Day 19 - A Zero Day — Walking People Out of Poverty

walkingpeopleoutofpoverty.ca is the personal blog of Peter Thorpe, long-time Opportunity International Canada supporter and Walking People Out of Poverty founder. For Dan Murray’s blog and information on OIC, please click here.

On Saturday morning, during our Zero Day in Leavenworth, we met up with 3 hikers, Cuttermac 125, Randolph and Selfie.

These 3 gentlemen had set out from Snoqualmie a little later than us last Monday, but arrived into camp well ahead of us. This was a trend that would occur for the remainder of the week and quickly became a friendly rivalry, although if I’m being honest we were never close to catching them. Not only are they solid hikers but they are solid guys as well and so it was fun to share stories whenever we met up.

This rival team, and I mean that in the friendliest of terms, told us a story about one of their team members who was not present this morning. He had hiked 12.5 miles to one of their campsites only to discover he had left his tent poles behind. He ended up turning around at 5:30 pm and hiked back. Some of this was in the dark with his headlamp on, to the campsite and found his poles. He had hiked a round trip of 25 miles and made zero progress. I told his team that’s a day he will remember forever, far more than his good days.

Naturally, he set up camp and began to make his way up the trail the next morning. It was a good story and a solid reminder to always double check when leaving camp, or after any rest break, to ensure you leave nothing behind. This team had decided to skip the next section altogether and were getting a ride up to Mazama, where they would have a 10 mile hike to Hart’s Pass before a 2 day push to the Northern Terminal which is the end point of the PCT. Being Americans they would then hike back to Hart’s Pass where they hoped to get a ride to a place where they could arrange to get home. We wished each other good luck for the remainder of the trip.

We said our farewells and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Leavenworth which is a delightful little town. It is based very much on a Bavarian town and the food is, for the most part, German. For instance Bratwurst, Schnitzel, and other German fare.

Woody, who was born in Washington, acted as our tour guide and took us on a walk down to a park with the Wenatchee River running through it. We spent probably an hour or so before going back into town to find lunch.

And now for some pictures.