. That that did help us out quite a bit.

McKenna 1:20:01

We both got the new iPhone before the trail, kind of not really because of that, um, but that was a really nice thing because then we didn't have to buy like an a garment in reach or whatever. It was we just had the satellite texting on our phone, so that was super nice. I think they're gonna remove it, which is really sad. Really? I think it's only two years free or something.

Tyler 1:20:20

Oh boy, yeah. It was really useful. Um, but yeah. Uh did you use solar-powered battery?

McKenna 1:20:27

We did not. No.

Tyler 1:20:28

How did you charge your device? So only when you stopped at a town where you were able to recharge your devices?

McKenna 1:20:33

Yeah. So we had a small battery pack that had like quite a bit of charge in it, and we would have to charge that up in town, and then also both of our phones and our Kindles and our headlamps. So there's a lot of things. Um, luckily, my Kindle holds a charge for like a month and a half. And then my Tyler was in a in an unexpected turn of events. Tyler ended up being the photographer, journaler, journalist, I don't know, and then um the navigator of our hike, which is kind of like the roles are reversed. I mean, when we travel internationally, usually we kind of trade off navigating, but I take most of the pictures and do most of like the writing and documenting just, I don't know, just cuz, but I was really not feeling it on the trail, and Tyler got really into it and he took a lot of really amazing pictures. So um his phone was the one that we used most often, and mine was kind of there as backup. And then when we had shorter resupply stints or when we both had enough battery and we were within like three days of a resupply, um, then we could listen to music, but we really couldn't listen to music for a lot of the trail because we had to conserve battery. So, like we'd put our phones on airplane mode, put them on low power mode, um, and then he would use his and only turn it on, like usually partway into the day, either if we reached a fork that we couldn't tell where the trail went, um, or like we wanted to know how close we were to camp at the end of the day or whatever, and then he would journal at night. Um, and then my phone would just be off. So I would actually not charge my phone a lot of times for like three weeks sometimes, like especially when we would go to a town and there was maybe only one outlet. Tyler's phone was the priority to charge. So a lot of times mine was just hanging out, just off for weeks at a time. And then I would turn it on to be like, I'm alive, and then put it and put it away again. Um, but uh, we relied on the battery pack, and we never be came close to like having an issue with that.

Tyler 1:22:17

We were never like, oh my god, we're gonna run a battery or something like that.

McKenna 1:22:19

But we were also very conservative.

Tyler 1:22:20

We were very conservative with our you know managing the battery. Like we would shut it off and just use it as little as possible and like just constantly being aware, like, okay, what are we at? Well, how much is left in the battery pack, you know, and just num one not the number one, but one of the number one priorities getting into town is like, okay, where's an outlet? Let's start charging because like it takes a while, you know. Our our ability to navigate was on our phone. Like we had this map called Far Out that's actually really, really useful. And like like over 90% of the people on the trail use it because it has a map of the entire trail and it has like camp spots, it has water, it has so many different little icons and information about the trail that help you just so much. So every day we'd be using that to check where we are, what's going on, all of that. Sounds very helpful. Yeah, and it's it's also um like crowdsourced because you can leave comments. So that was huge, especially later on in the desert when we're worried about water sources is checking like to see what the current status of the water sources are. See, is it dry, is it running, you know, is it really disgusting? Is there a rat in it? You know, that sort of thing. Speaking of water, so you talked about how you go in in many different climates and and from the mountains to the desert in an hour. How much water did you keep on you at all times?

McKenna 1:23:31

It really depended on the day. The temperature was a the biggest factor that influenced that and the distance we were going, but um, I would say we so we had like 700 milliliter bottles, four of them each.

Tyler 1:23:43

And roughly like two-thirds of a liter.

McKenna 1:23:45

Yeah. We wouldn't always fill all four depending on the day, especially where like knowing where we had to stop for water in the day. So, for example, like in the desert, sometimes we'd have to stop 10 to 15 miles before camp as our last water source before camp. And so then in the morning, we obviously wouldn't fill all of our water capacity because it's like, well, we're gonna fill it in like 10 miles or whatever. Um, but then other days when we wanted to go the whole day, because we we tried whenever we could to go the whole day without stopping for water because which a lot of people don't do that. A lot of people prefer to stop every like maybe 10 to 15 miles, sometimes even like every eight miles for water because they don't like to carry um water. But I would much prefer to carry a little bit of extra weight and to have better quality water sources, sure water sources, and to just not have to stop so often. Like I hate stopping my momentum. And we also have a gravity filter, which there's pros and cons to that. I swear by it now, because you you just leave it and it just does all the filtering for you.

Tyler 1:24:39

You don't have to like sit there and you just scoop it up in the container and just hang it from a tree.

McKenna 1:24:44

Yeah, and the filter it just filters through with gravity.

Tyler 1:24:46

Um and so and it's like the most popular filter that people use is called the Sawyer squeeze. So you have to like scoop up in this bag and then like force it through the filter yourself. And they burst sometimes, but especially like later on, the filter can get kind of clogged up the more you use it. So you can it takes it can be a lot of force to you know put it through the filter. So um, but it makes it easier to just do a liter at a time and just stop when there's water, which works really well in a place like Washington where you're like crossing five streams a day. But we did, you know, some people ran into some trouble that we like people we knew were like running out of water in the desert because they weren't willing to carry for the entire day because they like water sources can just sometimes not be there in the desert.

McKenna 1:25:29

And and I will say the reason why I think we were a bit more prepared for that, aside from living in the desert and hiking in the desert the last four years, um, was I went through, I spent like three weeks prepping all of our plan for the trail, which is not normal. Um, but I had this whole spreadsheet and I had done historical research on the water sources to see like year after year were the were these sources consistent. So if a source had been maybe th three years out of the last eight years it had been running, I would not count that as reliable. I wouldn't, you know, say, oh, let's rely on that source being there. It was only when every single year it's without fail running at that time of year in the fall, then I would count that as a reliable source. So I ahead of time. And some of them were dry, they're gonna be a little bit more than a little bit that we were counting on. So like water caches from trail local trail angels in the desert are incredibly helpful.

Tyler 1:26:21

Um to the point where like it wouldn't even be possible to do some check sections of trail without without water caches.

McKenna 1:26:27

Yeah. But but like the desert didn't have as many water issues as I expected, especially like we didn't have to drink out of nasty cisterns and like cow poop puddles and stuff, because we planned out our sources to carry when we needed to and things like that. And um, I guess to finish, like the what I was saying before about our filter is that the the other pro of our filter is it has a really um large capacity, so it's a four-liter dirty bag, which you can't actually really store water in there because of the zip closure. But the the clean bag that it filters into is also four liters and it has a cap that's very secure. So whenever we needed to in the desert, we could carry an extra four liters. Um and then we'd obviously have to split that between the two of us. But it was also nice we could kind of get rid of it throughout the day. So, like on some of the carries, like especially because Tyler carried most of our, like he carried our food up until a certain number of days, then I would help with the food, but I carried all of our gear. Um, and so he carried his own sleeping stuff, but like I carried, you know, the tent and all all the other stuff, all the other gear that was shared. Um, and so like we would start maybe like the day with four liters, but then as we would go, we would each like as we'd empty a bottle on our person, we would um dump out from that four-liter bag to kind of like redistribute the weight and not have me just having four liters extra on my back all day, which was very helpful.

Tyler 1:27:47

Yeah. So like at some points we were carrying like a total of 10 liters, three liters per person in our bottles, and then an extra four liters in the bag. Wow. Um, which was that wasn't typical. That was not typical. That was very rare, very heavy. Yeah.

McKenna 1:27:58

Plus food and plus food and everything.

Tyler 1:28:00

So those that was those were rough days. But that only happened very rarely in the desert when there just wasn't a water source that we could use for, you know, maybe even like a full day. And then we need to carry extra in order to be able to to live. Um, so but most of the times if we were carrying extra water in the in the desert, it was like maybe like a liter or two. Uh For water carries. And you mentioned that the light um ultra-light packs aren't designed for this kind of weight distribution. So did it where did it dig in? Like your shoulders? Yeah, your shoulders. Yeah.

McKenna 1:28:29

And just the packs were falling apart. Yeah, like by the end of the trail. Like they had massive holes that Tyler was trying to stay on top of by sewing like every few days.

Tyler 1:28:37

Um but yeah, I know the packs do hurt quite a bit if you go over their weight capacity, which we did do a couple times, which was not fun.

McKenna 1:28:44

Yeah. And I mean it did help though, because when you're doing it at as a couple and you're you're hiking every day together, you can share so much of your gear. So like we had a two-person ultralight tent, um, but then we would, you know, we would eat out of the ex the same silicone bag. Like we Tyler would just eat half the meal and then pass the bag to me. So we had one spoon, one bag, like one set of cookware, um, one trowel for you know cat holes and like one water filter, one headlamp, even. Like we we didn't have we just shared the headlamp. Like, yeah, so it would yeah, one charging core, just everything was kind of in almost everything was shared except for food and water, um, which and obviously sleep gear. Um, but that was really helpful that allowed us to be able to do longer carries and stuff. So Tyler would carry food up to it depended, but like four to five days, depending on the length of the carry. And then beyond that, I would take the extra days, and then we'd kind of alternate every other day who got rid of their food because obviously your pack gets a lot lighter.

Tyler 1:29:43

Yeah, that's such an interesting thing to find a balance between like carrying the necessary gear, but maintaining like a workable pack weight distribution and comfort level. Because you you don't want that, I imagine, digging into your shoulders. That's probably the only thing, at least I would be thinking about the whole time. Like, oh dang. So, did you ever experience a moment where you didn't have enough water where you were like, dang, we really need to like get to a stream, or you managed to that's impressive. Like over 2,000, remind me, 2650.

McKenna 1:30:10

Yeah, 2650 miles. Yeah, that's or 55 miles. But yeah, technique, I mean, like we would plan on running out of water because we didn't want to be carrying extra water because or we didn't have the capacity to carry even more. So we would plan, we'd know, especially because we knew kind of how much we drink every hour, we'd know, like, okay, we're gonna be the last hour we're not gonna have water until we get to this town, but there's a guaranteed water source at the town, like no question.

Tyler 1:30:34

We were never more than like an hour out from a guaranteed water source. And we'd plan dry. Yeah, we didn't plan that. It was like we were like, you know, we don't we don't want to carry like an extra liter of water because you know that matters. Yeah, so but yeah, we were never in like dire straits, which was nice. Yeah, I'm very glad that happened.

McKenna 1:30:50

Mostly due to planning.

Tyler 1:30:51

Yeah, absolutely. So, talking about the food and shelter situation and and water, we're like getting into the topic of the nitty-gritty like survival. These are the basic necessities that we need to keep going in any situations, whether it's off or on the trail. Um and I imagine that there's probably like a disconnect between what people think and maybe romanticize the trail to be, and what the daily lived experience is, maybe physically and mentally. But was there where where was your headspace at on a on a daily-to-day basis? I know there's nuance there, it changes, it's not a constant like, oh, I was happy that 100% of the time. There's there's no way that's how it was. But was there an average feeling you had? Was there a um a center uh talking about the headspace you had as you're on the trail for 12 hours, 10 to 12 hours a day? What were you thinking about? Were you talking? Just what was that like experiencing something tough for so long?

McKenna 1:31:53

Yeah, I would say my headspace was neutral positive. Like I generally was feeling good, but it wasn't like euphoric all the time for sure. Um, but I would say I dissociated a lot. Like I just wouldn't, I hours would pass and I wouldn't even have any recollection of what I thought of. Like you just kind of get into this really weird headspace and rhythm where you just are just going. It's like you know, you're not really it. Almost was like the harder I thought about something, if I was like, oh, okay, like what job am I gonna get when I get off trail or something like that? It would like make the time pass slower and it would be less enjoyable. But if I was just like not just existing, it felt like it just kind of flew by and it was quite enjoyable. I just I felt like I didn't have a care in the world, like life was so simple. It was, I I missed that a lot. Just and then we would, I would say we we had a lot of great conversations and we talked a lot more than I thought we would, which was helpful immensely for boredom. Also, even we talked about uh how just having another person there, even if you're not talking, really makes you not feel as isolated and not as bored. Um, but I would say, would you would you say, Tyler, that we talked for maybe like a third of the trail?

Tyler 1:33:02

I don't know, because it it fluctuated sometimes. Like sometimes we would talk like maybe only like an hour or two a day. Yeah like when we're hiking, especially if it's like a harder day. And other times we'd be talking for hours without being like the whole day, just like especially at the beginning of the trail. Yeah. Um so I don't know, but a a significant portion of the time was talking. Um I just I don't know what the Yeah, I don't know what the percentages.

McKenna 1:33:22

And then we actually weren't able to listen to music that often just.

Tyler 1:33:25

Which I thought we would be able to more, which is kind of disappointing.

McKenna 1:33:28

But but I mean, even we got bored of our music too, and so it it was it was all right.

Tyler 1:33:32

But I mean, a lot of it you're just I don't even I it's kind of even hard to remember, but it wasn't like I had I obviously thought about things, but it wasn't like it was almost just like letting thoughts drift in and out of your mind, kind of in like a I don't know how to describe like meditative stage in a trance, like you're just so uh your thoughts are really embodied, maybe to put it that way. They're not abstract thinking about like oh what you know, my my bills or yeah, like my bank's gonna have like there's fraud on my card, I have to resolve this, like all these general anxieties. Yeah, yeah, things like that. It was really just I'm here, this is my existence. I'm I'm walking along this trail. Do you find that when you hike, you kind of just fall into the sound of the footsteps along on the gravel and just become kind of like hypnotic, yeah.

McKenna 1:34:23

Yeah. But yeah, what would you say, Tyler?

