Portrait 2: Wildcat

Around mile 330 on the PCT, I was camped amid the desert brush and could faintly hear voices in the distance. The next morning, I passed several hikers on the same trajectory as me: aggressively hiking toward town to get a shower and resupply.

I met Wildcat first. She was standing in a patch of snow on the mountain, checking her maps. I love sloshing through shallow snow and shot right past her. On the PCT, shallow snow means “maybe six inches.” The route I chose to get into town - straight down the snowy mountain - was not the wisest. Wildcat took an actual trail.

There are different approaches to thru hikes. I like to wander wildly, take side excursions, and follow alternate routes. Samwise and I chose - not entirely on purpose - to climb the chute at Forester Pass rather than taking the trail up the switchbacks. I found it to be a perfect adventure within an adventure. Wildcat was not as pleased with the choice. She lost a water bottle on the climb, we hit a whiteout on the north face, and she postholed through a few feet of Sierra snow and injured her ankle. Not long after Forester Pass, our differences in hiking styles became more apparent. I took a series of side trails, sometimes only covering 10-12 miles of PCT in a day. Wildcat climbed two passes in a day, and we wound up not seeing each other again until mile 2644. Being on trail does weird things to your life. After only having known her for a few hundred miles in the desert, it was still a reunion with one of my best friends as we were both finishing our own, individual journeys. Everyone should get to experience this kind of a journey. Everyone should get to experience this kind of a friendship.