Pacific Crest Trail

The landmarks of Pacific Crest Trail

95 landmarks, in walking order. Each photograph is by the person credited beneath it, used as they licensed it.

1. 

   0 km in · Start

   Southern Terminus

   Five weathered posts stand at Campo on the Mexican border, the monument marking mile zero of the Pacific Crest Trail. From here, two thousand six hundred and fifty miles of desert, mountain, and forest run north to the Canadian line. A trail register sits at the base of the monument, and the international border fence runs east and west behind it.

2. 

   29 km in · Water

   Lake Morena

   The first reliable water of the trail lies below the chaparral hills, a reservoir ringed by oaks where a county campground has welcomed hikers since the route's earliest days. Roughly thirty kilometers from the Mexican border - for most walkers, the end of day one.

3. 

   65 km in · Town

   Mount Laguna

   Open Jeffrey pine forest climbs to the tiny hamlet of Mount Laguna, perched above 1,800 meters. The air turns crisp and resinous up here. Just east, the land drops away into the cracked badlands of the Anza-Borrego Desert.

4. 

   108 km in · Landmark

   Scissors Crossing

   Two highways cross and part like open shears in the San Felipe Valley, a dusty junction that gives Scissors Crossing its name. Ahead lies one of the trail's hottest, driest stretches, and a water cache here has rescued many hikers from the heat.

5. 

   157 km in · Town

   Warner Springs

   The white steeple of a little 1830s chapel stands above golden grasslands where the San Felipe hills open into the ranch country of Warner Springs. Just south, Eagle Rock spreads its granite wings across the meadow.

6. 221 km in · Landmark

   Paradise Valley Cafe

   A roadside cafe sits at the foot of the San Jacinto massif. Hikers walk in off the trail and order the half-pound burger; the granite shoulders above them rise nearly three vertical kilometers from the desert floor.

7. 

   261 km in · Summit

   Mount San Jacinto

   San Jacinto Peak rears more than ten thousand feet almost straight up from the sand. The trail climbs out of the desert and into cool pine forest below it. Snow can linger in these heights while the valley floor still bakes.

8. 

   306 km in · Landmark

   Cabazon and the I-10 Crossing

   Forests of white turbines spin above the freeway on the windswept floor of San Gorgonio Pass. Where the trail passes beneath the roaring interstate lies one of the lowest and hottest points on the entire route.

9. 339 km in · Water

   Mission Creek

   A thin thread of water has carved Mission Creek's canyon into the desert flank of the San Bernardinos, and the trail follows it up from San Gorgonio Pass. After the interstate's roar, the silence feels enormous, broken only by the trickle beside the path.

10. 372 km in · Summit

    Coon Creek Jumpoff

    The forest opens on a high shoulder of the San Bernardino range, the land falling away in tan folds toward the horizon. Above 2,600 meters the air thins, and the Jeffrey pines stand widely spaced, their bark smelling faintly of vanilla in the warm sun.

11. 

    411 km in · Town

    Big Bear Lake

    The alpine resort town of Big Bear sits beside a long lake high in the San Bernardino Mountains, where pines and granite replace the desert scrub and the air at 2,000 meters comes as a relief after the burning valley.

12. 

    427 km in · Landmark

    Holcomb Valley

    Gold fever once roared through this broad pine-rimmed basin, when an 1860 strike made it briefly the busiest settlement in the San Bernardinos. Now only weathered cabin ruins and rusted mine scars remain among the quiet trees.

13. 

    464 km in · Water

    Deep Creek and Holcomb Valley Forks

    Holcomb and Deep Creeks braid together among willows and granite slabs, a green ribbon through dry country. Gold was once panned from these waters in a brief 1860s rush that left ghost diggings in the hills above.

14. 

    500 km in · Water

    Silverwood Lake

    A broad blue reservoir sits cupped in the San Bernardino foothills, the trail contouring high above it. Boats dot the shore all summer. The water in them was carried hundreds of kilometers south by aqueduct from the distant Sierra.

15. 

    558 km in · Summit

    Wright Mountain and the Pinyon Ridges

    The San Andreas Fault has shattered the slopes below Wright Mountain into vast slumping landslides. From the forested crest the Mojave spreads hazy to the north and the snowy crown of Mount Baldy looms south.

16. 

    575 km in · Summit

    Mount Baden-Powell

    At over nine thousand feet, the whole San Gabriel range falls away from Mount Baden-Powell on every side. The peak carries the name of the founder of the Scouting movement, but the thing worth seeing is near the summit: a weathered limber pine that has clung to this ridge for some fifteen hundred years.

17. 

    590 km in · Summit

    Mount Williamson

    The Mojave spreads far to the north from this high shoulder of the San Gabriels, the deep gash of the San Andreas fault running along the foot of the range. The trail here once detoured around a closure protecting an endangered yellow-legged frog.

18. 

    686 km in · Landmark

    Vasquez Rocks

    Tilted sandstone slabs thrust skyward at sharp angles here. The landscape is so striking it has stood in for alien worlds in countless films. The outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez once hid among them, lending the rocks his name.

