Sunday, September 27th, 2026

(More photos when bandwidth allows)

Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of the long gap between when I finished at Gumboot and restarted the PCT there was that it was colder than it was at beginning of September.

I knew this when I decided to restart, but having had a very cold night made it real. It didn’t help that I had trouble sleeping. I don’t know if that was due to the coldness, due to the slant of the tent site, or if it was my body trying to get used to sleeping on the trail again. Whatever it was, it wasn’t particularly good way to start back on the trail.

It was overcast in the morning, but there was some light from the sunrise that greeted me when I woke up. Well, I woke up well before sunrise due to the shorter daylight hours and having trouble sleeping.

The weather report said it would be getting warmer as the day went on, so hopefully that’s the case. I do have the clothing and gear to deal with cold weather, but hopefully it doesn’t get as cold as it was the prior night.☃️🥶

There were several points in the trail before the Oregon border where I might be tempted to abort the hike again. The first one is the park trailhead in about 6 miles. Hopefully I wouldn’t give in to the temptation.

Fortunately, with adjusting the balance of my backpack and it being slightly less heavy than the day before, I did not have any left hip pain this day. A couple ibuprofen probably helped as well. 😄

I did have some discomfort in my right knee in the late afternoon, but it wasn’t bad and didn’t last long.

Mile 1535.3 to 1551.2 – 15.9 miles hiked on the PCT

Not bad for the second day back on the trail.