Tyler 1:34:25

Yeah, what would you say? I would agree in general it's it's kind of the same of like neutral positive, where like you can't be enjoying every second of every day. Like the majority of the time was just kind of neutral. Just you're doing this thing and you you see beauty, you see these really amazing sights, but then other times you're like, yeah, today was just kind of like I didn't see anything special. We just it wasn't super hard, it wasn't super easy, it just, it just was. Um and so, like at the beginning of the trail, you know, I think we both tried to, I don't know, have like more purposeful thoughts of like thinking about like you're like you, you know, you think you're like, oh, I have so much time on my hands. I could like think about so many things, like plan so many things out, but like you can't really because you don't have you're not writing anything down, you're you're having to focus on not falling on your face as you're walking. Um, and so a lot of times, yeah, it was just that trance where I would slip into just like time would fly by. Um, and it you had to kind of like not try to do that because there were a couple quite a few times where I would like be like, I want to be in that state, but I can't because I'm trying too hard. Um and so I just and so like the hours would pass by super slowly because you know it's yeah, I'm I can't fall into that. So it would it would be better on those days where I could just like from the day I wake up to when we stop at night, just be in that trance um where you're not bored, but you're not active either, really. Like you do have thoughts, you like things pass through your head, but nothing really sticks. It just kind of flows through. Um it is sort of meditative. Um, and that that was the mindset that I had a lot later on in the trail after like the initial start, um where it's it's boredom, yes, but it's it's not not quite it's not horror, it's yeah, it's not yeah, it's not like it's not like agonizing. Yeah, it's agonizing if you try to force it. If you're like if you do fall out of it and you're like, oh my god, I'm so bored. But if you are able to enter that state, it's it's not so bad. And it's it is it is very simple. And it's there's a very clear reward pathway of like, I made it to camp. I made my miles for the day, we're we're inching closer to the the final goal.

McKenna 1:36:27

That was another nice part of planning out basically every day. And we did switch around our camp spots a lot, but kind of knowing how many miles we were gonna hike every day was really nice because then there's not that like, I don't know, should I stop now or should I just make myself hike four more miles? And like you, it's a different sense of satisfaction when you're like, this is the miles that I am supposed to hike today, and I did them. Like point blank, you're like, I did it. And there's not this like, oh, but I could have gone further and stuff like that, especially because you you've planned out every day for the rest of the trail. So you're like, well, okay, tomorrow's another day that I have also planned the miles for.

Tyler 1:37:01

And so it was very satisfying at the end of every day, like, especially when we'd get to camp early, we're like, oh yeah, so it was a really nice feeling because we've talked about it, how we were both of a very similar, like very focused mindset of like, we are here to try to the best of our ability to complete this trail. Yeah. Um, which I mean, people do the trail for a lot of different reasons. And some people they're more like, I want to have, you know, I want to, you know, make this sort of like a party, like have fun, like meet people and drink and and you know, that sort of thing. Um, whereas like we kind of both agreed, especially going south on like we need to be as focused as possible on on getting to the finish because we want to finish. Yeah. Um, like that wasn't like the thing we focused on to like our detriment. Like we weren't like, yeah, yeah, you know, we weren't like, oh my God, if we don't finish, we're this is awful. And we weren't constantly thinking about finishing, but we did try to focus very much on making our miles. So there weren't really days where we were like, oh, we're just gonna give up and only hike 10 miles, you know, without without a reason. Like it wasn't a stop or like well, we never hiked a lesson.

McKenna 1:37:59

No, no, no, we didn't.

Tyler 1:38:00

No, no, no. But like some days we would cut it short by a couple of miles because we're like, oh, like this is a really nice campsite, or yeah, you know, but like knowing what the next day's mile is.

McKenna 1:38:08

Right.

Tyler 1:38:08

Yeah, we were like, okay, well, tomorrow's a little bit shorter, we'll just add this on. So we never fell off track from our miles. We we stayed very on track and on schedule, which was actually early. Early. Yeah, we finished a couple days early at the end of the trail, which was a really nice feeling.

McKenna 1:38:21

Well, we were also even more early because we were able to take more rest days than we thought. Like we kind of, when we originally planned the trail, we planned it without any rest days, which I knew we would have to take rest days. That wasn't like I wasn't under no assumption that we wouldn't take rest days, but it was we kind of just didn't have room for them. So I was like, oh, I guess we'll just get behind or something. Um, but it just, I don't know. It's through a lot of different factors, we were able to take more rest days than we thought, which was really nice and really helpful. Yeah. Um, but yeah.

Tyler 1:38:48

Yeah, it it it wasn't like, you know, in everyday life when you have tasks you're working on, you you can fall behind, things cannot go well for whatever reason. Like, you know, things just don't keep on the schedule you imagined for yourself, just for whatever reason. But like on the trail, that's that's not what happened. We kept our schedule for all that time, and it was a really it was a nice feeling. And I I it, you know, when you slip out of that, you kind of realize how much you miss that day to day.

McKenna 1:39:16

And some people would argue that planning it out that much like takes away from I don't know, the spontaneity of it or something. But for me, it was very reassuring because it's like, oh, I can just sit back and enjoy this because I don't have to worry about getting to a certain place at a certain time or not knowing how many days I'm ahead or behind where I should be. And like it was just so nice to be like, yeah, we're we're where we need to be.

Tyler 1:39:38

Especially at the end where we're like, we could hike 30 miles every day if we wanted to. Like that was definitely something we were physically capable of. But if we were done at 24 and we were, you know, it was 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. and we're like, we have time. We didn't feel that pressure to keep going just because we could. We were like, no, we're good, we're we're on schedule, we're on time, so we can just kind of sit and enjoy the early camp.

McKenna 1:39:57

Yeah. I mean, most days we were by the end, we were doing really long days. Like by the end, we would if we did less than 30 miles, it felt like an easy day. No, we would literally be like, We were so lazy today. I feel like we did nothing.

Tyler 1:40:09

It's amazing how you can acclimate to a different day-to-day life like that. Yeah, day-to-day expectations and demands on your body and your mind and get used to it.

McKenna 1:40:18

Like I'd want to hike over 30 miles because I'd be like, I felt like I wasn't productive today if I didn't do that. But yeah, it was very nice to just kind of sit back and enjoy the ride.

Tyler 1:40:28

Yeah, I can imagine that. I mean, yeah, if I saw a beautiful campsite, I'd probably want to take a take a break and and stop there and enjoy it. Because you have to find, I'm sure, also a balance between wanting to, yes, finish and and reach the end, but also you're there to enjoy this beautiful backcountry that spans from border to border, north to south, and you don't want to just like sacrifice experiencing beauty for the sake of finishing on yeah, yeah, no, for sure.

McKenna 1:40:56

And I think I think that's like what Tyler was saying about how everyone has a different reason for being out there and a different goal. That was one thing that we realized is that completing the trail means something different for every person. And it's really difficult because I mean, there's like, for example, there were closures that were there the entire season that we hiked for both Northbounders and Southbounders. And so, like, you they call it being a redliner because on far out, the line of the trail for the the true PCT is a red line, and then there's these blue alternate trails um that you can take in certain sections. And so um like purists or redliners um would be very frustrated to like experience these closures. Um, for us, it wasn't so much about being purists. I for me, at least my definition of completing the trail was hiking the total number of miles or more of the trail. And so there we did take alternates sometimes. Like, for example, at Crater Lake, like the trail does not pass within view of the lake, but I've never been to Crater Lake. So I was like, Interesting, I'm not gonna hike all the way from Canada to Crater Lake and not see Crater Lake. So we just went and did the alternate trail, which is like not, I mean, like it is it's still hiking, it's still and we we were very careful actually because our goal was to do the total number of miles of the trail. We made sure that when we did shave off miles on an alternate route that we would add them back on later, either doing a side trail for something or doing another alternate that was longer than the regular PCT. Um, and so we ended up being like 21 miles over the true total trail length by the end. But that was important to us to kind of be true to that.

Tyler 1:42:27

And so there's I think or like continuous footpath is another thing that people do where they're like, I want to be able to say my footsteps trace from border to border all the way. Um, and for some people that is their definition of finishing the trail. So and we we didn't quite follow that, but we were close and we we did do the full mileage, so we counted ourselves as you know, because like their definition is like you can't take a car across a parking lot, you have to like connect your footsteps, like across a highway, like you can't get dropped off on the other side of the highway. Oh that's that's like some people's definition of finishing the trail and actually doing it.

McKenna 1:42:58

And then some people they're like, I went on the trail and I spent some months on there. Yeah. And so I did the PCT, which I'm just gonna say personally, I do think there's a at there's a point where I don't think you should call yourself a PCT or like uh say that you've successfully completed the through hike if you haven't done a certain amount of mileage. Um, it's different year to year because let's say two to four hundred miles get closed because of wildfire. That's not your fault. Like, you know, you're still you you did the PCT that you did what it looked like that year for you. But there were a lot of people who skipped very significant sections either because they were behind or because they didn't feel like it. Like we knew a lot of, we heard that a lot of Northbounders skipped like all of NorCal, which is crazy to me because it's a huge section. It's like 600 miles.

Tyler 1:43:44

I think wow, but it is like I think the most hated section of trail.

McKenna 1:43:47

Yeah, which I loved NorCal. NorCal does not get enough love. Like I think it gets way too much hate that it doesn't deserve. It is hot, but it's I just thought it was still very beautiful. I thought it we were also feeling very good physically during that time, but I felt like it was just really enjoyable. The trail towns were good, whatever. All of it was uh good in my opinion, pretty much except for the except for the burn areas. Yeah, the burn areas were bad. There was like a four-day burn area, which was horrible. But um, everything else, you know, was pretty good about NorCal. But, anyways, um, I would like we met some people later on where um they were some southbounders. And so typically when you're on the trail, you're not always like we never hiked with other people or but we would camp occasionally with other people, although I would say like 95% of the time we can the campsite to ourselves, which is really nice. Um, but especially because we're kind of antisocial, and that was actually a big reason why we went southbound. Everyone thinks it's because we were still in school, which I guess is part of it, but we still could have gone northbound technically if we wanted to. We could have just started in mid-May, which it would have been kind of late, and we would have had to also go fast northbound, or just it would have been hot in the desert. But um, the main reason why I wanted to go southbound was just because it's a lot less popular. Like I think 90 to 95% of people go northbound. That's why people, every time we say we went southbound that we started at Canada, people are like, I didn't know you could go that way. Like, isn't that the wrong way?

Tyler 1:45:07

I didn't know you could. Yeah, as if there's some governing body, yeah.

McKenna 1:45:11

Like a one-way arrow or something. Um, but yeah, so it it is a cool experience because far less people go that direction. And so obviously, we still had to cross the northbound bubble, which we hit basically all of Oregon was crossing the northbound bubble.

Tyler 1:45:25

Um but what is the northbound bubble?

McKenna 1:45:27

Like basically, there's stragglers on either end, people who have hiked really fast and are really early from the the northbounders who started either early in the season or just hiked really fast and they're getting like we saw, I think, our first northbounder in southern Washington. Mid-Washington, actually, like near Snoqualmy. Um, but then there's stragglers up like through NorCal.

Tyler 1:45:46

Like our last person we saw was like well into like NorCal.

McKenna 1:45:49

And she knew she wasn't gonna make it, but but she was a nobo. So but then like the vast majority of people who are kind of on the schedule of people who started during the window that you usually start for northbound and they've hiked the pace that more most northbounders usually hike. Um, we passed them in Oregon. Like I see.

Tyler 1:46:07

Yeah, so when we pass like 20, 30 people a day sometimes. Wow. Yeah, I mean if you're saying if 95% of people do northbound, they're pretty are they camping together, like in giant camps?

McKenna 1:46:18

I mean, we heard about a lot of other Southbounders having to fight for camp spots with northbounders. We luckily didn't have to do that as much because at that point my dad was still out there. So we were A, camping with him a lot, and B, we were really off the standard resupply schedule because he was resupplying us at random highways that didn't really connect to anywhere. And so then we were on like that would be the end of our day, for example, where for someone else, that's the middle of their day. And so then our campsites were off of where other people were stopping.

Tyler 1:46:49

Wow. Okay, but the people coming northbound are like, I just can't imagine that. Why would you want to go where 95% of people are going to be able to do it?

McKenna 1:46:56

Everyone wants the culture and the community.

Tyler 1:46:59

Like, you want the party feeling, you want the like I'm I'm not saying you want to go out and drink alcohol and party like that.

McKenna 1:47:05

Well, there's a huge drinking culture on the trail. Huge and drugs.

Tyler 1:47:08

Imagine that. Yeah, yeah. Your body's going through a really difficult thing, and then you're about to put this poison basically into your body to make matters worse. Wow. Makenna was telling me the other day about some reel of a Northbounder who did 26 beers. Yeah. 26 beers in 24 hours in in Oregon. Like that was a challenge.

McKenna 1:47:30

I think it was in NorCal.

Tyler 1:47:30

NorCal, okay.

McKenna 1:47:31

Yeah, it was an old station to Bernie or something.

Tyler 1:47:33

Oh, that's that's horrible. That's a bad place to do that.

McKenna 1:47:36

Yeah.

Tyler 1:47:37

Um, but uh, I'm not I'm not saying you shouldn't drink.

McKenna 1:47:40

Like that's we didn't drink the entire trail because we just didn't want to like put any extra strain on our bodies. And there was never a point where I was like, oh, I could really go for some alcohol right now because you're like, I know I'm gonna feel awful. Like you're just like, I could go for calories, that's it.

Tyler 1:47:55

Wow, I think I would definitely, based on what you're telling me, want to do southbound too because you don't have to fight for these. Well, you said you sometimes you had to fight for a camp spot, but at least you're not moving with this big bubble of people where you're like, oh my gosh, I can't even get away and experience some peace and quiet and be with nature. I'm constantly with these people who are moving with me.

McKenna 1:48:13

And they can be obnoxious. We found that we didn't gel with actually quite a bit of people on trail. And like a lot of people say that the trail, the people on trail is the best part.

Tyler 1:48:22

Like, it's it's called your trammelly, your trail family. Your trailer. I have an issue with that word, but yeah. It's like your found family on trail.

McKenna 1:48:31

But or even just the other people that they meet along the way. And I found that we both didn't gel very well with a lot of the people that we met. It wasn't even like they weren't bad people, it was just like we just didn't have much in common. Um, and I I think, yeah, for us having like time and space to ourselves was really important. And then also, in my opinion, you get a better mosquito season, a better wildfire season going southbound. Plus, you especially because we were lucky with the snow up in Washington, it melted pretty early. So we were able to not deal with snow when we started, and then we were able to get out of the Sierra before there was snow, so we didn't have to deal with post-holing like up to your waist, trying to make your way through the Sierra, which is what the northbounders usually have to do when they're coming into it in like May or June.