19. 

    688 km in · Town

    Agua Dulce

    Agua Dulce means sweet water, and the small town lives up to the name, a hiker hostel here having sheltered weary walkers for years.

20. 

    714 km in · Water

    Bouquet Reservoir

    A quiet reservoir sits tucked into the dry chaparral hills north of Agua Dulce, its surface a startling blue against the tawny slopes. Its dam was built after the St. Francis Dam gave way one night in 1928 and drowned some four hundred people on its way to the sea, the disaster that ended William Mulholland's career and rewrote California water law.

21. 752 km in · Town

    Hikertown

    At the desert's edge waits a curious cluster of tiny false-front buildings, a hiker haven dressed up like a frontier movie set. Beyond it the trail strikes out along the open Mojave, often walked at dusk to dodge the brutal heat.

22. 

    782 km in · Water

    The Mojave and the Aqueduct

    The floor of the Mojave Desert opens ahead. The trail follows the concrete line of the Los Angeles Aqueduct straight across the open sand. Walkers often cross this stretch by night to dodge the furnace heat. Their headlamps string out across the dark like a line of stars.

23. 826 km in · Water

    Tylerhorse Canyon

    A thin seasonal creek runs beneath cottonwoods in this narrow desert canyon, a green oasis after the bone-dry aqueduct walk. The ridges above hold the Tehachapi Pass wind farm, one of the first big wind projects built in America. Some three thousand four hundred turbines up there, all of them fed by the gusts that funnel through these gaps.

24. 

    866 km in · Mountain pass

    Tehachapi Pass

    Rail lines and a highway thread through a broad wind-raked saddle between two mountain ranges, the way out of the southern deserts. Just below lies the Tehachapi Loop, where freight trains climb by spiraling over themselves.

25. 889 km in · Water

    Golden Oaks Spring

    A piped spring waits among scattered oaks in the dry Tehachapi foothills, the first reliable water in a long, exposed stretch. Cattle graze these open ranges, and the trail threads quietly between them.

26. 

    1,002 km in · Mountain pass

    Walker Pass

    Wind off the desert carries the resin smell of pinyon down to Walker Pass. Here the land finally tilts upward toward the real Sierra. The explorer Joseph Walker crossed this low gap in 1834.

27. 

    1,040 km in · Water

    Joshua Tree Spring

    A small spring sits ringed by yuccas and pinyon pine, a green pocket where the southern desert finally begins to yield to higher, cooler country. The water here once carried a uranium warning, though most hikers fill and move on.

28. 

    1,079 km in · Landmark

    Kennedy Meadows

    Kennedy Meadows is where the High Sierra begins, the place where hikers trade desert shoes for an ice axe and a heavier pack. Some seven hundred miles of dry country lie to the south, and the highest, wildest mountains on the trail rise just ahead. John Muir called this range the Range of Light.

29. 

    1,162 km in · Mountain pass

    Cottonwood Pass

    A broad sandy saddle breaches the crest of the southern Sierra at Cottonwood Pass, where lodgepole pines give way to wide alpine views. This is a true threshold of the High Sierra, the desert falling behind for good.

30. 

    1,188 km in · Camp

    Crabtree Meadow

    Beside Whitney Creek a green meadow spreads, the launch point for the side trip up Mount Whitney, the highest summit in the lower forty-eight at 14,505 feet. Marmots whistle among the granite slabs and the air carries the chill of real altitude.

31. 

    1,215 km in · Landmark

    Bighorn Plateau

    Above 3,500 meters the world flattens into a stark, treeless tableland, where a small tarn mirrors a horizon of jagged peaks in every direction. Few places on the trail offer so vast a sweep of the High Sierra at once.

32. 1,218 km in · Water

    Tyndall Creek

    Clear, cold water tumbles off the flanks of Mount Tyndall, deep in the roadless heart of the High Sierra, where the granite glows pale gold in the late light and the silence is total.

33. 

    1,228 km in · Mountain pass

    Forester Pass

    At thirteen thousand one hundred and fifty-three feet, Forester Pass is the highest point on the entire Pacific Crest Trail. The path was blasted into a sheer wall of granite. It is a slender notch in the crest, with a thousand feet of air below the ledge.

34. 

    1,310 km in · Mountain pass

    Muir Pass

    A round stone hut crowns this high stony saddle, built in 1930 in memory of John Muir, the only shelter of its kind on the trail. Snow lingers here into summer, and the basins on either side glitter with frozen lakes.

35. 

    1,341 km in · Forest

    Evolution Valley

    Green meadows string out below soaring granite peaks: Darwin, Huxley, Wallace, Mendel, Spencer. Theodore Solomons named them in 1895 for the great evolutionists, writing that he could think of none more fitting, so at-one in their devotion to the sublime in Nature. Deer graze the long grass of McClure Meadow and Evolution Creek slides by in glassy pools.

36. 

