Clutching at straws: stages of hope, denial and acceptance
After the huge disappointment of deciding to get off the PCT and postpone our hike, there followed a difficult few days of hope and denial.
1. Maybe this will all blow over in a couple of weeks. ?
We can stay with my Dad and wait it out, then pick up where we left off, only a couple of weeks out of sync…
2. Ok, maybe a couple of weeks isn’t gonna be enough, 1 month? ??
How long until we out stay our welcome???? ?
3A. In the meantime, risk mitigation hiking on the PCT? ?
Could we still hike the PCT in a way that mitigates the reasons we aren’t hiking right now? We thought we could perhaps keep hiking and use a car with the following plan;
- We drive to location A
- One of us starts hiking to location B
- The other drives to location B
- The other then starts hiking to location A
- We cross in the middle, have a few mins break together and (importantly!) hand over the car keys
- On arrival at location B, one of us drives back to location A to collect the other
- Camp on trail near the car and repeat the next day
Alongside this plan, we would do a few things to mitigate concerns about hiking during the C-19 pandemic;
– Always have 2 weeks worth of food and water in the car as emergency backup (i.e. more than we needed) – the thinking here that if we got ill on trail we had enough food and water to self-isolate for two weeks in the tent/car without having to risk passing the virus on to others.
– If one of us was ill enough to need hospital the other could drive to a hospital. Each day hiking would only be 10-15 miles due to time constraints with the added time needed to drive between locations. This meant that one of us was never more than 5-8 miles from the car.
– We would avoid hiking in weather or locations where there was a greater risk of accident (most of the PCT is reasonably non-technical and easy to navigate in good weather).
This idea seemed attractive. We could do two week stints before returning to my Dad’s to review the situation and resupply if possible for another stint. When things settle down we wouldn’t have lost so much time in terms of making progress on the trail. The only thing I was still uneasy about was the scenario where an accident occurs and we need assistance (see this article which highlights the problem here). If we mitigated this as noted above then it felt we were not putting ourselves at any greater risk than driving, walking, cycling in residential areas although rescue may be trickier.
Katie did some research and in fact, whilst this seemed like a good idea, it would be difficult logistically and quite a lot of extra effort and cost. We decided it wouldn’t actually be a fun way of hiking the trail.
4. In the meantime, Plan B: Hike local, keep fit, you never know when we might get back on trail…
Hike relatively local to my Dad’s until we could get back on the trail. The day after we got off the PCT I insisted we walked down to and along the beach with our packs on. Must have looked like right goons. ? I didn’t care.
5. Fighting acceptance ?
Day by day the situation changed, as it had been for the past 2-3 weeks. Gradually, measures became stricter, some National Parks are completely or partially closed, campsites are closed etc. It doesn’t look like even option 2 has any hope of coming to fruition.
6. The straw that broke the camels back ?
When Boris announced the UK’s isolation lock down on Monday 23rd March the Foreign Office also issued a statement to say that all UK citizens abroad should return to the UK. I contacted our travel insurance to find out what this meant for us and was told what I had feared – if we stayed, and made no attempt to return home, we would not be covered for medical expenses in the US. We couldn’t risk this, it would wipe out all our savings, and more!
We booked a flight home for Thursday, re-packed all the things we had unpacked from the trail after packing everything to get ready for the trail and made the most of our last couple of days with my Dad.
Back on home soil ?
We arrived home in the UK Friday lunchtime and are fortunate that we have plenty of family options where we can stay. For now, we are staying with Katie’s parents and hope that we didn’t pick up the virus on our trip home. Like many others, we are video calling friends and family more than we ever have before and making the most of it!
We gave up our flat and our jobs in London so we are job hunting once again (if anyone has anything going, let us know!). Depending on how/where that turns out, we might find ourselves looking for a flat again.
The plan, when we left London for a year out, was to not return to living in London. We expected to have plenty of time to discuss where to look for jobs whilst walking from Mexico to Canada; we could look for jobs in London and commute from outside, or we could look somewhere else entirely. Well we accelerated some thinking on that and both agreed we like the Bristol area as a location but want to live somewhere nice and green. But given the situation we are looking for jobs all over the UK and worrying about the location later! ?
Once again, whilst we are devastated that we have had to postpone our year out adventures, not just the PCT but our travel plans for South America too, we are lucky to have family we can stay with whilst we find our feet again. Many others have been affected in bigger ways that really impact lives, this is just a minor readjustment in ours.
The PCT isn’t going anywhere and we will be back at some point in the future… ?
In the meantime, amongst CV polishing and job applications, some tlc for the tent and some fruit and veg planting! ?
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