Tyler 1:49:15

Yeah, and they deal with snow all the way like through Northern California. Like we saw comments like, yep, still snow. Which is crazy. Wow. So, but like I said, like we said before, like everybody does the trail for different reasons. And a lot for a lot of people, that reason is that sense of community and culture. Like people will go, like again, going back to the PCT Reddit, people will be like, Hey, who wants to be like my trail buddy? Like trying to find people to hike with well in advance, because a lot of people do start by themselves, but they want to have that community, and so they want to pick up other people that they hike with. And sometimes they'd have like, you know, four or five, six people together hiking that would, you know, not necessarily hiking and it hiking every step of every day, but like meeting up to camp and like going into town together and drinking and like, you know, and some people are like we have lifelong friendships from this.

McKenna 1:50:03

Like people meet their spouses on trail and stuff like that. So it it is it can be a really cool thing, but at the same and and we definitely didn't have that because we were together and we were trying not to have that. Um, but we did still meet some really cool people on the trail. Like we We made some friends, we we still had a good time meeting people, and I think it was the right amount where like we would not socialize for maybe a week and then we'd talk to someone like a lot in a town or something, and it would be like, Oh, that was nice till I get to talk to someone again. Um, but then right as we're like, okay, that's enough socializing, we could just go and do our own thing. So I thought that was a really nice balance. But yeah, kind of circling back to the all the different reasons that people do the trail. I'm fine, I, in my opinion, it feels like there is uh just the this vibe nowadays on the trail. Obviously, I I haven't done the trail in the past, but like because of social media or because of kind of like what people think the trail is gonna be, there's a lot of like people really trying so hard to find themselves or find their people and kind of part like partying is trying to escape life. A lot of it, like the the main demographic of people who do the trail seems to be well is people in like their mid-20s to mid-30s. And so a lot of these people have been out of school for a few years. Now they've been working a nine to five, usually. A lot of these people are trying to escape a life that is in some way dissatisfying, um, which I get that. Um and I'm not even saying that's a bad reason to do the trail. I just think there some caution should be taken with that. Um, I think that's why some people can go a little bit overboard with certain things. Like it was also very interesting too, because you would think those people would be the most like, oh, I'm hell yeah, I'm so excited to be out here. Like, I'm not sitting behind a desk anymore. And versus like, we've been in school, we've been adventuring for the last few years. So, you know, I found though that we had we were generally in a lot better moods than people of that demographic. And other people actually noticed that and commented on that. Like, we had people comment sometimes, like, wow, you guys seem in really good spirits for how much you're hiking. And then when we would talk to older people, because there was also some older people on the trail, like really impressive people in like their 50s through 70s doing a trail, they were also in really good spirits. And like, I can't imagine how difficult that is to do at that age. Um, and so it like it was weird that I just noticed that because we also met a few younger people. I mean, there were some people that were fresh out of college. We we met like a 15 and 19-year-old. Yeah, we had a great conversation with them once on top of a beautiful ridgeline, and um, they were in such great moods, and like it just felt so nice. And like I feel like there were times where we saw other people that were just kind of bitter and like jaded almost about life and the world.

Tyler 1:52:40

There was this one guy who was rushing to get to a job interview on trail. Yeah, when we're going down to Kennedy Meadows North, he was talking to the shuttle driver to be like, Hey, I have a job interview in a couple hours. Like, are we gonna get there in time? Is there a Wi-Fi that I could use to do an interview?

McKenna 1:52:53

And it's just like and it's like to each their own, but it just it it was interesting how a lot of those people seemed quite like bitter about a lot of things. And so I don't know, it was it was just interesting to me. But everyone has a different reason for doing the trail. Um, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I think I but I do think you need to own that reason, like whatever your reason is for being out there, because some people, for example, we met someone who so when you do not the whole trail, but you do like a really long section of it, like let's say maybe a thousand miles or something, you're called you're known as a lasher, which stands for long ass section hiker. I love that that's like the official term. Yeah. Um, and she like introduced herself as such and was saying, you know, I just wanted to do a highlight reel of the PCT, like I just didn't want to hike the whole thing. And I was like, that is so valid. Like there is no shame in that. Um, but she was honest about it. And then in that, she was hanging out with some people that in that same uh actually that same shuttle. Yeah. Um, where so like I was saying before, you kind of know who's around you at any given point, especially when you're going southbound, there's less people. So you kind of have an idea, like you look at trail registers, or you just see people, you hear about their plans. It's like even if you don't see them on a daily basis, you're like, oh, I know they're like two days ahead of us, or I know that that person, I've heard through the grapevine that that person's one day behind us. Um, and so you kind of just have this idea. And we kind of knew at that point, like we're now getting into the middle of California. So we knew like a lot of people at that point who are going southbound. And so then we see this big group of people. We start seeing all these new people, and we're like, oh, hey, like nice to meet you. Um, and they introduced themselves as southbound PC tiers. And we were immediately confused because we're like, How have we not seen you guys yet? Like, where have you been? Like, how have you just been like a because it is really easy to just be a day behind someone for like weeks and you and you sometimes don't know, but generally you hear about it. Um, and so we were a little bit confused, and then they they were like, Yeah, yeah, like we're we're here, and we're we were trying to piece together like how have we not seen them? And it turns out they had skipped from like mid-Oregon all the way down to middle of California, which again, there's no shame in that, but they didn't say that. And so uh even in the shuttle, the driver said, Have you guys done the whole trail? Like, have you guys are you guys hiking the whole trail? And they said yes. And to us, that felt a little bit unfair as people who had at that point, like basically the four-day burn area in NorCal, who had done all the miles up into that point, and like we're living very like they're hiking, you know, maybe 20 miles a day. We're pulling 30s to like get out of there as fast as possible and stuff. And and it's not it's not an ego thing. I I feel like ego has no place in the backcountry, like there's no reason to do that. Um, but it felt like just you just need to be honest, just because it's such a different experience. Like we were having a completely different experience than them. And I do feel like the more people that do that, because that's just one example, it's quite common to to kind of fudge what you're actually doing. Um, I think for me that it feels like it cheapens the experience a little bit because then everyone's a PC tier. Everyone's saying, Oh, I did this, but then you find out, oh, well, you skip 600 miles. Is that really the same thing? Like that's a whole over a like a month or more on trail. And that's that's quite a bit when you like it's different than oh, you know, we shaved off four miles here, like, okay, whatever. But like, I mean, even for us, we tracked that. Like, if we shaved off half a mile, we would track that and then add it on later. And so, like, and and that's just us. I'm not saying everyone needs to do that, but just I think sometimes recently people have become not so true to being honest about reporting that, and and come and that's again, completion has a different definition for every person. But I do think that you should state your definition of completion to some degree, um, and then own your reason for being out there. Be like, I don't really care about doing the whole miles of the trail. I'm I literally I'm just here to meet people, and like that's awesome, like, good for you. But it's just, I don't know, it's different.

Tyler 1:56:37

Is most of the representation misrepresentation of what they do like on social media, or is it in person? Because you just said it happens in a van with other through hikers, as and being explicitly asked, are you doing the whole trail and saying yes?

McKenna 1:56:51

Like to me, that just was like, What?

Tyler 1:56:53

Yeah, I'm trying to put myself in your shoes and both your shoes and experience what that feels like because you are pushing yourself and not taking any shortcuts and you're doing the hard thing, and then you hear somebody say that and you said it. What was the word you used to describe? I felt like it cheapened the experience a little bit. Does it offend you? Is that the right word? A little bit. Yeah.

McKenna 1:57:16

More like a noise.

Tyler 1:57:17

Yeah, I don't know if offend encapsulates. It's more of just like a I don't know. It it's just I think cheapens is just a really good way to describe it. It's like you know it's it just does a disservice to to people who who did do that section because you know it's not easy. It's it's something that's it's hard to get through and people who do try fail sometimes. Like because you skip that 600 miles, you you could have you could be staying on trail when you could have gotten an injury or something. And I'm not saying that you should be getting that injury, but it's just like I don't know, it's just it just it does a disservice to people who who actually do that those sections of trail. So yeah, because maybe it makes you feel like, well, if if anybody can say that they're doing the whole PCT, then why the heck am I doing 30 miles a day and going through a burn zone and yeah, and it's and it's not like we're doing it so that we can say we did it.

McKenna 1:58:05

We're not like having an ego, like, look, we did the PCT. Like, I don't I actively try not to tell people that we did it because it opens a whole can of worms that I don't like talking about with people. And so like I don't usually like to share that part of my life with people, um, just random people. And and like it that was never a reason for doing it, like, oh, I should impress people or anything. It was like, I just want to challenge myself to meet this goal. But when you're yeah, being so dedicated to your goal, and like Tyler was saying, we both had a very focused mindset, which I think is helpful that we both had a very similar mindset and that we maintained that focus the whole time. And it didn't detract from our enjoyment of it, like we were saying before. It was like reassuring and nice and just felt like a nice way to enjoy it. But it was we very much made decisions that kept us on track, and so that that is different than what some people were doing.

Tyler 1:58:52

I also wanted to go back to the how you mentioned people will like seek out others on the Reddit, the subreddits or whatever, and and purposefully go through the trail with a group. That sounds really difficult to me because even with two people, like you're saying, you be you each had injuries in different segments, yeah. And then there's drama too. Yeah, there's tramily drama.

McKenna 1:59:10

Yeah.

Tyler 1:59:11

How do you yeah, how do you navigate like and negotiate? Oh, well, I think it's time to get off the trail. And we're we're a tramley, so we we need to stick together and stay off the trail.

McKenna 1:59:21

We've heard that people will get like talked into doing things they don't want to do. We saw it actually.

Tyler 1:59:25

Yeah, we like again going back to that tramily in the shuttle. Um, we saw them like one member of the group getting talked into staying an extra day because it was like five against one, like, hey, like we should stay, like the it's a really nice resort. We should like get a room and like stay an extra day.

McKenna 1:59:38

And at this point, they're st they're already not gonna make the snow window.

Tyler 1:59:41

So I'm like, well, not that they realized that they were a little unrealistic in what their expectations were. But still, like it there definitely is that peer pressure to be let to stay with the group and and you know, mold your schedule to fit theirs so that you can fit you can stay with these people. Because if you get off by a day or two, you could just not see somebody for the rest of the trail if you don't try to meet up with them. It's it's you know, because even if you're just like five miles apart, you're never gonna see them. So there is that that pressure and that I mean, a lot of times people are very happy to to have those people and to have that companionship. But sometimes it goes bad. Like there's this guy named Meat Wagon, um which we haven't talked about. Oh, uh well, I don't really care. Okay, yeah, it's fine. He deserves it. Yeah. Um which side note, there's these things called trail names where it's it's um it's pretty standard actually to get what's called a trail name where you just go by some some some name, like I don't know.

McKenna 2:00:33

Usually bestowed upon you by someone else due to some incident.

Tyler 2:00:37

Some incident, yes. Um there was this guy named Meat Wagon. That was his name. That was how he introduced himself. And we actually ran into him for quite a while.

McKenna 2:00:45

Like how how many I don't know, probably like a month or something.

Tyler 2:00:47

Yeah, like a month. Like we would just run into him and his family on and off. Um he was a he was a very abrasive man.

McKenna 2:00:54

Yeah, like very inappropriate and rude to like people in towns and stuff.

Tyler 2:00:58

Yeah, we did not enjoy hanging out with him.

McKenna 2:01:00

Like making really sexual jokes to a woman who was hosting him at like a ranch, like incest jokes about small towns. Yeah, like offending people in small towns and like yeah, just not so the name is fitting into something. Yeah, that's why we don't feel bad mentioning people. We can't mention other people though.

Tyler 2:01:18

It's not like you're putting on this illegal first and last name. That's true. Um, but anyways, his tramway ended up breaking up later on. We never got the full details because we we weren't friends with them, we didn't ask, but we did eventually see that like they split off, like one person totally dropped, and then I think meat wagon was like a couple days behind, and then the two others like went ahead. And so, you know, drama does happen and tramilies split apart, and so yeah, yeah.

McKenna 2:01:39

No drama over here though. And honestly, I was surprised that we didn't get on each other's nerves more. Like, we really I mean, obviously, in any relationship, any time of life, and then especially in a time like that, there's gonna be like little things, but I really don't feel like I feel like we were on, you know, just in a really good place for the whole trail, which was really nice. It kind of surprised me almost not that I thought we'd be in a horrible place or like I wasn't worried about the trail breaking us up, which actually happens more than you'd think. Like a lot of people start the trail together with a romantic partner and then they break up mid-trail, um, which I was never worried about that happening, but I was a little bit pleasantly surprised that we just were chilling for most of the trail. Just because it, you know, when you spend that much time with someone, but I mean, we have now we've been through not nothing like that, but we've you know traveled internationally for like a month and a half at a time where we're literally attached at the hip and like yeah, like it's weird to be further than 20 feet apart from each other. Yeah. Like I I've found it's super fascinating, actually. I feel that when we are together like that for so long, I will get like separation anxiety, and we don't have a codependent relationship. And like now that we're off trail, it's like you know, I don't see him for 14 hours on Monday through Thursday. Um, but like it is weird, like I would feel anxious when he'd like go to the bathroom or something in a town where it was like weird that I couldn't see him. And it was like I don't that's irrelevant now, but when you're so used to just being with someone all the time, it just it almost feels like they're like not in a weird way, but almost like an extension of yourself. It's just like, wait, like what's happening? Is he okay? Like, and just I don't know, it was unsettling. I don't even know why, but I can see that.

Tyler 2:03:13

I don't I don't think that's unusual. I mean, your day-to-day life is so different, and your Tyler is your day-to-day life. He's completely next to you at all times. Like I, you know, like we would be in lockstep the entire day.

McKenna 2:03:25

Yeah, I I was in the front because I have shorter legs and I go slower. And so instead of Tyler like turning around constantly to like cat let me catch up, we just put me in the front the entire trail. Um, but we he was never more than which sometimes I got flat type.

Tyler 2:03:40

Sorry, I I got better at that.

McKenna 2:03:41

You did, you did. But he was never more than a few steps behind me. And then when we would listen, the the times we would listen to music, whenever we whenever he needed to tell me what time it was, like to eat a snack when the watch would go off, um, or to like stop to go to the bathroom or something, he would whack me on the shoulder with his hiking pipe. I would say tap, not whack. I told you I told you to whack me. It was it was requested. Yeah, but yeah.

