Orlando hiker completes Pacific Crest Trail

An Orlando woman has completed what many dream of doing but few actually finish: hiking a continuous trail from the US-Mexico border to the point where Washington touches Canada along some of the highest peaks on the West Coast .

The daunting 2,650 mile effort took Janean Bartman a day less than six months to complete. During her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, she narrowly avoided wildfires, celebrated her 30th birthday, overcame injuries and battled fatigue, but was rewarded with incredible views and accomplishing everything. a life.

I stayed behind to watch his dogs, send words of encouragement from afar, and experience the adventure vicariously. Along the way, Bartman stayed in touch using a satellite communicator to relay messages to friends and family who prayed for his safe return.

The hike, which typically involves hiking a long trail for weeks or months at a time, has grown in popularity in part because of the “Wild” effect, a reference to Cheryl Strayed’s 2012 memoir (and the movie following with Reese Witherspoon). The PCT, in particular, has seen a 300% increase in permits for long-distance hikers from 2013 to 2019according to Dehors.

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Bartman, whose track name is “Twiggy”, first heard about the track when a childhood friend’s mother posted that one of her daughters had reached half PCT in 2020.

“I just thought, ‘Wow, that sounds like the coolest thing in the world, walking from Mexico to Canada.’ I didn’t think it was possible,” Bartman said. “I wanted to feel like I was on an epic adventure, something you can only do once in a lifetime.”

After getting some time off, a PCT license, and a dog sitter (me), Bartman was ready to pack up and hit the trail.

Although a hiking experience can hardly be cataloged or accurately described for outside viewers, there are many ways to measure a PCT hike. A metric could be miles per day (maybe 20-22 average, 35 at most for Bartman), pairs of shoes worn (five), bear sightings (nine), or days it took to finish (184).

Another daily tally some hikers experience is blood, sweat, and tears, all of which are common on the trail. On the first day, setting off from the Mexican border on March 22 with his father joining for the first 20 miles of the hike, Bartman experienced sweat and tears.

A Instagram post recounts the mixed feelings of leaving everything behind and embarking on this great adventure: “I woke up and felt dizzy from all the anxiety I had been feeling. I felt like the dumbest person in the world for leaving behind all the things I love to go hiking in the brutal desert heat all day, sleeping on the ground, and drinking from questionable water sources.

By mile 100, Bartman’s attitude had changed.

“I think the 100-mile mark was really special for me because it was the first time I was like, ‘Hey, maybe I could do this,'” she said. “Staying mentally motivated at first was pretty easy. Every day was new and exciting and I felt like I was always learning something new.

As time and miles passed, the novelty of the hike wore off and the adventure started to get more strenuous.

There were some definite highlights: climbing Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states, seeing Eagle Rock (a formation that looks like an eagle), and stargazing with the rain fly from his tent. Bartman experienced the joy of completely unplugging, away from the range of cellphone towers, and living fully in the present thinking only of where the next water source or camp might be. .

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But for every high point, there were at least several difficult moments. At first, a new trail friend and hiking partner nicknamed “Dreamcatcher” had to give up. One day Bartman was sailing in 103 degree heat and lost his water bottle. A particularly windy night broke his tent.

From aching feet and joints to post-holing on snowy passes and bloodthirsty mosquitoes, there were constant reminders of the uphill battle that is hiking.

“It’s definitely not a vacation. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Bartman said. “You wake up every day and hike all day and then sleep on a cushion a few inches thick. Then you wake up and start over.

Every week or so, Bartman would venture into town to do laundry, rest in a hotel or on Airbnb, and then hit the trail again. But one particularly difficult stretch saw her walk 25 days in a row without “day zero”.

By the time Bartman reached Oregon and southern Washington, she was running the length of a marathon almost every day.

“I had a motto that I repeated to myself when things got intense. It was, ‘Learn to rest, not give up,'” she said. If I didn’t think I could make it to Canada, I would tell myself to go to the next city or the next source of water.

The pitfalls and strenuousness of the hike were rewarded with stunning sunsets, towering waterfalls and meadows full of wildflowers.

It’s hard to adequately capture the PCT hiking experience – “How do you put such a brutal and spectacular experience into words?” – but some Instagram posts hint at the true nature of hiking with all its glory and perils.

“Sometimes I want to scream in frustration here, but other days the trail renews me and washes my mind and takes me back to another section,” one post read.

The most heartbreaking environmental factor to deal with has come from wildfires, which have become increasingly frequent amid droughts and extreme heat due to climate change. Bartman narrowly crossed the Oregon border before ash and smoke from the McKinney Fire in California rolled in behind her. She made the decision to jump about 330 miles into Oregon due to fires, then turned back to complete that section once conditions improved.

In early September, Mother Nature seemed determined to crush the spirits of hikers once again before the end of the hiking season. The Northern Terminus monument at the Canada-US border, a dreamy wooden marker for PCT hikers, closed due to several fires nearby.

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Further south, a fire near Stevens Pass in Washington threatened to end Bartman’s epic trek more than five months and 2,400 miles after the experiment began.

“I decided to stop 160 miles from the finish line,” reads Instagram. “The smoke from the nearby wildfires was irritating my throat and my stomach was hurting and I was alone and crying and just above.”

In an interesting twist of fate, Bartman’s planned exit route was closed due to wildfires, forcing her to walk.

“Towards the end, it was a lot of stubbornness,” she said. “I had come far enough not to want to give up.”

Just after 9 a.m. on September 21, Bartman had Canada in his sights and reached the border by taking an alternate route to a marker that was not awash in fire.

“I suddenly didn’t want it to end. I hesitated because I wasn’t ready for the adventure to end,” she says. “When I finally reached it, it was definitely the greatest thing I have ever accomplished. There were a lot of tears. It took me a long time to leave the monument.

After six months of exhaustion and a dream come true, it was time for Bartman to come home. It took time to reacclimate to normal society and work, but it was offset by emotional reunions with family, friends, dogs, and easily accessible laundry.

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“Right now I just want to relax and hang out with my family and friends,” Bartman said. “Once in a while, especially when I’m looking at old photos, I kind of feel like I might want to do something similar in the future.”

To relive Bartman’s PCT hike, visit Instagram @neanersj and YouTube “Twiggy Hikes.” To learn more about the PCT, visit pcta.org.

Find me @PConnPie on Twitter and instagram or send me an email: [email protected]. For more fun things, follow @fun.things.orlando on instagram, Facebook and Twitter.