Mallard Fillmore 6/26/2020

SFC Richard Williamson - The Pacific Northwest trail is well north of our intended route. I have only backpacked a small portion of the Pacific Northwest Trail where it overlaps with the Pacific Crest Trail in the Passayten Wilderness. This trip we will be on a segment of the Pacific Crest Trail south of the North Cascades Scenic Highway (State Hwy 20). I'm getting old, so I'm only doing the 20 mile segment from Rainy Pass on Hwy 20 to Bullion Campground on the Stehekin River. I've made the trek many times. For this trip my backpacking partner, and youngest child, will be 17 at the time. She has never backpacked before, so I'm starting her with an easy one. The same one upon which I took many of my other children, to include my oldest child many decades ago when he, my now 57 year old son, was only 17. Time marches on, but the Energizer Bunny keeps going and going and going...

SGT Robert Pryor - That's awesome! I've hunted up in in the cascades a lot and hiking the PNT never appealed to me. That's some rugged country. We usually hunted between Mt Adams and Rainier, so I've probably hiked it before in places.

SFC Richard Williamson - This picture from 1998 was taken at the north terminus of The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT, or officially, The Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail). So far north, in fact, that my then 17 year old daughter was standing in Canada (Eh), while I was still in the USA. The PNT and PCT are two different trail systems with only a very slight overlap that she and I had been on the day before this picture was taken. The Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT) basically runs east and west -- just below the Canadian border -- between Glacier Peak National Park in Montana, and the Pacific Ocean near Bellingham, WA. The PCT runs north and south between Manning Provincial Park in British Columbia and the Mexican border in California. Hunting and hiking between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams likely put you on the PCT somewhere along the line. Starting at Chinook Pass and heading south, it passes just to the east of Mount Rainier National Park and then West of Mount Adams, passing between the two while staying west of the Yakima Indian Reservation and ending at Bonneville Dam, where you cross the Columbia into Oregon. A funny thing about this picture is, if you zoom in, you can see where I lost part of my outer right forearm to a B-40 rocket and had been shot in both knees in Viet Nam -- ya, like that was gonna to stop me. LOL

SGT Robert Pryor - You are absolutely correct. I have always confused the two. I just know that it's rugged country. Thanks for the correction. Be safe, Robert.