Tyler 2:04:04

Seems like a good good mechanism of letting somebody know you're trying to get their attention. Yeah, because she would just keep going. If I didn't do that, she would just be able to do it. There are a lot of different ways I think you could go into the topic of what transitioning off trail is like. There are a lot of different angles you could take from the physical to the mental to the maybe spiritual isn't the right word, but being connected with nature like that. But what was the first what were the first few days like? Or maybe not you don't have to limit yourself to days, but was there a certain period of shock? Like or yeah, it was it was rough getting off trail. It was kind of surreal being having that be our existence for four months. It was really strange to go from that to go to like quote unquote real life, right? Like, you know, just day-to-day. It was a really strange transition, especially since we were also transitioning in general in our life, you know, having just graduated college, um, transitioning from that into like, you know, again, quote unquote regular adult life. Um, both of those things started happening at the same time because I had gotten a job that I had I had a start date after the trail. So as soon as we got off, well, not as soon as we gave ourselves like a couple days, but basically as soon as we were getting off trail, it's like, okay, let's start getting ready to move. Like, what what what's going on? We need to like, we need to buy a car, we need to find a place to live. Like, we transitioned very quickly from your entire day as hiking, that's all you do every day, to like, okay, now like I'm starting my job in a month, like we need to like do these things that were so far from our minds before. And so it was a it was a it was a bit of a rough transition. And and meanwhile, not long before this, you were mentioning this to me off or before we started recording, you experienced a really interesting, I would, I don't know, traumatic's the right word, blizzard. Like you'd this type of experience, and then you'd go right back into the daily social life. Would you mind telling people what happened with that crazy blizzard outside of Los Angeles? So we were in Angeles uh National Forest Um about to summit Mount Baden Powell, which is uh it's a somewhat famous mountain in that region of the of the country. Um, and we had heard that there was going to be a pretty decent amount of rain um up ahead a few days before when we were in town. So we were like, okay, like it's fine, like it'll it'll suck for like a day or two, but we'll be okay. Um and then we went, we ran into a ranger station. Um, Ranger Todd, shout out to him. He was great. Uh he gave us some like Gatorade and soda and stuff and he had a water cache, so he was great. Um, but he was like, you know, there's there's some flurries uh that are forecasted to be at the mountain. So just like, you know, just so you're aware, like it should be okay, just some flurries. Um and then it ended up not being a few flurries, it ended up being a rather significant amount of snow, like like almost like a full-on blizzard around us as we were like gonna go up and summit Mount Baden Powell. It was not a good situation to be in. That was like the scariest moment on trail. Um that's interesting because you said you also uh climbed the high Sierras and you were going through there. And I would never suspect, as somebody who hasn't done this hike, that right outside Los Angeles could present a more dangerous situation than the high Sierras.

McKenna 2:07:17

It was really unexpected. I mean, they do get snow in like November, but we thought we'd be fine because it was like mid-October. And and it was it was unexpected. Like we talked to locals in the town that we went to when we got rescued, and um, it was like they were like, This is very like we didn't expect this, and so it made me feel better. I was like, we weren't being irresponsible.

Tyler 2:07:37

Um like like if it was forecasted to snow, like we wouldn't have been doing that.

McKenna 2:07:41

Yeah, we wouldn't have attempted that.

Tyler 2:07:42

But it was just it just came out of nowhere, and like we we we didn't have cell reception, so we couldn't check, and it was just like you know, it's it's it was a rough situation to really.

McKenna 2:07:52

But we when we got to camp the night before the blizzard, we um knew it was gonna rain like all night and then into the next day, and so we did to keep ourselves dry, because it's really difficult once you get like even in a tent, like it's not like our tent would leak, but it would just like it just you just everything just kind of gets wet. It's how like it just condensation of the heat inside kind of everything is wet, and so and it's obviously dangerous to have to be wet when you're when it's cold. Um, and so and when you can't get dry. So we we decided to sleep in a pit toilet and we slept. And in case people don't know what a pit toilet is, could you just articulate a volt toilet where like other people's waist is just in a pit, the open pit. Except this one was weird.

Tyler 2:08:35

It was one of those toilet belt. It was like a conveyor belt.

McKenna 2:08:38

So there was actually like smeared, smeared shit all over.

Tyler 2:08:42

It was horrible. Yeah, it was there was like a conveyor belt in the toilet. And so when you were done doing your business, you would press a lever on the side and the conveyor belt would like move it down.

McKenna 2:08:51

Spear it though, like into the peak. Into the crack of the conveyor.

Tyler 2:08:56

And like the walls were metal and like there was a gap on the floor, so we actually didn't like it.

McKenna 2:09:00

And there was giant spiders that came in overnight.

Tyler 2:09:02

Like we much preferred the traditional like concrete bunker pit houses for for that purpose.

McKenna 2:09:07

But, anyways, we decided to sleep in there because we didn't want to get wet, and so it was really cold though, because we didn't have like the warmth of our tent. And then we thought it had stopped raining because we didn't hear anything on the roof anymore. So we're like, oh yay, wonderful, we get a break from the rain. And then we opened the door and there was like many inches of snow, and we were shocked. And so we tried to summit, but we quickly turned back because it was really dangerous, and then we like were getting hailed by like really strong winds and sleet and stuff like that. So we were soaking wet, super cold. Um, it was a yeah, we we made it down and then we're starting to panic a little bit.

Tyler 2:09:41

Oh, definitely.

McKenna 2:09:42

I I was like hysterical, and then we got um rescued by a very, very kind train trail angel, and him and his wife hosted us at their house, um, which was very incredible.

Tyler 2:09:53

How'd you contact them?

McKenna 2:09:55

Um, we had some acquaintances or some friends on trail that um like that basically they were already at their house, and so they let like we texted them, they let the trail angels know that they had some friends on trail who didn't have to be.

Tyler 2:10:08

Yeah, we just happened to have reception. Yeah, we like at the pit toilet, we just happened to have a little bit of reception um to be able to text them. Um, because if that didn't happen, we would have just been stuck.

McKenna 2:10:18

Well, we actually we didn't even reach out to them. They had said, Hey, how are you guys doing? Because they knew that we were slightly behind them, like a few miles, maybe like I think 10 miles behind them or something. And so they were like, How are you all fairing in the blizzard? And so we were like, not good, like really bad. And so then they were like, Oh, we're gonna have the people come, and we pay them and everything, like, but it was still very kind of them to like go out, you know, drive in a blizzard to get hikers. So that was like, we'll never forget them. That was incredibly kind. And um, I would say that was like one of the most traumatic instances on trail. But the the two others that stand out, like for me, there's three main traumatic instances. One was right at the beginning of the trail, Section K in Washington. Hell on earth, hell, I tell you. Like, that's why I texted you guys at when we started the trail, and I was like, I have found a trail that's worse than Charlebois. And it wasn't the cat's claw, obviously, that's irrelevant, but it was um so overgrown, like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of blowdowns, which are down trees from like wind or whatever. So you're and and then the trees were not small. They're not like, oh, I can like straddle them and like hop over. It's like trees that whose diameter was as tall as I was. So like you're having to go all the way around the trees.

Tyler 2:11:31

Or under or climbing.

McKenna 2:11:32

And you're on the side of a mountain. So it's not like you're just walking on flat ground, you can go around it. Like you're having to like, you're like slipping down the side of a mountain trying to get around a tree.

Tyler 2:11:40

And like somebody broke that leg and got airlifted out.

McKenna 2:11:42

Yeah, like it was dangerous. Like I did, yeah, it was bad. So so this is already bad. And then also, it's even when there's not down trees, it's super overgrown. So you're in it, the resistance that the plants are creating against you makes your miles really slow and like lethargic. So you're you're wading through plants that are up to your shoulders and stuff, completely choking out the trail. So that's already bad. But then I ended up getting a really, really, really bad UTI from a medication I was taking. Um, like I've never had anything so bad. Like, I was like starting to like shake and almost become like delirious from how bad the infection was. And like Like it was like straight blood, just like really, really scary.

Tyler 2:12:20

How many days in was this?

McKenna 2:12:22

This was so bad. I realized that I was getting it like two days in to a six to a six-day stretch, which is really bad. And at that point, we had to make the decision like, do we turn around or do we just try to like exactly? And so we like we just ended up keeping on going because we we like upped our mileage a lot. But we didn't we also knew that the stuff behind us was really bad, but it actually ended up being worse in front of us in terms of blowdowns and stuff. Milk Creek. It was horrible. But um, that was really scary. And also shout out to I think her trail name was Flamingo. This girl, yeah, I'm pretty sure that was her trail name, but um, she gave me she and we just happened to ask her. I was like, ah, she's a woman, she might have this, but I thought it was such a long shot. I was like, Do you by chance have anything for a UTI? And she had cranberry pills, and I was like, Oh, bless, please, like anything. And she was like, Yeah, I'll I'll give you a ton because like she just had them for prevention, which we later ended up taking cranberry pills the rest of the trail for prevention because of like that incident. Um, but she like really helped me out because she gave me some cranberry pills, which helped keep it under control. It was definitely not gone at all by the time we got out, and we actually ended up having to take like an exit to get out sooner so I could get um like get it taken care of. But it was it was quite scary because it was like going downhill. Like I there was actually like one night where I was okay when I went to sleep, but I was really nervous because things were going downhill really, really, really fast. So I told Tyler, like, if you wake up in the night, can you like check on me to make sure I'm like okay? Like I was like worried about making it through the night and stuff. So that was also very making it through. Like I didn't want to go into like sepsis, you know. Oh my gosh, like I didn't because well, it's like it can change so fast. Like I didn't feel like I was close to that, but I was also getting worse like by the half hour.

Tyler 2:14:09

Like it was it was really, really scary and stressful. It was really bad because Section K doesn't have exits. Yeah. Like the exit we took was not supposed to be an exit. It was like this really overgrown trail that like people were saying, Oh, it might be closed, it might not be, like it was not meant to be used. People didn't use it as an exit. We just used it because we had to. And like there was like nothing before that unless we turned around.

McKenna 2:14:32

And we were struggling to make our miles because of all the blowdowns and like the choked out trail, the overgrown, yeah, the overgrowth. And so it was just it was really stressful. Like I I could feel like my energy just being zapped by the infection. Like I just did not, like I felt like I was like in tears a lot because I just like couldn't I felt like I just couldn't walk and stuff. And I was in a lot of pain, like my kidneys were hurting really bad because it like was just it was a bad infection. Um, but luckily it got that taken care of. And the other traumatic time, I think.

Tyler 2:15:02

Well, really quick. Is there a specific reason that or like a correlation between long like through hiking and and UTIs? Is it because you said you took the cranberry pills like throughout the rest of the time? You're just not sanitary. Yeah.

McKenna 2:15:14

And it's more so that you just don't have uh easy access to medical care. Like if you go on a weekend backpacking trip, you maybe get a UTI. Like if you get a UTI, you get one, oh, one or two days in. Well, you're going back to town that day. So it's like it's not a it's not a big deal. Um, but when you're in these long stretches, and then even when you get out of the stretch, you're still, you know, maybe a hundred miles from the nearest hospital or urgent care or whatever. It's like you'd want to have more prevention for stuff like that, um, which I didn't realize how much that would be an issue. Um, but it ended up being like due to a medication problem. But um yeah, that was that was not fun.

Tyler 2:15:50

Well, but like Tyler said, you I think that goes to show that you really are not dirt, you're not clean on this site. And it can lead to real problems beyond just being smelly or beyond being salty or all these things. But anyway, continue. I just thought that was important to demonstrate for people then and kind of emphasize that this has real consequences, that the hygiene aspect. But what were you gonna say is the neck the second uh stressful?

McKenna 2:16:17

Well the the first was the well, the blizzard and the UTI. I would say for me, the UTI was the most traumatic, but then the blizzard then um was just the like what we already said before about the Sierra. It was just like every day we were under a lot of stress, so it was like we you would be like, Oh, it's so beautiful, and then you'd be like, I'm stressed, I'm stressed, I'm stressed. And so every day, just you know, like I wouldn't say I wasn't in tears in that section, it wasn't as traumatic. Like I think it the long-term stress. Yeah, exactly. The trauma was spread out over nine days, over nine days, yeah.

Tyler 2:16:45

Just just because you just like the exits are a really big thing where you just it's not like other sections of the trail, like especially like Southern California, like there were roads, there were people, there was stuff everywhere. Like if you every few miles, yeah, like if you were in trouble, you were fine. Um, and even thing even like you know, in other places on the trail that was the case, but like in Section K in Washington in the Sierras, like those are the places where if you get in trouble, you're gonna get airlifted out. Like that's the only way they can get to you if you're in trouble.

McKenna 2:17:15

So but I would say that aside from those three parts of the trail, the rest of the trail for me felt like smooth sailing for the most part. Like it was it was actually way easier and way more enjoyable than I thought it was gonna be. Like Tyler was saying at the beginning, I really expected every day to be miserable, long, like torturous, and to like hurt really badly. But after I got over the two to three week hump, it was like this is a lot better than I expected.

Tyler 2:17:39

Yeah. One thing I do want to touch on that we haven't really talked about so far is people's perception of the dangers of the trail. Like that was something we got a lot and we were saying, like, yeah, we're gonna hike across the country for like several months. Are you referring to people like before you actually started the hike, friends and family? Yeah, like asking me, like, like, isn't that like super dangerous? Like, what about wildlife? What about bears? Like, are you gonna be okay in the backcountry? Um, and I do feel like it's it's a it's it's a weird thing because yeah, it's dangerous. Like, you know, very few people have, but some people have died on the PCT, and a lot more have gotten into trouble of dehydration, of injury, of breaking their legs and having to get airlifted out. Like stuff does happen, but I don't feel I feel like people kind of it's overblown in people's minds because it's so foreign to them. And if you don't have that experience and really know what it is, you're just like, oh, like being in the wilderness, like camping, like there's animals out there and stuff like that. Um and I feel like the oftentimes the most dangerous things we ran into were like other people on trail.

McKenna 2:18:41

Like there was a dog, like someone's dog in a neighborhood that tried to attack us, or like peep creepy people.

