Is the CDT the PCT‘s younger sister?

The PCT was a childhood dream, teenage love. A year later the training wheels have come off, I felt ready for the real deal: the Continental Divide Trail.

But I wasn’t dipped into enchantment leaving the Northern Terminus and immersed in the magic, we’ve all felt back on the PCT.  

Instead I was just walking, walking, walking and then staring at the roof of my tent, wondering, doubting. Finally I had returned home, but it seems like I‘m at the wrong address.

Is it time to leave the CDT?

Like a ping pong ball.

The idea has been passed back and forth between Boomer and I like a ping bong ball for a few days.

While DB and I are still crushing big miles, my thru hiker heart is crumbling from small pieces into dust. „You seem to have a lot going on“, he said the day he noticed the terrified look on my face, when we opened the trail register. And I told him, there’s more than one thing pulling me off the CDT.

Not the PCT‘s younger sister

„Come out and join me“, Boomer said after her decision to leave her CDT nobo hike this year. And at first, it seemed ludicrous. A 21 hour bus trip. Meeting a stranger somewhere in a motel north of Seattle. A rental car. A random itinerary of national parks and towns to visit.

It doesn’t feel right to leave the CDT behind. And it doesn’t feel right to be out hiking it either. This trail is not the PCT‘s younger sister. I had expected the CDT to fill this PCT-sized hole in my chest. And, being 450 miles longer, it should have filled it. It didn’t.

A ticket to sisterhood

After all, the CDT will not go anywhere. It will not hold it against me if I leave it, like a spurned love interest. And there was the promise of sisterhood waiting on the West coast. While the CDT demanded me to be fierce and strong and tall, I was ready to curl up in a little ball, lick my wounds and most of all: feel safe. The kind of safety I only find in other women. And women, well, there aren’t many one the CDT.

The decision is made

The decision lifted 50 pounds of my shoulder and with the new found lightness, I finish a big day on a Saturday evening. While the sun was already setting, I stretch my thumb out, half jokingly. Knowing I’m way too late to get a ride. But like a miracle, Amber and Will pull over. We squeeze into the old pickup and head into town for dinner.

I’m not sad. I am relieved. I feel free.

While the CDT slowly disappears in the rear mirror.