Wow a lot has been happening over the past week!  The spread of the COVID-19 virus across the country resulted in the NCAA deciding to cancel all spring sports.  If you don’t know, our daughter plays beach volleyball for UC Berkeley, and Cal had risen to a ranking of #9 nationally! Amy and I had worked hard to figure out a plan to get off the trail each weekend so that we could go cheer the Bears on for the first month of our adventure.  When we got the news of the season ending, it felt like someone had punched us in the gut, which I am sure is nothing compared to those young women who poured their heart and soul into the team this year. We felt especially badly for the seniors as they were never given an opportunity for a senior day, nor did they know that their last victory would be their last.

As we came to terms with the loss of the beach volleyball season, our focus slowly turned back to the trail which was now only about 7 days away from the start.  It was hard to get motivated to think about the trail at first, but we had to find the focus quickly as things with the trail were changing fast. Many of the long standing trail angels along the trail were making the difficult decision to not provide help this year, for a multitude of reasons.  This, along with not having to get off the trail each weekend for volleyball, meant that our schedule was changing and we had to re-adjust our resupply dates.  This was tough as we had spent months creating what we thought was going to be an ideal plan.  We have been able to find alternatives to mail drops along the trail and delivered all of our resupply boxes to my mom who will be mailing those out for us.  With a new plan in place we are ready to GO!!

Now we are only 4 1/2 days away from the start of our journey and we are super excited to get out there and experience this adventure together.  We have all of our gear ready to go.  Having used the past 12 years of backpacking, we have slowly reduced our pack weight, allowing us to travel further distances with less strain and more enjoyment.  For the PCT, we have cut our base weight for our backpacks down to what we feel is very comfortable.  Amy’s backpack will be down to 14 pounds and I will have a pack weighing in at 18.3 pounds.

We feel lucky to be able to have our kids take us to the trailhead to start this trip which we have been planning for 8 years. We will be posting daily blogs with pictures when we can so that you can follow along. Our posts may be delayed due to cell reception, but trust us, we will get them up there as soon as we can so you can follow along.  Thanks again for reading.

Brian