Tyler 2:18:47

Yeah, like the times we felt most unsafe, except for like those few instances we talked about, were usually when we were like in and around towns and people. When we were like in the middle of the wilderness, like you know, two or three days away from anybody, like we felt really safe. We didn't feel in danger at all, and like we were never bothered by any animals, like we saw bears, we saw a bobcat, you know, like we we were okay, we were fine. And what did you do anything special for the bears or or boxes or anything with food?

McKenna 2:19:15

Uh Tyler carried a bear can for almost the entire trail. We got rid of it in the desert, which actually we weren't even planning on doing that, but ended up doing that, and then we used an Ursac after that, um, which is like a bear-resistant sack, but not as resistant as a bear can, um, which it's props to him for carrying it that long because it is not a comfortable, it's heavy. Um, but it was really nice to not have any concerns about rodents or bears getting our rodents are the main thing, but yeah, but also bears squirrels.

Tyler 2:19:45

Yeah.

McKenna 2:19:45

Well, like rats and mice too. Um, but it was really nice to not have to worry about them getting our food. Um, and it was like the the sections, so bear cans are required for some sections of the trail, but the times when we heard bears like playing with our bear cans or just like out around camp at night um were not the sections where bear cans were required. So like it's it the the when they require bear cans, it's usually in areas that are really like high highly traffic. Yeah, high traffic areas, and especially with like more weekend backpackers who sometimes don't understand how careful you have to be with your food with bears. Um, like that that's something I I know why people express these concerns. It's out of genuine concern, it's out of also like not being familiar with doing something like that. Like for other people who aren't used to being outside, like it is kind of that that is a big hurdle. Um, but I would find I I do find that it gets frustrating to constantly be asked, like, oh my god, are you so scared of bears? Because it's like bears are the least of my concerns. Like it's weather, weather is what I'm concerned about. And occasionally, like if I'm gonna be concerned about a certain type of wildlife, it would be like mountain lions just because they can be offensive as opposed to like bears are only things.

Tyler 2:20:55

They seek you out, yeah.

McKenna 2:20:56

Like they can stalk you as prey, but bit bears don't do that.

Tyler 2:20:59

And especially you did hear bears? Sorry to interrupt you. But like they would actively mess with your food canister, a little bit, but they can't get into it.

McKenna 2:21:06

So they're just like, okay.

Tyler 2:21:10

We yell at them.

McKenna 2:21:11

Yeah, I mean, you still try to get them to go away, but like it's like scared, yeah. And like, I mean, we'd see them on trail and like they'd either run away or I'd use my cow milking voice and yell at them and then they'd leave. Um, so we could like keep going down the trail. But it's like uh people don't understand too, because there's no grizzlies on the PCT.

Tyler 2:21:29

It's only you can't you're not allowed to carry bear spray. So we did not carry bear spray.

McKenna 2:21:33

Yeah, and so people would ask, like, why don't you have bear spray? That's so dangerous. And it's like, okay, you don't understand. Like, these are not grizzlies. Also, like they're not gonna just randomly attack you. I mean, obviously, you do need to be oh aware, alert, and not get between don't approach them, don't give them food, like still follow like basic wildlife safety, but yeah, you know, but they're really not like they don't care, they just we we can all exist, there's space for us all, and so I don't know. I think it just it's uh it there's there were certain questions like that, and I think going back to like what we were talking about a little bit ago with like other people's questions or like perceptions of the trail before and after the hike, like people who have have are not really familiar with it, it is there is like some friction with that, and most of the time I I I really understand where it's coming from, and so it's like it doesn't offend me, but I guess like it when it's just like so repeated the same questions over and over that kind of are not really true to the experience we had, it feels like it can it can get a little bit irritating, especially to my thing is when people are like condescending. Like I have had people who because they're older, they think like they still know better than we did, having like hiked the trail, which I find that quite interesting. And it's not like I'm you know, again, like ego doesn't have a place in the backcountry. I'm not like, well, let me tell you I did this trail, but like when they're like, Well, you should have done this, and like really.

Tyler 2:22:54

In retrospect, they tell you what you should have done, even though you successfully finished it.

McKenna 2:22:58

Or like, oh, like I would have done this, or like, or just people, I okay, this is this is also how I feel about it, where I find that it irritates me more when people are when they assume that they know something. And it's to me that feels a little bit more condescending than if they're just curious. Like, I don't mind when people are like, How do you resupply? How often do you do that? Like, you know, asking questions about the trail, I have no problem with. Um, it's more people that kind of are like dismissive of our experience almost. Like I've had people who are like, Oh yeah, I'm gonna do that someday, but I'm I'm not gonna camp. I'm gonna stay in hotels the whole time. And I'm like, Oh, are you? Tell me which hotels, because I did not see the hotels that you are claiming about.

Tyler 2:23:38

Section K. Don't recall a hotel.

McKenna 2:23:40

I recall six days of nothing. Um, so just things like that where it's like they're just kind of assuming, like, I I don't know. It's like I I I just I just don't respond, or I'm just like, oh, good for you, like cool, hope you have fun or whatever. Like, I'm not gonna get into I'm not gonna be like, well, actually, there's not hotels, but um for me, it it just feels I I guess like I was thinking about this the other day. I was like, if someone, if I met someone and they were like, I do the luge professionally, I know nothing about that. And I honestly don't really care. So I'd either just kind of smile and nod and be like, oh, that's cool. Or if I was interested and wanted to have more of a conversation, I would say, like, how often do you train? Where do you train? What kind of training do you do? Like, just ask about it and learn more about it. Um, but I feel like saying something like, yeah, it looks pretty easy. Don't you just like lay down? I think that like, you know, that would be very dismissive of their experience. And like they and it halts the conversation. I know it's like a lot of times it's people's attempt to connect. They want to find like a common interest. Like people will will be like on trail or off trail or whatever, and someone's like, Oh yeah, my uncle backpacked once. And it's like, okay, that's cool. And I know that it's coming from a place of like, I want to connect with you, I want to find something that like we can talk about and have in common and like show interest. And I I totally get that. But I think sometimes, especially when it comes from a more condescending place, um, of like, I know better than you, or like, why would you do that? It kind of halts the conversation. I'm like, I just don't really know what to say to that. So I'm kind of just like, okay. And then I just change the subject because it's like, I don't know what to say.

Tyler 2:25:09

Yeah. And going back to your question of like getting off trail, that also those sorts of questions didn't help that experience. It was like, I don't know, like dissociative or just like what do you mean exactly? Questions related to getting off the trail? Like when you're getting off the trail and you're you're coming down from this huge, momentous like thing that you dedicated so much of your life and effort to, and you're trying to like grapple with and wrestle with all of these emotions and feelings and like coming back into normal life and trying to adjust again and having people ask questions that are so far from the reality of what you actually did. It's jarring. It's just, it's really it's just kind of an uncomfortable place to be. It doesn't help your own processing of like you know, getting off trail and trying to find yourself again.

McKenna 2:26:00

Yeah, like if someone's like, ooh, do you eat any tarantulas? You're just kind of like, what do I even say to that? Like, I don't what?

Tyler 2:26:07

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, not to get too much like into the weeds about human behavior here, but I think what people experience when they hear you mention that you did this is they they go, Oh, this is something absolutely remarkable, or even to use this word, superhuman. Like it really is, because such a small number of people are um first able and interested and willing, all the above, to do something on the of this scale. So they interpret it as like this piece of social capital, like this shiny, shiny thing that you carry with you. Like, think of it as a badge that you can wear in society. And suddenly when they're around people that carry these badges that look good and and cool and and in some ways paint them as not superior, but more capable, or uh yeah, I guess just more capable, they feel a need to maybe bring you down a little bit or bring themselves up, elevate themselves, or minimize the difficulties. Try to make it more relatable or yeah, minimize the difficulties of what you went through, or make it more relatable to their everyday experience or their imagination. And I think it's just because sociality is all this, it's basically just a game. And if you feel like you're losing the game, you're gonna take these tiny moves to kind of position yourself in a in a way that makes you feel like you're not losing it, or against other players that have more social capital. But there are there are complexities related to this, like how much people are willing to overtly kind of minimize or patronize your experience versus others who might genuinely just be asking questions uh because they think that's the reality, and maybe they have no intention of of minimizing or painting your experience in a different light. And it's hard to tell sometimes. Yeah, it is. I do get what you're saying. I've never hiked the PCT and I've never done something on this scale, but I I could see how it would be troublesome to respond in like a positive, friendly, lighthearted manner to questions that like totally throw you off. Yeah, and it's like the best of intentions a lot of times. It's just it just clashes with what our experiences were and what our reality was. Yeah, and I remember one time I I I was guilty of this too. I sent a text and I was saying, How was it? Right. And I think there's like a double, it's a double-sided coin because the person asking that sort of thing, of course, that's a terrible question to have to answer.

McKenna 2:28:29

I say that's the number one worst question you could ask if you hikers.

Tyler 2:28:32

It I can see that, right? Because how do you, where do you, what, what angle do you take? Your experience is so multifaceted, multi-dimensional. What aspect do you choose to highlight among those different factors? What uh, you know, it's speaking in terms of time, of geography, of distance, uh so many ways to answer the question. But from the person asking it, it's like, I don't even know what it's like. So what type of specific question would I ask? Especially if people don't even, you know, I've backpacked, I should have known better, probably. But people who haven't backpacked before, haven't even camped, what you know, it's like what type of specific question can they ask? It's yeah, these things are hard.

McKenna 2:29:09

And there's so much, like there's a whole world of through hiking that like we have learned about over the course, well, I mean, especially in the last year or so, but like over the course of several years. Um, and that is something where for someone who like doesn't really hike or doesn't backpack, like that is so far removed from their reality. And so it makes sense that there's like, it's like, I don't even know what to say and stuff. And and that's totally fine. But yeah, it's just, I don't know. There's a lot of different things that people will say about hiking, every especially too. One thing I've noticed is that hiking in a lot of people's minds is like uh because it's a bit more accessible. Like, for example, if you're like, I ran a marathon or something, a lot of other people who don't run or are never planning on running a marathon might not find a way to relate to that. They might just be like, that's really cool. But almost almost everyone like who has like able-bodied legs has been on a hike of some sort. Um, and so even if that was hike was only one mile, like they can connect over that. And so I think it's they're trying to draw parallels between experiences that are are still vastly different. Um, and so I think that's why like a lot of people feel like they want to contribute more to that, those conversations. But then sometimes it can kind of go awry, or just I don't know, I find that general generationally it's it's a bit different too. Like recently I had an older man, uh, which this happens a lot, but I had an older man like insinuate that basically tell me that I shouldn't hike alone. Um, and like that that like, oh, like back in my day, like we didn't, we didn't, we were of the belief that that's not what you do, and like that's like not what a woman does, or that was impl I think that I don't think he meant it in that way, but I I mean like I was talking about it to Tyler after, and I was like, How often are you asked in the backcountry when you're by yourself, like, are you here alone? Or like someone comments on the fact that you're alone. And and he was he was like, Never. And like that happens to me every single time I hike by myself, unless it's a day hike. If it's like a six-mile day hike that's a popular trailhead, like everyone's hiking alone or whatever, that that's different. But every time I go on either a really long day hike or like backpack on my on my own, I always have someone ask and comment on me being by myself. Like even in Patagonia, this one guy, he wasn't being creepy, like I didn't get bad vibes from him, but he literally was like, Wow, you're so young and you're all alone. And I was like, Why would you say something like that? Like, why would you say that?

Tyler 2:31:30

And then they were like, Wow, your boyfriend lets you let you do that.

McKenna 2:31:34

Yeah, and it's like I was like, I don't think he could stop me if he tried. Um, but but yeah, like I get comments every time I go in the backcountry. And so that's how I can tell, like the experience is a bit different with that. And like, granted, with the PCT, we were together the whole time, but I and I was this was just happened like a week ago that I was talking to this person and I know them like well enough to know that they meant well. They weren't trying, they were, they were just concerned for my safety, but it felt condescending. It's like, why are you, why do you think that you have the authority to be concerned about my safety and that you know what I should be doing with my safety when like I've hiked hundreds of miles by myself, and then I've obviously hiked now thousands of miles with Tyler, but like I have experience, and then like still on my own, I've backpacked hundreds of miles, and so it's like that to that to me just felt it was like okay, like this is not the conversation we need to be having, and just I don't know. It there are people will make comments or have questions about things like that that to me feel quite irritating in the moment, but I try to just let it roll off because there's no use in spending time being annoyed by it, especially when I know it's coming from a place of either genuine concern or just wanting to connect.

Tyler 2:32:45

Like people offering advice are sometimes doing it as a way to like show an in-group status and then like insinuate that you're not part of that in-group and it makes them feel more normalized, their their choices, their their preferences, their habits as more normal, and it makes them feel good inside and fuzzy. Yeah. And uh maybe they're making the assumption that because you're a young woman that you're not a part of the in-group, and so they're like, uh, I know things that you don't. Whereas they don't know you, they don't know that you've hiked at this point thousands of miles across multiple comp continents and places. And yeah, I bet that's frustrating.

Hunter 2:33:21

Yeah.

Tyler 2:33:22

And the fact that Tyler hasn't experienced that, I don't think, you know, reflecting on my own experiences, I don't think I've experienced that. I haven't backpacked alone. I've only day hiked alone, but nobody's stopped me to ask her, hey, are you by yourself? That's I would be a little creeped out if I were in your shoes. Like, what do you why do you want to know?

McKenna 2:33:37

Yeah, I'm like, why are you drawing more attention to that? And and a lot of times they don't seem like creepy people. I mean, you never really know, but like they they don't give me bad vibes. But I'm like, but you should know it's kind of the clue, like the cluelessness or like the the not understanding the female experience in the backcountry, where it's like, if you were in my shoes, you would know that that's a very bad question to ask or like a very bad thing to comment or about. Like, just pretend you don't notice that I'm by myself.

Tyler 2:34:02

Yeah, that's so interesting.

McKenna 2:34:03

But it's fine. I don't I don't usually like have many issues with safety in the backcountry. Like, I feel so safe usually in the backcountry. And that's why whenever people are like, oh, you know, it's is the trail like well connected to towns, like you must like when there's when it's near cities or You when there's a lot of people on trail, I'm like, no, because there's way more creepy people.

