Pacific Crest Trail 2026 L•A•S•H

Well, I jumped on a long trail again, so I suppose I should try getting this blog fired up for a bit to help get my wandering thoughts somewhat documented while hiking along.

This time I am back to the roots. The Pacific Crest Trail. The one that got it all started for me. And I am hiking 1200 miles from the California / Mexico border back north to Tahoe.

Historically, I start up this blog when I am on a long trail so I can keep friends and family sorta updated on the happenings of my adventures, my rambling thoughts, and general updates. Honestly, it would be interesting to read back through what I have posted from 14 years ago while on my first PCT adventure.

I first hiked the PCT from Mexico to Canada in 2012. I turned 29 that summer. It was my first foray into the counter-culture of long-distance hiking. Since then I have accumulated roughly 9000 miles of hiking, including the Appalachian Trail - 2200 miles from Georgia to Maine. Over 500 miles accumulated San Diego Trans-County Trail. About 600 miles (90% of of New Mexico) on the Continental Divide Trail. Roughly 1000 miles hiking in Alaska, the Lost Coast Trail, Tahoe Rim Trail, and many more around the country.

This time I am doing a Long Ass Section Hike (LASH) of the PCT. Time to get my body back in shape, and my mind reset. Time to grieve, time to process, time to plan and dream about all that lays ahead of me. If there is one thing I am learning as I creep into my mid 40's, is that time is fleeting. Gotta do the things you love when you've still got the health and pulse to get it done. So with a bit of planning, sacrificing, and a healthy amount of depending on family, friends, I have been blessed with the ability to pour the next 2-3 months of my life into doing not much more than walking. Walking north.  I'll be putting in 35k-60k steps a day generally, for those of you tracking your steps at home. I hope to shed dozens of pounds of weight, while getting my heart and stamina back to elite athlete levels. Let's see how it goes. I am 3 days in. Lots more to go, but it is nice to be on a trail that feels like home. That I have shared so many laughs, tears, conversations with over these years. Every time I cross the PCT somewhere in my travels, I try to get out and walk on it, even for a hundred yards, to check in, reconnect, and touch base with the Trail that taught me so much about myself. All I can do to honor her is to have pure love and respect. I believe that is all the PCT really asks of you....

I generally lose steam posting once back on the trail for a bit, become too lazy after grinding miles day after day, and also not wanting to be a real content provider or writer. But hey, no one is paying me to keep this thing alive, and it's generally more off the cuff from the seat of my sweat soaked shorts. 

So if you like what you read, and want to see more content, drop a tip in that venmo app and that just may be the motivation to keep posting lol. I am much to lazy and not super keen on putting this behind a pay-wall, but oftentimes people want to know how they can help, can they send a care package, how can they contribute. If you find yourself asking these questions, please feel free to reach out and ask and I can communicate with you details and specific needs. And I will make it worth your time with personalized notes, pictures, and postcards.

Until next time...

Kristo the Lion

venmo link here. 

more photos from the 1st month

Never gonna make it. My quest for the Triple Crown.

Well here I am in Cuba, New Mexico, over 500 miles hiked so far on the CDT and one month complete. Northbound for Canada. Again. 2500+ miles of hiking, for 5 months straight. Again. 

It's been great so far. Nearly perfect weather for the most part and my body is finally starting to agree with my mind that another long-distance hike is in fact, a great idea. I've been ahead of all the fires that have been occurring along our trail, however there is talk of shutting down the national forests of New Mexico due to the other areas currently enduring some of the worst fires in the history of the state. That will leave me with decisions of either some unsafe and rather major road walks around closed areas, or to potentially skip ahead and come back to finish missed parts later, which isn't really an option as anything I would be skipping ahead to is still covered in several feet of snow. At this point it's just a waiting game to see what the forest management teams decide to do and what options I have after that...

Some highlights:

• being bluff charged by a 1200+ lb Bull defending his watering hole...

• summiting Mt. Taylor 11,305 ft in 60mph winds

• running into old hiking friends from trails passed

• Gila Wilderness, crossing the river 200+ times and the hot springs. Especially the day I hiked 20 miles and still was able to soak morning, afternoon and night.

• San Pedro Parks Wilderness and taking unofficial routes that aren't on the app everyone is using to guide themselves. Felt like I had the mountains and trails to myself.

Top Media Consumed:

Music:

• Grateful Dead - Workingman's Dead

• Billy Strings - anything really

• Greensky Bluegrass - LIVE vol 1 & 2

• Tool - Undertow & Æenima 

Audio Books - 

• Dharma Bums - Kerouac (for the 5-6x)

• Where the Deer and Antelope Play - Nick Offerman

 • All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy 

Podcasts:

 • Ari Shaffir's Skeptic Tank

 • Ologies w/ Alie Ward

 • The Always Sunny Podcast

 • This Past Weekend with Theo Von

Greyhound

Riding Greyhound, people are generally traveling for just a few reasons.  You're broke, without license, or you're moving somewhere to start over.
You'll know if you're sitting next to someone starting over, cause they've got a fucking story to tell, I'll tell you what.
Where they've been, where they're going. You're about to know allll about it.

