2,650 miles, 184 days and 3 states: Orlando hiker completes Pacific Crest Trail

An Orlando woman has completed what many dream of doing but few actually finish: walking a continuous footpath from the U.S./Mexico border to the point where Washington touches Canada along some of the West Coast’s highest peaks.

The daunting endeavor of 2,650 miles took Janean Bartman a day shy of six months to finish. Along her Pacific Crest Trail hike, she narrowly evaded wildfires, celebrated her 30th birthday, navigated injuries and fought fatigue but was rewarded with incredible views and the accomplishment of a lifetime.

I stayed back to watch her dogs, send words of encouragement from afar and live vicariously through the adventure. Along the way, Bartman kept in touch using a satellite communicator to relay messages to friends and family who prayed for her safe return.

Thru-hiking, which typically involves hiking a long trail for weeks or months at a time, has surged in popularity partially due to the “Wild” effect, a reference to the 2012 memoir by Cheryl Strayed (and subsequent movie starring Reese Witherspoon). The PCT, in particular, saw a 300 percent increase in permits for long-distance hikers from 2013 to 2019, according to Outside.

Bartman, whose trail name is “Twiggy,” first heard about the trail when a childhood friend’s mom posted that one of her daughters had reached the halfway point of the PCT in 2020.

“I just thought, ‘Wow, that sounds like the coolest thing in the world, walking from Mexico to Candada.’ I didn’t think that was possible,” Bartman said. “I wanted the sense of going on an epic adventure, something that you only get to do once in a lifetime.”

After securing time off work, a PCT permit and a dog sitter (me), Bartman was ready to pack up and hit the trail.

Blood, sweat and tears

Although a thru-hiking experience can hardly be cataloged or described accurately for outside viewers, there are many ways a PCT hike can be measured. One metric could be miles per day (perhaps 20-22 on average, 35 at most for Bartman), pairs of shoes worn through (five), bear sightings (nine) or days it took to finish (184).

Another daily tally practiced by some hikers is blood, sweat and tears, all of which are common on the trail. On Day One, leaving from the Mexico border on March 22 with her dad joining for the first 20 miles of the hike, Bartman experienced sweat and tears.

An Instagram post recounts the mixed feelings of leaving it all behind and embarking on this grand adventure: “I woke up and felt dizzy from all the anxiety I’d been experiencing. I felt like the dumbest person alive for leaving behind all the things I love to go walk in the brutal desert heat all day long, sleep on the ground and drink from questionable water sources.”

By mile 100, Bartman’s attitude had shifted.

“I think the 100-mile mark was really special to me because it was the first time I thought to myself, ‘Hey, I might actually be able to do this,’” she said. “Staying mentally motivated at the beginning was pretty easy. Every day was new and exciting and it felt like I was always learning something new.”

Learn to rest, not quit

As time and miles wore on, the novelty of thru-hiking wore off and the adventure started to feel more laborious.

There were definitive highlights: summiting Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states, seeing Eagle Rock (a formation that resembles an eagle) and stargazing with the rain-fly off her tent. Bartman experienced the joy of completely unplugging, far out of range of cellphone towers, and living fully in the present with only the thoughts of where the next water source or camp might be.

But for every high point, there were at least several trying times. Early on, a new trail friend and hiking partner nicknamed “Dreamcatcher” had to drop out. One day, Bartman was navigating 103-degree heat and lost her water bottle. A particularly windy night broke her tent.

From foot and joint pain to “post-holing” on snowy passes and bloodthirsty mosquitoes, there were constant reminders of the uphill battle that is thru-hiking.

“It’s definitely not a vacation. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Bartman said. “You wake up every day and hike all day long, then sleep on a pad just a few inches thick. Then you wake up and you do it again.”

Every week or so, Bartman ventured into town to do laundry, rest in a hotel or Airbnb and then hit the trail again. But one especially hard stretch had her hiking 25 days in a row without a “zero day.”

By the time Bartman reached Oregon and Southern Washington, she was hiking the length of a marathon nearly every day.

“I had a motto that I would repeat to myself when things were getting intense. That was, ‘Learn to rest, not quit,’” she said. “I remembered to take it one thing at a time. If I didn’t think I could make it to Canada, I would tell myself to make it to the next town or the next water source.”

A bittersweet end

The pitfalls and arduousness of thru-hiking came with great rewards in the form of stunning sunsets, towering waterfalls and meadows full of wildflowers.

It’s hard to adequately capture the PCT hiking experience — ”How do you put such a brutal and spectacular experience into words?” — but a few Instagram posts hint at the true nature of thru-hiking with all its glory and perils.

“Sometimes I want to scream from frustrations out here, but then other days the trail renews me and washes my spirits clean and draws me back in for another section,” one post reads.

The most harrowing environmental factor to contend with came from wildfires, which have become increasingly common amid droughts and extreme heat due to climate change. Bartman narrowly made it across the Oregon border before ash and smoke from the McKinney Fire in California swept in behind her. She made the decision to skip about 330 miles in Oregon due to fires, then circled back to complete that section once conditions improved.

In early September, Mother Nature seemed determined to crush hikers’ spirits just one more time before the thru-hiking season was over. The Northern Terminus monument at the U.S./Canada border, a wooden marker of dreams for PCT hikers, closed due to several fires burning nearby.

Further south, a fire near Stevens Pass in Washington threatened to end Bartman’s epic hike more than five months and 2,400 miles into the experience.

“I decided to call it quits 160 miles from the finish line,” reads an Instagram post. “The smoke from nearby wildfires was irritating my throat and my stomach hurt and I was alone and crying and just over it.”

In an interesting twist of fate, Bartman’s planned exit route was closed due to wildfires, forcing her to hike onward.

“Toward the end, it was a lot of stubbornness,” she said. “I had made it far enough that I wasn’t willing to give up.”

Just after 9 a.m. on Sept. 21, Bartman had Canada in her sights and reached the border by taking an alternate route to a marker that wasn’t inundated with fire.

“I suddenly didn’t want it to end. I hesitated because I wasn’t ready for the adventure to be over,” she said. “When I finally reached it, it definitely felt like the biggest thing I had ever accomplished. There were a lot of tears. It took me a long time to leave the monument.”

After six months of exhaustion and a dream realized, it was time for Bartman to come home. It has taken time to reacclimate to normal society and work but that’s been made up for by emotional reunions with family, friends, dogs and easily-accessible laundry.

“Right now, I just want to relax and spend time with family and friends,” Bartman said. “Every once in a while, especially when I go back through old pictures, I get a little inkling that I might want to do something similar in the future.”

To relive Bartman’s PCT hike, visit Instagram @neanersj and YouTube “Twiggy Hikes.” To learn more about the PCT, visit pcta.org.

Find me @PConnPie on Twitter and Instagram or send me an email: pconnolly@orlandosentinel.com. For more fun things, follow @fun.things.orlando on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.