Tyler 2:34:21

Yeah, what what you both mentioned that what are the creepy people doing that makes them creepy? I mean are they involved with like the the groups of people coming through the PCT hikers? They're they're actually heckle heckle you or something sometimes, and that that's more rare. There have been like sex offenders or other people who were will like try to cat like prey on women who saw posters of like this, like a specific guy, like a picture like there's a lot of them do not accept a ride from this guy.

McKenna 2:34:46

Yeah, like he'll try to like invite female through hikers to like stay at his house or like things like that. Um, and a lot of trailing just will invite you to stay at their house, so it's not abnormal, but then you don't know sometimes what you've gotten yourself into, which that was another plus of not hit hitching into towns very much is we didn't have to deal with as much like should we trust this person, should we not? And it was helpful to have Tyler there as a guy, and also when we we did hitch like a couple times for various things, um, not really like into town, but um it was a lot easier to get a hitch when we're like a couple and I'm a girl, like people are much more were much more likely to pick us up than just Tyler. Yeah. So that was quite helpful.

Tyler 2:35:24

But um I wonder why though. That's kind of an odd intention. Like you like what are you, you know? Well they see you as less harmful, like they they see you as if you see like this hobo hiker guy by himself on the side of a highway at you because you look really ragged, you know.

McKenna 2:35:37

So it's the one time, not the one time, but one of the times that being a woman is like to your advantage when people don't see you as a threat as much. But um what was I saying before that?

Tyler 2:35:47

You were just talking about what makes the creepy people creepy and the posters of the Yeah.

McKenna 2:35:52

So, like especially in SoCal, there's like dirt roads that you're you're either walking on the dirt road or you're crossing a dirt road like constantly, and people can drive on those roads like in like four-wheelers or whatever. And so, like, there'll be just like someone with a gun that goes by, and generally there's hunters, and that's fine. And we actually found like hunters almost grew on me on the trail because I found that they had a lot of respect for nature. Like it was the people that I found I was most frustrated with for not like leaving no trace or whatever, were other were day hikers, city folk, yeah, city folks, especially around LA.

Tyler 2:36:23

There was like a lot of like trash and yeah, like graffiti and like just people just not being very respectful of the environment.

McKenna 2:36:30

And like people who were like going on, you know, like out hunting, it's like they have also a vested interest in preserving nature, and so like they weren't treating it poorly, like they were like we met a lot of hunters that were really nice. Sometimes it was a little bit jarring when you'd like go around a corner and there's just a guy with a gun, like just like standing on the trail, just like yeah, and it's like you just don't expect it, but like they I didn't feel unsafe or anything. Um, but oh, I was gonna say that like on those roads and stuff, like there there can be interesting people, and like we have heard either through the grapevine or on Faro, like someone will be like, Oh, there's a this like house that's near the trail, and like this man will like come try to like solicit you for things or something, so like uh like avoid it or whatever.

Tyler 2:37:11

So it it's not like just like like encampments, not not just like people just like kind of just like camping down in the middle of nowhere, kind of like semi-permanently, and you're just like yes, waters, yeah, the desert for sure.

McKenna 2:37:23

Which is like it I don't have an issue with like you know, it's like uh everyone's just doing their thing, whatever. I'm not I'm not gonna stick my nose into what other people are doing, but it is more unsettling when you're like there are people around me that I need to be aware of, versus when you're like, I'm three days from the nearest highway. Like, I know that anyone who's made it out here is a backpacker.

Tyler 2:37:42

No, yeah. Apparently, um, quite a few years ago, there used to be a lot of like illegal marijuana farms down in Southern California. Um, and we knew somebody who had done the PCT. We met we met them and they were like, Yeah, I did the PCT at that time. And I got shot at by these illegal marijuana farmers in the middle of this California desert. Yeah. Um now that it's legalized, it's not as much of a concern. Like it's not nearly as common. But back in the day, like going, you had to just like like don't look. Don't don't like act interested in other people's business when you're going through SoCal because there's some shady stuff that goes down there.

McKenna 2:38:13

We luckily never experienced this, but I have heard it's actually quite common to like at trailheads or dirt roads see people camping that are making drugs in their car. And so they don't want you going anywhere near them. And so, like, if you like, even if you don't know what they're doing and you're not trying to pry into their business, if you're like too close to them, they'll like lash out and like threaten you or whatever. So luckily, we really didn't have too many safety issues, but like it, I'm just saying the general feeling and sense of safety was worse the closer we were to towns and highways and trailheads, as opposed to being just out in the middle of nowhere, because then you're like, I'm just hanging with the deer and I can understand that.

Tyler 2:38:49

Yeah, you're like, okay, I'm so far away from any possibility of somebody, you know, nobody would come this far with a bad intention. Like they're not gonna bother. They're gonna, if they're a predator, I guess they would unfortunately find somebody closer to them and more accessible.

McKenna 2:39:02

Yeah. I'm also kind of of the belief in general that like bad things are gonna happen when they happen. Like there, there are things you can do, like, you know, you don't you don't hike into a blizzard if you know it's gonna be a blizzard, but like you at a certain point, you you can't take every precaution for every circumstance that might find you. And so I choose to not dwell on all the things that put could potentially go wrong or could potentially be dangerous, especially in the backcountry, because that's like my happy place. And so it's like if something bad's gonna happen, it could I could get hit by a car when I'm driving in the city. It's like I'm safer when I'm hiking, it's just that perception of safety. I think that people who are not as familiar with being outside oftentimes will will be like, I don't get it. How could you be out there with the bears? And it's like they're not hurting us.

Tyler 2:39:49

Well, I think in modern like film and media, bears and and just nature in general is presented as this absolute wild land, savage land where the animals are just out to get you. They're they're looking at you like prey, the bears are treating you like a bird with all those horror films that are like in the wilderness where there's like some monster hunting you or serial killers out there trying to get you. And yeah.

McKenna 2:40:13

It's also really interesting when you look at the history of how the US specifically has viewed nature over time, especially because like European colonizers were very much like they didn't like nature even in Europe, but then when they got here, it was even more threatening. Like people in app um like the Appalachians and stuff, like it was like, you know, a frontier, a wild frontier, like it was dangerous for them. That's like a lot of why, like going off off on a tangent, but like why um guns are such like so embedded in our society in America, because they were like a requirement for protection back when like the revolution was going on, like you know, and so like um our view of nature as a country, obviously, like that changed during like Manifest Destiny and stuff. We obviously became more like this is a pride point for us. Like, we have this beautiful nature in our country.

Tyler 2:41:04

Um, and like less of an obstacle and more and so more of something to enjoy.

McKenna 2:41:08

Yeah, but that still is some it's still at the root of it is how our country has viewed nature as like a wild, untamed, dangerous place that's that is actively against the interests of humans a lot of times. And so that is still, I think, hard to shake generally generationally, in my opinion.

Tyler 2:41:29

I could see that. Yeah, deeply embedded. And I wonder if that has anything to do with the people's reverence for nature. Like if I wonder if they were less afraid of it, they would want to take care of it more, maybe, or maybe if if it's well, some people possibility. Yeah. It's it's a weird mixture of like Yeah, I don't know. It's it's it's weird because some people do like it is sad, but like as nature becomes more accessible to the public and as it becomes more and more popular in social media, it does become more trashed. Like the places where the most people are is where you see the most damage to nature, which is sad. And I I'm not sure why the common theme is that lack of respect when you kind of reach the like I don't know, the average point of when you when you bring a bunch of people together, the average you get is is not respect for nature, which is I don't know, I don't know why that is.

McKenna 2:42:25

Well, a lot of these places have overshot their carrying capacity because of social media, which is frustrating because you don't want to gatekeep the outdoors from people, but at the same time, there's so many issues with people not treating it well. I mean, luckily we didn't see as much of it on the trail as like you would in maybe like a national park or something because I mean we did hike through seven national parks, but like we weren't always on the most popular trails in the national parks, or like it's it's I mean, people do day hike the PCT, but only in like certain sections. Um, but I mean you still would find people like not packing out their toilet paper because they think it's biodegradable and it's not, like you you still need to pack out your toilet paper, but there would be like just dirty toilet paper like hanging in a bush or something, you're like ew.

Tyler 2:43:05

But um I think it's because throughout history we've approached nature as though humans are completely separate from it. Like throughout the industrial revolution, nature was seen as this area or um an abundance of resources that we could extract and we could pull from and use to do human things that were important and supremely important over any concern animals had or nature more broadly. And so it's easier to trash something we feel we're not a part of, but I think we forget we're absolutely a part of it. Yeah. Uh it's easy to forget when we have big cities and in concrete jungles like Phoenix, Arizona, is where I'm from. But yeah, I I think maybe uh a remembering that we're a part of it would foster uh a deeper respect for nature and a care for it. And I do want to get more into what it was like transitioning off trail, but how about we take a bathroom break really quick? Okay, sounds good. That's cool. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. So I imagine you you mentioned things like day-to-day life on the trail was was simpler. Uh, and I imagine that's because your your mission, like you're you woke up and and what you had to do that day was clear, easily definable. It's like, okay, I have to hike, we have to hike 26 miles to reach this destination. We're gonna set up our camp, go to bed, and do it all again tomorrow with a similar mission. So, what was transitioning back to society off-trail like in terms of that shift in a sense of purpose or what you do on a daily basis as a human? Um, in in one way, I imagine the trail is being um not simple because it is complex and it's hard, but a clear guide. Like you have a north star really the whole time you're there. And in everyday social life, we have many social and we have many north stars. Um, we're pulled in all sorts of directions, and sometimes it's confusing, it's stressful, it's anxiety-inducing. So, what was that like for you both? Um, I'm just uh curious because I'm imagining how I might experience that shift, and I don't think I would take it particularly well. I like clear-cut missions, and when you lose that, it must be kind of you experience some sort of loss. So, yeah, what was that like for both of you? I think for me, there definitely was that sense of like loss of purpose and purposelessness. Um, and it was more than I I don't know, because I I had heard about post-trail depression and I'd heard about the difficulty in tr in transitioning off trail. Um in the beginning of the trail, I kind of felt like that didn't really apply to me because you know, you're just sort of getting into the groove of it and just starting to, you know, this start this massive thing. But especially towards the end, I I could tell, like, well not even especially towards the end, like I knew I enjoyed through hiking pretty early on into the trail. But especially towards the end, I was like, yeah, this is gonna like really suck to get off trail. I could tell. Like even though we were both getting like kind of like antsy and like ready to stop and get off trail, we could also be like, we're gonna miss this. And we did. Um, and just yeah, just this the it is it is simple. Even though it's there are complexities, there's things going on you have to pay attention to, there is one goal, and your entire self is dedicated towards that goal every single day, every single moment. And it's something that it's not stressful. Like, you know, I you know, we've been in college for the past four years and then in regular school for 12 years before that. Like it wasn't like that because, in a sense, you're working towards the same thing the whole time you're in college, you're working towards getting a degree, but you're also working on passing this class, passing this exam, doing this homework, getting through this day. And it's it's not simple, it's hard and it's stressful. But the trail was a different kind of stress hole. It wasn't that like, oh my God, like there's something hanging over my head I have to do. It's just it's it's just different and it's a lot better. Um, we were talking about that on trail, how it's a different kind of stress, and it's a lot better, it's a lot easier on you and a lot better for the mom. Mentally, especially, mentally, especially definitely harder physically, way better physically. But like I was like, I would so much rather be doing this than doing any sort of schoolwork. It's just so much better. Yeah, I to me it was just so much easier than trying to force myself to sit down and and you know, work on homework day after day, do an essay, you know, work on physics, whatever. So that was something that I knew I would struggle with, and I did. Um I I wouldn't say it was like full-on depression, but it was definitely like it was sad and it was it was just feeling that loss of purpose. And I think for me it extended out further than I thought it would. It wasn't that intense at the beginning, especially because we were do we were so busy trying to move and get ready to start a new job and kind of start the beginning of the rest of our life. But especially now that I have been doing that job for several months, um, it's really weird to go from the PCT to working an office job. And it it we've said multiple times, like the PCT, it wasn't that long ago. It was like, I don't know, we got off trail.

McKenna 2:48:13

End of October. End of October. Yeah.

Tyler 2:48:15

So it's been like what four months, maybe five months, not even. No, like four. Yeah. Um, and that's it's almost it feels like a fever dream. Yeah. That like going. It doesn't feel real. Yeah, it doesn't feel real, even though we did it so recently. And then now I I I have my job, I work my 40 hours a week, and then I come home and I, you know, like I do my I do my chores, I we we do our little things on the week, and then it's back again. And it's it especially with starting my new job where I'm I don't have like a clear cut sense of purpose. I'm not I you know, I'm not I'm not the person who knows everything, I'm the person who knows nothing, who's having to learn everything from scratch and trying to find my place in this new organization, this new space in life. I've definitely felt that like loss of purpose. Um, which it's getting better. And I've I've been trying to do more things, you know, outside of work to find that. But even then it was like we were so busy trying to get settled and it it it felt like I wasn't even doing anything on the weekends for a little bit because we were just so busy with everything. Um and so that's been that's been hard and it's it's been it's been especially difficult um with feeling like so much of my time is is sucked up into some in things to that I sometimes don't think are what I want to be doing myself at work. So it's that's been that's been hard and it's been something I've been trying to adjust to even even now.

McKenna 2:49:42

So yeah, I would say the simplicity, I crave that from the trail. Like the the simplicity was one of my favorite aspects of it. Um it was just so it like quieted my mind, which like we were talking about earlier, it's it's very interesting reflecting on the meditative aspect of it now, because I didn't even really think of it that way until you phrased it like that. And I think that I find that very interesting because I actually hate meditation. I'm horrible at it, I hate it so much. Um, and so it is interesting that's like, wait, I actually kind of like did that in my own way, but um I I would say I do miss that a lot. And it just I I echo a lot of what Tyler was saying. I think we've had different experiences off trail because of our we're in different places in terms of our career. Like I am in the throes of a really bad job search right now, which is not helping. Um, like we're but like his job, there's also like you know, there's aspects of that that are making exacerbating that feeling of like, oh, I I missed it. It's just so different.

Tyler 2:50:42

I mean so different. Yeah. Even just your your immediate environment. Yeah, it's like you're indoors. I'm I'm sitting in a cubicle all day under fluorescent lighting, and that is my world for the you know, the majority of the week. Um, as opposed to like being out in nature for like basically like all like all the time. I was never not in nature, like every single waking moment was experiencing nature and and not necessarily enjoying it all the time, but being present in it, most of the time, yeah. But being present in it as opposed to just sitting away in my cuticle typing, like yeah, you know.