I met this very recently sober *eyeroll* methhead today in Sacramento. I fucked up and leant him a pen inside the station even before we had got on a bus. Now he's my friend obviously. He got kicked out of his hotel last night at midnight for smoking weed outside, even though the front desk told him it would be ok. *eyeroll* He is headed to Sheridan, Montana, and he is getting on my bus to get there, headed for the southwest. Why his route has him going from Sacramento > Los Angeles > Phoenix > El Paso > Denver > Sheridan Wyoming (on the border of Northern Wyoming and Montana) I just don't understand. This shit will take him 3 days. I find all this out before we even get on the bus.
I do a quick search on my greyhound app and see it only takes a day to get there from Sacramento heading north to Portland then east. Seems way more direct, and is cheaper than the roll of tickets and connection slips wadded up in the front chest pocket of the leather jacket, with buckles, of 'Bag it up Bobby' the nickname his friends gave him back in the day when he used to commit petty theft alll over the place.
Bag it up Bobby has no money, no phone, and the first ID card he has had in 6 years. He is on a 3 day bus ride and he needs to use my phone to call his sister now that we're on the bus and he needs money somehow. She says no, she's pregnant, amd on her way to work and doesn't care about his situation at all. He says he'll see her in 5 years, and 'break into your accounts and get it then' laughing it off.

His adventure started somewhere in Oregon, but most recently he walked from Oroville to Sacramento (impressive for a methhead without a phone or wallet or water bottle). He's gonna desperately need me to buy him a cup of coffee at a stop since I obviously have money cause I have visible tattoos.
Another text, to whom I don't know cause he deleted it after he sent it so to not bother me or my phone with his family. (I thank him for that.)
He's never been to LA and as we jam south on i5 inside this bus, this country side has him wanting to jump into traffic and die. He asks me to Google Sheridan, Wyoming. He knows nothing about it. I ask why he is going there then. The very first question I've asked to this point. He says he doesn't even know, but he knows one girl there and she doesn't know he is coming. I guess his plan is to steal a car back or something.
He's starving. I watched him crush a sleeve of powdered donuts an hour and a half ago in Sac at the station, and a bag of chips. He's gonna need me to buy him a hotdog or something, along with that coffee.

We're pulling into an AmPm in Coalinga for a half hour break. Finally I can create some space. I tell him I'm set and don't need to get off. He bums a cigarette off the guy in front of him getting off the bus.
After 5 minutes or so I decide to get off, and walk a few hundred yards to the other gas station at this offramp, just to stay away from Bag it up Bobby. I walk into the gas station and he's right there, bumming food off the cigarette guy from the bus, so for now I'm spared his pleas to feed and hydrate him.
Back on the bus he needs my phone again. I take out my ear buds and look annoyed at his requesr. He asks to open YouTube cause he wants to play me the rap song he always plays after he has scored some dope. He's fiending. I tell him I'm more of a bluegrass fella, just to add contrast to his pick.  He pulls up Big Thief and says he fucks with emotional music too. *eyeroll*

We're almost to the grapevine when he asks if we passed through LA yet. I assure him he didn't miss it. As we climb I tell him that the other side of these mountains will begin the decent into LA and true SoCal. Now he's ancy. And traffic is slowing as rush-hour is approaching. He's getting impatient to see skid row, on 7th avenue where the Los Angeles Greyhound Bus Station is located. But we're running late and our connecting bus is supposed to leave 5 minutes after we arrive, but its Greyhound so i know it will be a while. He needs money, he's gonna rob something maybe. He's not sure. I tell him that's a bad idea. He said he'll just try to find some whiskey.
Once in the LA station, the connection is a mess, our next bus isn't here yet and after an hour of waiting, Bag it up Bobby has panhandled some food and about 6.82$. He finds me and asks to Google a liquor store close by, as a methhead, in the middle of skid row, I say I wouldn't advise it, but he says there's gotta be one close but who knows when our bus will be here, just a waiting game. He says he will be quick. I say good luck. He leaves. 3 minutes later our bus pulls up, 14 minutes later we pull away and Bag it up Bobby now lives on skid row, with a wadded up roll of bus tickets hoping to get him to northern Wyoming that expires tonight. Good luck guy.

Looking forward...

misty morning. Cool, California

I'm pretty sure I am the worst blogger ever. I think about this site almost daily. I think about the stuff I should be writing,  and the ideas, and goals I have. But it is so tough for me to actually start writing sometimes, because I  don't take myself seriously as a writer. I started this blog not because I have always wanted to be a journalist, author, or poet. I started this site because I have always loved creating in some way.

Actually, I have never taken myself serious in any of my creative outlets. I play music, but I'm not a musician. I paint, draw, take pictures, create blogs. I can build things out of wood, everything I do is through some creative lens, but still, I'm not an artist or a photographer. Not in the professional sense. I know artists, I know authors, musicians and photographers. I see their talents and I struggle to compare my own to theirs. This mentality can be crippling. It prevents me from striving to get better, because I have already accepted that I am inferior. It is hard for me to sit down and write anything of depth or meaning, because I read amazingly well thought out articles, tweets, blogs, updates on a daily basis, by real people that are professional writers, and I know I can't provoke those emotions from people by my writing because I don't have the skills, the training, the degree, the whatever that those writers who can take themselves seriously possess. I don't have an audience expecting anything. No one asked me or told me I needed to start this blog. I did it hoping to have a creative outlet for talking about and showing pictures of my adventures on this planet. I didn't start it because I am a writer and this is the best way to promote my talents. I am winging it. I'm what I like to call a hack-artist. An emulator. I have never taken any type of instructions or lessons for most of what I do. I am primarily inspired and get my ideas from watching how others do things. Most of my paintings look similar to the artist who I was able to watch complete painting after painting. I emulate that process, with a few of my own ideas thrown in the mix. The same goes for how I play music, design my website, write my updates, or draw the drawings that I do.

I'm trying my best to shed these mindsets and just go for it. I am feeling more creative than ever. I have more ideas for content here on this website. I have half-done art projects and new ones running through my mind constantly that I want to see through... I want to start a podcast, I want to hike 1000 more miles, there are a lot of WANTS for this coming new year.

So keep coming around and hopefully this hack-artist of a website will have more frequent updates, hike and trail re-caps, and possibly another hikertrash type podcast for ya'll to listen to...

kristoOUT