PCT hikers planning romantic rendezvous
LEAVENWORTH – When your girlfriend is 700 miles into the Pacific Crest Trail and having the adventure of a lifetime, the daily tasks of work and play tend to pale by comparison.
That’s why Leavenworth native Isaac Reister will hit the 2,650-mile trail himself and hike south until he encounters his girlfriend Lyra Dalton, who’s hiking north with her friend, Laura.
They expect to meet somewhere around Crater Lake, Oregon.
“I work in a factory setting, running a machine to solder components onto circuit boards for a solar panel manufacturer,” said Reister, who now lives in Arlington. “She was on the trail. I was following her blog, calling her and saying hello. I realized I just really needed a break. We’d climbed Mount Adams and decided we were probably a pretty good pair together.”
Reister and Dalton, both 23, graduated last year from Whitman College in Walla Walla. He earned a physics degree. Hers is in environmental humanities. They’ve been together since graduation.
Dalton and her friend Laura, both from Lopez Island, had made a pact to hike the trail together and had been planning the trip for two years, he said. They started from the Mexico border at Baja California.
Reister didn’t want to infringe on the plans the friends had made together, he said. Thoughts of the trail kept beckoning.
A few months ago, he hatched his plan. Reister will start the hike July 1 at Hart’s Pass in the North Cascades, about 30 miles south of the Canada border. His dad, Zeke, will hike with him the first 70 miles, then Isaac will continue south until he meets Lyra and Laura.
It won’t be a surprise encounter – she’s expecting him, he said.
When they hook up, he plans to hike north with her and Laura for a couple weeks before again turning south to through-hike the entire trail.
Early summer is a perfect time to start a through-hike, according to the Pacific Crest Trail Association website. The grueling route traverses California desert, the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington. It takes about five months.
Most hikers complete the trail section by section over one or more seasons.
Both he and Dalton are keeping journals of their adventures online. Hers is called “ramblesinbrambles” and his is “corkbottle.wordpress.”
“The bottom-line reason I’m doing it is because it seems like every small step I take towards doing it makes me feel extremely happy,” he said. “And I’ve stockpiled 100 pounds of granola.”