McKenna 2:51:18

Yeah, and it's like my experience has been different because I've been at home just searching for jobs. So on one hand, I've had the stress of like the uncertainty of my future and trying really hard to do something that I like do something in my field that I'm passionate about, but also kind of coming to the point where I have to accept where that might not be possible and just it like there's a lot of I won't go into the whole job search thing, but it has not been good. Um, and then simultaneously though, I'm at home, so I do go for walks outside whenever I want, or like I'll go volunteer, I'll go do things like I've been able to actually connect a lot with people um around Santa Fe and stuff. Like I've made up some friends and like just have been able to kind of do things that make me feel like me, like I've gotten really into I've gotten back into crafting and like DIY projects, which was a big thing for me growing up, and I like didn't do that at all in college. So, and back into like libraries and reading physical books. I I got back into reading because of Tyler um in college, but I've been getting back into you know, going to libraries and I've been reading like a book a day. Um, so like I mean it depends on the week, but I I find that that has been helping me a lot. But then there's the other side where I feel kind of like directionless at the moment. I mean, I I try to give myself that sense of purpose and direction, but it like you were saying, or like you you were kind of introducing before, like the there is a sense of purpose on the trail that's so simple, like it's embedded in what you're doing. You don't have to really look and find it because you're like, well, I'm just walking and trying to complete this big hike. And I do miss that a lot. I just miss the simplicity of like waking up. I and it's really weird. Well, I okay, I'll finish my thought first. I I would miss the simplicity of just waking up, eating, hiking, pooping, sleeping. Like that's like it's very it feels like it's a very freeing experience.

Tyler 2:53:05

It is.

McKenna 2:53:07

Um, but really quick.

Tyler 2:53:09

I mean, I think people underestimate how much having a a literal path, a trail in front of you helps you calm down and and just relax and take your mind off things because what it does is remove so much of it it uh co-cognizes with you. Like your your cognition is now distributed onto the trail itself. It's it's telling you where to go. You no longer have to think. Imagine if you didn't have a trail and you're just looking at looking at the the landscape in front of you, trying to problem solve and figure out where to go logistically. That's way different than having a trail right here determining where your path is. So you can just kind of go on autopilot to a certain extent, again, making sure you don't twist your ankle. But yeah, it really does help. And it's that North Star metaphor or whatever it is, the the mission metaphor, having it be clear, it's largely because of that. Yeah, we don't have in regular quote air quotes regular life. And also being disconnected from the world at large, that was something we really enjoyed is we just didn't have cell reception. We didn't have to worry about anything else but what was directly in front of us. Like we just put everything else out of our minds, you know, our own personal wider things, the world at large, all of that, which was also like something that doesn't happen very often in the modern age.

McKenna 2:54:23

And people would be like, Don't you want to know what's going on in the world? Absolutely not.

Tyler 2:54:27

Do not tell us the news. We do not want to know it.

McKenna 2:54:29

Yeah. But it it is like, I mean, I feel like I've felt that before because like when I'll travel internationally, for example, I will, you know, buy a very small amount of data. So my phone is almost always on airplane mode, and then I'll maybe check in with my family once a day or something when I have Wi-Fi. So I'm kind of used to like not really being on the internet much for extended periods of time. I sometimes will like put my phone on airplane mode and pretend pretend I'm camping or backpacking when I don't want people to contact me. Um, but like I just I do like being disconnected from like notifications and people. And so that wasn't necessarily new, but just doing that for so long was nice to to get away from it. But it is really interesting how fast you slip back into that. And it wasn't even that jarring, it was more just like, eh, yeah, back to the world, like it's what it is. But it it was it, I think it was less so like, oh, there's cars and people, because we still saw that on the trail. That that that wasn't the jarring part of going back to the real world. It was more so like like Tyler was talking about, just the the very different types of challenges you're presented with. And I mean, we had a really, really busy November. I mean, we we got engaged at the end of the trail at the southern terminus, and so that thank you. Um, that was really nice, and like we got some time to like celebrate that and our our hike and everything. But then, you know, a few days later, we're like, I'm starting the job search very intensely. He's trying to find us a place to live because he's has you know about a month till he starts work and um we're having to buy a car, and that turned out to be a lot more work than we thought. Um, and then like we came out here to house hunt for a like a week, and um there's just there was a lot going on in like Thanksgiving and just it there was I don't even know. It was it was just it was I wasn't doing that well mentally during that time because it just was like so much, and like I had a hard time. One thing that for me was a really big thing getting off trails, I had a really hard time sleeping for like the first month after being on trail. Cause like I was talking about before, I have a hard time sleeping in general, but outdoors I always sleep so much better than indoors. And so after coming off four months of really good sleep, it was like a huge letdown to all of a sudden not be able to sleep again. Like it was weird sleeping inside. It was like unsettling. I was like, I want to just go sleep outside, but I'm like in a neighborhood or in a hotel in Santa Fe.

Tyler 2:56:45

Wow. I wonder how much of it also has to do with agency. Like you were the ones determining how far you went every day. You were the ones determining what campsite you stopped at, versus in this life where a lot of us, especially with white coat, white-collar jobs, where we are told when to come in, what to do, when we can take vacation, it's it slips away from us our ability to determine our future, even on a short-term scale, like on a day-to-day basis, a week-to-week basis. Did you feel like it had anything to do with that? Like you were fully in charge of your lives throughout that period. Fully.

McKenna 2:57:21

Yeah. Like you were in charge of your own survival and everything. Which obviously you always are, but I I would say so.

Tyler 2:57:27

And even just like the like more nebulous like loss of agency, not just people directly telling you what you can and can't do, but just like the confines of regular society. Like, I don't know, like you need to go do your taxes, like pay attention to your credit card statement, you know, your bills, and just even just I mean, this is very minor, but even just like feeling like, you know, oh, I gotta go like do all my chores, like make sure I'm fed, which it's very different from the trail because I don't know, we did all that work ahead of hand. And you know, and we we we were just like literally we only have one purpose. Everything else is like not really relevant right now.

McKenna 2:58:04

And it was almost like we had to block everything out and like put our blinders on. Like I did feel bad, but I really didn't check in with friends during the trail. I like just put my blinders on, and it wasn't it felt a little bit selfish at times, but I was also like, I can't I just can't worry about other things right now. Like, especially because we, like I said, we would have maybe an hour or two of cell reception once a week. And so we're busy checking fire, wildfire status, like trail conditions, water conditions, like telling our family we're okay, responding to emails. I would get people, um, somehow my name was still on the syllabus for the 450-person class I taught. And so I get so many emails as school started in like September or August where people would be like, Miss, miss, my quiz is due in 10 minutes and I am ill, or like so. I'd be responding like that.

Tyler 2:58:52

I forgot about this exam. Can I retake it? What how nice of you to respond after graduation?

McKenna 2:58:57

When I'm on the trail too, I'd be like, I'm no longer the TA. But you know, it's just like your time gets eaten up and it just it wasn't. I felt like I I don't I don't want to say it, like I didn't have the interest, but it I it's like I almost just didn't have the capacity or like whatever to be like, so how are you doing? Tell me about your life when I'm just like I have my blinders on, I'm just I'm focusing on like what I'm doing.

Tyler 2:59:18

Yeah, yeah. I don't think you should feel bad about that personally.

McKenna 2:59:21

I yeah, I don't think it was nice to catch up with people after for sure, but yeah.

Tyler 2:59:27

And Tyler, you're saying what you're saying is is I think probably a common feeling that people who have spent a lot of time outdoors, this is just my my sense the sensation I have that they there's something that's lost when you come back to the the social hustle and bustle of things. But I then again, what's so interesting is like there are people out there, no doubt, who would have the complete opposite experience. Like if you put them on a trail outdoors for four months, they might experience that as like a total loss of what gives them a life and energy, and then you put them back into the complex social network that is our so our everyday life, and they feel um invigorated again, they feel energized, they feel happy, and and so that's just so interesting how how diverse people are. Um and there's no one single northern star that guides everybody in in a way that makes them feel unanimously satisfied. I just think that's fascinating about humans.

McKenna 3:00:24

Yeah, for sure. And it is really interesting to kind of hear people different experiences when people get off trail because there is a really common theme. It's they call it like catching the through hike or bug, which I do feel like we've caught it. Um clearly with the one I'm about to do. Um, but you like people will almost be like, I cannot be like I was talking about before, like they're like, I can't be satisfied unless I'm doing a through hike. And I do think that's not a place I would want to be in personally.

Tyler 3:00:51

Yeah, like if they're not through hiking, they're planning a through hike.

McKenna 3:00:54

Or they're like, I'm miserable. Like my life outside of through hiking isn't really my life. Like it's just an interim time until I can start the next through hike. And I I just wouldn't want to live like that personally. I'm not judging people who do. Um, but we've we've like heard about that and talked to people who experienced that a lot. Um, and I do think some of that has to do with the fact that we have so much in our off-trail life that we love and that brings us so much meaning and purpose, like in each other, in friendships, in um like other hobbies that we have, and even just like we've made it a priority, especially Tink is going to the bathroom. That's really loud. I can hear that. Our lovely cats, yeah. Okay, anyways. Um, I I feel like we like we've made it a priority to go camping and like get outside more because we found that we were missing that a lot um post-trail. But I feel like we have so many things, even on trail, that we were looking forward to after the trail and that we're currently enjoying. So I don't feel that complete like loss of purpose. It's different and it's not, but it's not like I yearn for through hiking, but in a positive way, not like I'm dissatisfied with my life now, so I wish I was doing that instead, but more so like that was also an amazing time of my life that I was really cool and I would love to do again um when the time's right. And like we have talked about potentially like I you can't really potentially making our kids into through hikers, but you you can't really like you know force them into it. But you know, it we it would be really cool if we ended up having a family with kids who like were willing and wanting to do that, um, to do like a family through hike, like I don't know.

Tyler 3:02:31

Or even just like the aspiration to maybe become a triple crowner in our lifetime, which is which is when you complete the top like the biggest three-through hikes in the states, which is the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide, and PCT. So and for people who don't know, the Continental Divide Trail goes from where to where?

McKenna 3:02:47

Also Canada to Mexico, but it goes through Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. And the Pacific Crest Trail, because we never really said this, goes through Washington, Oregon, and California. And everyone thinks it's the Pacific Coast Trail. They're like, oh, so you were walking on the beach the whole time. Like, no. Um, it goes, it's very much inland, like several hundred miles inland. And then the other thing to note about the the PCT is that it zigzags so much. So we like figured out that as the crow flies from terminus to terminus, it's about which is end to end, like border to border. Yes. Um, it was about like a thousand miles, which is still a lot. Um but we hiked, you know, 2,600.

Tyler 3:03:31

It was to the point that we were actually really angry at the trail in certain sections. In certain sections, especially in SoCal, it was really bad. We'd just be like zigzagging all over the place for like no apparent reason. And we're like, why? Why are we doing that?

McKenna 3:03:43

Or that time in NorCal where we saw Shasta from like all the way from Crater Lake into southern Oregon, and then we went like six days to the west, and then we circled back around, and then we were right next to Shasta, and we were like, we feel like we've been seeing Shasta for like two weeks. Yeah, like leave it.

Tyler 3:03:59

But Shasta's a big mountain in Oregon.

McKenna 3:04:01

No, in NorCal.

Tyler 3:04:02

In NorCal, sorry. Yeah, that's sorry, NorCal, yeah. Wow.

McKenna 3:04:06

But but like those are the two major loops. But the trail, I mean, it especially too, you're getting so much distance just in vertical elevation. Because I mean, average per day, we were hiking three to five thousand, but sometimes two to six thousand feet of elevation gain a day. So that's like sometimes over a mile of elevation gain, like oftentimes at a mile or more. Um, so you know, you're getting that distance too. And then like even just you can't see on the map, but like there's just so many like switchbacks and other zigzags around things.

Tyler 3:04:36

So I imagine that's purposefully designed for multiple reasons, one of them being to keep you off private property uh to the extent possible, and then probably another reason to keep you along water sources as much as possible. No, I wish. I wish.

McKenna 3:04:49

No, the main reason is that it's horse grated, so they have to they're supposed to, which some of the sections were like, this is not horse graded because it was really steep, but they're supposed to make it so horses can do it, like and also follow the crest, yeah, like follow the mountain crest.

Tyler 3:05:03

But it's um they want horses to be able to do the trail, it's supposed to be an equestrian trail as well, so that's why it's nominally horse grated.

McKenna 3:05:10

Yeah, I see. But you can't, I mean, it's not taking you like over Mount Rainier because that's like a whole different skill set. That's the other thing that people don't understand is like this is endurance hiking, not mountaineering. And so people are like, oh, do you want to hike Everest? I'm like, that isn't in no way in the same realm. And like, so like, you know, we're not summiting Rainier like with pickaxes and doing avalanche training and stuff like that. Like, we're just you know, the highest the trail goes is 13,000 feet. Um, so it's it's they take you on the crest, but not you're not summiting every mountain. Yeah, but there is so much up and down, and sometimes it's so pointless. You're like, I see a valley right there that I literally could have just walked to.

Tyler 3:05:47

Or like there's like a giant plane we could have walked across in like a day, and it took us three days to like circumnavigate on the crest around it.

McKenna 3:05:54

Yeah.

Tyler 3:05:54

So yeah. But hey, you said your definition of the finishing was doing the miles. So we had to do it.

McKenna 3:06:01

Yeah.

Tyler 3:06:02

Uh both of you have mentioned some future plans you have to do more hikes, but is there one that I mean, what would be your preference if you want to do the what was it called, Tyler? The tri uh triple crown. Triple crown. Would you prefer to do the continental divide trail or the appellate appalacian trail? Maybe the Appalachian Trail first.

McKenna 3:06:23

Yeah, the Continental Divide is it it is pretty brutal. Like there's a lot of sections.

Tyler 3:06:27

It's over 3,000 miles.

McKenna 3:06:28

It's yeah, so longer. But a lot of it is because it's not there's no trail in a lot of sections. Like it's just choose your own adventure.

Tyler 3:06:35

It's not maintained very well, if at all.

McKenna 3:06:37

Well, there's like sometimes it just the trail doesn't even exist. Like you just you just go in a certain direction. So that's not my cup of tea as much. I am very much like I think it's so interesting. I was thinking about this recently that I don't consider myself a very adventurous person, but I think, and I think that's a lot of a lot of that has to do with the people I hang around with are like adrenaline junkies and like really cool people who've done a lot of awesome things. So in comparison, I'm like, I'm pretty like timid and I I don't feel like I do anything that crazy. I kind of just walk and hang out in nature. Like I'll just read a book in the forest. And I'm not into climbing, I'm not into scrambling or technical things. But I think understandably, other people in my life who are not really into things in nature or whatever, or traveling are very much like, oh, you're so adventurous. And so I always just find that odd. It's like this weird dissonance where I'm like, I I'm not, but to other people I am, and so it's I don't know. But I feel like for me that wouldn't be as enjoyable. So we'll see if we ever end up doing that.

Tyler 3:07:35

Yeah, but it's kind of like if you do the if you do the Appalachian Trail, the AT, it's like well, and you kind of have to try and go for it. It's only 3,000 miles away. Yeah, two out of three, right? So we'll see. I don't know. It's it's you know, like we value our lives outside of the trails enough to be like, you know, we don't want to like quit our jobs or be transient or like, you know, do seasonal work or temp work that we could allow us to like take off months at a time of work.

McKenna 3:07:59

So it's hard on your body to it is also it is also very hard. I'm still injured from the last six days of the PCT, I got tendonitis in a different part of my foot. And so it's like it is like your body starts to fall apart over time. It's not really a sustainable hobby.

Tyler 3:08:12

And like, you know, I want to have a career, we want to have a family, like we we want to be able to live our lives, and you know, that means that we might not be able to do those trails for a long time, maybe not even until we retire or or who knows when. So it's like, you know, like McKenna said, like we both agree, like we I think we we've caught the through hiker bug, but not to the point where we want to sacrifice other parts of our life for it.

McKenna 3:08:35

Or where we're so dissatisfied with our life that we just wish we could always be through hiking.

Tyler 3:08:42

Yeah, that sounds like the allure of coming back, but the difficulty of the barriers you have of once again returning to I I hate this notion of real life. I'm air quotes here because it's not what is to say that that having a corporate job and and being in a big city is real life, but being outside is not is totally misguided. I'm just gonna say the whole ecology, the all of it is the real life, the whole world, the whole universe more broadly is real life. Um, and maybe the the urban day-to-day life is just one frame of that, being outside, being outside, connected with quote nature. I think urban life is also a form of nature, but in a different way, is just a different frame of that uh reality and and what frame we want to spend most of our lives in, what angle we want to take, what our entry point that we prefer in this life. Um it varies, and I I hope we all find ways to like get access to it despite the barriers placed on us. Yeah. And I just just a small aside on what you said, I have gotten the sentiment of like, you're so lucky to be able to do that, and just wait until real life catches up to you. Like people, especially older people, almost seem like bitter sometimes that we've been able to do this, and they're like, Well, just wait until real life catches up to you. Like you're gonna have to deal with it.

McKenna 3:10:05

I noticed that a lot, especially more so with international travel, where people who wish that they could have had the opportunity to do something like what we did, which again, like it goes back to what we're talking about before, where it's a combination of hard work and like making sacrifices to be able to do the things, and also like you know, a relative privilege for sure. Um, but I think people who feel that they either didn't have that relative privilege growing up or that they didn't they regret not making the steps that they maybe could have made to do those things.

Tyler 3:10:35

Or even just feel like they're trapped in their current lives.

McKenna 3:10:37

Yeah, that too will feel very will will express like bitterness and resentment towards us being able to do that. Like, I cannot even tell you the amount of times I have had people be like, you shouldn't travel at your age. Like we're being so irresponsible. Like, what do your parents think of you doing?

Tyler 3:10:51

They're basically just like they don't a lot of times they're not afraid like that. They're just like, well, just wait until it catches up to you.

McKenna 3:10:56

Like No, I've had people just be like, You shouldn't travel.

Tyler 3:10:58

Yeah, well, for me it's been a bit different. Strange, it's almost like an envy. Yeah, I think it is.

McKenna 3:11:04

And and it's hard because you it's like, I totally I understand where they're coming from, but I'm also like, just because you can't or couldn't or whatever doesn't mean that I shouldn't. And so it's just hard, which is, I mean, it's a big reason why I try. I don't, I don't really talk about this a lot with people. Like, I don't like to make that the focus of the conversation, or I like I don't want to mention it every other sentence, travel or the PCT or whatever, just because it is really hard to connect with people over. And so I try to find things that I can connect with people over that are that we have in common. Um, but it it is a really interesting thing that I that we both have noticed over time, and just it it's like it is hard because you wanna you don't know what to say sometimes.

Tyler 3:11:47

Yeah. I don't know that I wouldn't know what to say. Yeah, I like I don't I don't want to sacrif sacrifice my life for three working, but I also don't want to sacrifice it for the the working life either.

McKenna 3:11:58

And it was like the best time of our life, that best possible like window that we could have um done this because we weren't paying rent, we don't have kids yet, and like that I mean those are big barriers. Like we don't and then we were, you know, graduating, so we didn't have a job yet. So it's just it it's like if not now, then when? Like when every time someone's like, why are you doing this now? Like you should wait till you have money or you're till you till you're everyone says wait till you're retired. I'm like, I am gonna be old and tired and like not be like with travel, and I'm already getting tired. Like I can't imagine sometimes even traveling the way that I traveled two or three years ago. I can't even imagine doing that now, and that's like I'm still very young. And so it just kind of, I don't know, it's like if not now, then when?

Tyler 3:12:44

I think people forget that things are finite, that our time here is finite. And you never know when it's coming out. Exactly, you never know. And that's I don't know. It has to come down to this sense of regret. And I feel so bad for those people if that's if that's where they're coming from. But yeah, we we don't know that we have until we're 80 to fit the things we want to fit in here and this. Health is not guaranteed, health is not guaranteed, and so yeah, there's no when is the right time to do it? And there's a forgetfulness of of being a person, being a human in this really wild existence, this this uh inexplicable universe that we're a part of, and I think so often people want to frame real life as just the the workings of what of human sociality, but there's a bigger mystery behind what we're doing here, what this all is, and I think exploring the earth, explore, you know, in terms of landscape and and lakes and rivers and creeks and canyons and whatever helps us connect to those bigger questions that that itch that give us an itch to understand like what what is all this?

McKenna 3:13:58

And it makes you feel so small, yeah. Yeah, and I love being part of something bigger, also like kind of related to what we were just talking about. A very wise friend of all of ours, Yash, once told me that you need three things to to travel. And um, I think this very much applies to like through hiking too. You need time, health, and money. And when you're young, you generally have time and health, but you don't usually have money. And so that that's the major barrier. And so that's like what we've worked on the last few years to try to overcome that barrier by you know, it through different mechanisms. Um, and then when you're middle-aged, you have generally health and money, but you don't have time, especially if you have kids. But when you're retired, you have time and money, but you oftentimes don't have health or it's not guaranteed, um, which I I thought that was so wise the way that he explained that. He's so wise. Hi, Yosh. Um, but anyways, I I think that I I think I've thought about that conversation that I had with him since I think that was like several years ago now. I've thought about that ever since because it really puts it in perspective. And I I think it really is a difficult balance to strike because you can't, like Tyler was saying, you can't throw away your life for through hiking or for travel because at the end of the day, then you're gonna be without important things that you need to survive. Like whether or not you like the structure of society, the reality of it is still real. And so you have to be able to make your way in one way or another in society. And so it's like you can't have no contingency for like what you're gonna do outside of that. And so it is a really difficult balance to strike where when that's why I think oftentimes people are like, Well, why are you why are you doing this? That's so irresponsible. But it's like we've we've got it figured out. Like, I think even family members of ours were like had a hard time accepting that like we had some, like, especially our immediate families were very supportive, but there were there were like, you know, family members that were kind of like, oh, like why would you do that? Like, that's quite irresponsible. I I never would have done that. And it's hard, it's hard because you can't, you don't want to just sit there justifying yourself, but you're also like, you know, we've got it under control, we're we're balancing it.

Tyler 3:16:05

They see the transition from being a teenager into adulthood as this somewhat fixed curriculum of steps. And if you don't follow the curriculum in the way that's expected of you, then you're off track or you're doing something wrong, or even maybe it's that you are a bad reflection of their parenthood. Yeah. And these these complex relationships, and yeah, so there's so many layers of complexity to it. But if there were this is a hard question to sort of begin to conclude on, but you've mentioned both of you that talking about this experience has been difficult because there's been so much nuance you've experienced, so many dimensions, so it was a long experience, both in terms of miles and time. If there was one way people could understand better the nuance and complexity and understand that it wasn't just a how was it? That what you know, better understand that it's not just a simple it when I ask how was it, like I, you know, unfortunately asked you. What things would you remind them about what it what it means to do a through hike? You could I know that's a tough one, you can think about that for a second. I guess if it's if we weren't to have a several-hour conversation like we are now, I think the biggest thing that is really difficult for people to understand is the scale. Like you say a number, you say 2,600 miles, and that just kind of flies over people's head. It flew over my head before we did the trail. Like, honestly, like even now it's hard to conceptualize just the sheer scale of what we did. But I think the easiest way to kind of comprehend that there's a lot more complexity and nuance to it is just like you know, 2600 miles maybe doesn't seem like that much nowadays. You can drive that in a car in a couple days, you can fly that on an airplane in one day. But when you're doing that by foot, when it takes you like usually like at least four months of doing that every single day to do that, there's trying to conceptualize that and fit that into your mind and be like, you have to live every single one of those days, you have to walk every single one of those steps to make it to the end of that trail. And it's not the same, you're going through countless different types. types of clim of of you know terrain, climate experiences, like you know, you have to live with yourself for that amount of time doing this one single thing. I think trying to conceptualize that puts it more into perspective. And like I said, you can't even really understand it, even sometimes after you've done it. But it it's I I would say that's that's one way to try and understand it.

McKenna 3:18:42

I really like that answer. Thank you for saying that. That's a phenomenal answer. Better than I that I I'm not even gonna try. I I would just I would second that I think the scale is very difficult for people to understand and and I agree that like it doesn't feel like I've hiked 2600 miles. Even though I know I did it just it doesn't feel like it. It's it does feel like a fever dream or just like it couldn't possibly be real. Especially because it's broken down over the course of a while and it it doesn't I mean when you you know when you hike 26 miles or 30 34 miles I think was our longest day on trail or whatever like it's not it doesn't feel like that much. Yeah you're like well that's it's only 34 miles I mean well relative but yeah but like at the scale of the trail you're like I went like a percent you know yeah which actually was kind of funny because we we did go over a hundred days which 100 days is sort of like the marker of like really impressive if you go under a hundred days that's like pretty impress like very impressive. So we were over a hundred and we were never trying to be under a hundred like we were most more focused on making the whole making it the whole way and not getting injured. But we I mean we were like at 113 hiking days um which it felt like every day was about a percent of the trail which was kind of in some ways sad in some ways nice like depending on where we were at sometimes it was like wow we've barely done any but other times it was like oh this is great but um yeah I would say it it it is really difficult to conceptualize the the length and magnitude of the trail. And I would say also the the like visceral physical and emotional sensations that you feel are so hard to put into words. Like I don't feel like it can do it. But at the same time it's like you want people to understand you're like I want I wish you could experience this to like not because that's like oh I like you know I think you need you ought to experience this but more just like so that they could understand um and so it could just because you can't really put it into words.

Tyler 3:20:33

Yeah it's reductive to try and put it into like a couple sentences. Like do you do you focus on like you know the the pain the uncomfortableness the the blizzard the you know the the really sucky days do you say what they want to hear and be like yeah it was amazing it was the best you know best experience of my life would do it again. Like you know it's it's really hard to answer that question. And it depends a lot on the situation on who you're talking with. Do you want to have a 10 minute conversation with them or do you just want to answer the question and move on?

McKenna 3:21:04

Yeah especially like when you it it you have to judge like what their level of interest and how much they like do they care or they just humoring you. Yeah but I mean it yeah each day was such a roller coaster even like in the course of one day you could be like this is the absolute worst day of my life why the hell did I ever do this? Like why am I doing this? And then like four hours later you'll be like I have never been happier in my entire life. So it's such like a roller coaster and like I will say like even though there was so much monotony and boredom like almost every day had something interesting happen. Like sometimes bad but usually good like sometimes you'd see like a cute little family of bears or you'd meet someone really cool on the trail or you'd like see one of your friends that you hadn't seen in like a month or two or something. And so like it was there was usually some highlight trail magic that was that was fun.

Tyler 3:21:53

And so like trail magic is when people give good things to hikers um because we were Southbounders we didn't get a lot of the trail magic which is like people will like like have like full barbecues like out of their vans and give out of the goodness of their heart out of the goodness of their hearts yeah they're not even paying anything um so we more so got like like little snacks that were stored or drinks but it was still very nice.

McKenna 3:22:11

Yeah we really appreciated we actually did our own trail magic now on the CDT.

Tyler 3:22:15

I was gonna say I would be shocked if you two didn't end up doing that yourself.

McKenna 3:22:19

Yeah yeah we already went and dropped off an ammo box full of candy on the CDT um but yeah so like I I do feel like there are just so many different emotions and it is really difficult to just encapsulate the feelings but one of the things I miss the most is that like visceral physical feeling of of being present.

Tyler 3:22:38

It's so easy to just not be present in life. It's just it like people talk about it like 20 years fly by and you're like what did I do? Why am I here? And it's it's different when you're when you're hiking every day to achieve this big goal. So well thank you both for attempting and not even just attempting doing a great job I would say of putting something so difficult to put into words into words I think a lot of people are curious what this experience is like and it takes longer than even 30 minutes on a phone call or especially longer than a 30 second reel on Instagram to express the depth and intricacies and complexities of this experience. So I hope that people found uh what you had to to share fascinating because I do and it's interesting to sort of live vicariously through this experience. And I hope that you as people who have this newfound what did you say this um trail bug what is it through through hiking bug through hiking bug are able to find remedies for that bug in the future through various means.

McKenna 3:23:50

Thanks for having us thank you so much for having us that's really nice