    1,371 km in · Mountain pass

    Silver Pass

    A chain of silver-blue tarns flashes in polished rock below this granite gap, the high point between two deep river canyons. The lakes catch the alpine sun like coins, and the pass earns its name.

37. 

    1,401 km in · Camp

    Reds Meadow

    Beneath the Minarets a small resort tucks in, where a hot spring, a cafe and a store offer a rare comfort deep in the wilderness. Nearby stands Devils Postpile, a cliff of hexagonal basalt columns left by an ancient lava flow.

38. 

    1,448 km in · Landmark

    Tuolumne Meadows

    A wide green basin opens high in Yosemite, ringed by smooth granite domes and threaded by the gentle Tuolumne River, the high country where John Muir walked and wrote for years.

39. 

    1,479 km in · Camp

    Glen Aulin

    The Tuolumne River leaps down a staircase of waterfalls into a deep granite gorge, and a backcountry camp waits among the pines below. The High Sierra Camp here has sheltered travelers for over a century.

40. 1,555 km in · Mountain pass

    Dorothy Lake Pass

    A gentle alpine saddle marks the northern boundary of Yosemite, the park's granite cathedrals falling away behind. A chain of quiet lakes mirrors the sky on either side of the pass.

41. 

    1,588 km in · Mountain pass

    Sonora Pass

    At over 2,900 meters this windswept highway pass is the second-highest road crossing on the entire trail, and to the north the granite gives way to red volcanic ridges of crumbling lava.

42. 

    1,682 km in · Mountain pass

    Carson Pass

    The scout Kit Carson guided an expedition over the Sierra crest here in the winter of 1844. Wildflowers blaze across these volcanic meadows in midsummer, among the finest displays on the trail.

43. 

    1,727 km in · Water

    Lake Tahoe

    Above the deep blue of Lake Tahoe, the trail traverses the Desolation Wilderness, a basin of polished granite, cold tarns, and bare rock. The lake below ranks among the clearest and deepest in the country, its water fed by mountain snowmelt. That blue stays at the shoulder for miles of the ridge walk.

44. 

    1,761 km in · Mountain pass

    Dicks Pass

    Bare, glacier-scoured rock gives the Desolation Wilderness its stark and fitting name, and here at Dicks Pass it climbs to the wilderness's highest point, lakes scattered like coins across the granite basins below.

45. 

    1,803 km in · Mountain pass

    Donner Pass

    In the winter of 1846 the snowbound Donner Party met disaster at this gap, now spanned by railway and highway. Polished granite domes and old rock sheds flank the trail.

46. 

    1,876 km in · Town

    Sierra Buttes and Sierra City

    The jagged Sierra Buttes rise in a sawtooth ridge crowned by a fire lookout, reached by an airy iron stairway. Below them lies the old gold town of Sierra City. The North Yuba River rushes through the canyon.

47. 1,894 km in · Water

    Gold Lake

    A sparkling lake sits among granite slabs and lodgepole pine, one of a glittering cluster in the Lakes Basin country. Anglers have prized these waters for generations and the swimming is cold and clear.

48. 

    1,992 km in · Water

    Bucks Lake

    Weekend boaters favor this forest-rimmed reservoir. It filled in 1928, when Bucks Storage Dam went up on Bucks Creek over land bought from the old Bucks Ranch. The Bucks Lake Wilderness beyond it is red fir and granite, and the trail rides its escarpment for thirteen miles above the Feather River country.

49. 

    2,016 km in · Town

    Belden

    Switchbacks drop into a deep wooded canyon to the riverside hamlet of Belden, set on the Feather River. The Sierra Nevada quietly ends here and the Cascades begin. The plunge to the bridge is one of the steepest descents on the trail.

50. 

    2,046 km in · Camp

    Cold Springs

    Cooler fir forest closes in above the deep Feather River canyon, where a reliable spring sits beside a quiet trailside camp. The long ascent from Belden is one of the steepest sustained climbs on the trail.

51. 

    2,111 km in · Water

    Drakesbad and Boiling Springs Lake

    Steam rises from Lassen's restless geothermal flats here, a churning lake and bubbling mud pots betraying the volcano's life just beneath the surface. The old guest ranch nearby has welcomed travelers with a warm spring-fed pool for over a century.

52. 

    2,117 km in · Landmark

    Lassen Volcanic Park

    Ahead across the quiet heart of the national park rises Lassen Peak, the southernmost volcano of the Cascades, which blew its summit apart in a great eruption in 1915. A century on, lodgepole forest and still lakes have softened the devastation.

53. 

    2,168 km in · Landmark

    Subway Cave

    A long lava tube runs underground here, left by a flow that hardened around its own molten core, forming a cool, dark tunnel through the rock. Beyond it, the trail climbs onto the exposed Hat Creek Rim, one of the longest, hottest, and most waterless stretches in northern California.

54. 

    2,238 km in · Water

    McArthur-Burney Falls

    Water pours a hundred feet here. It is fed not only by the creek above but by springs gushing straight from the porous cliff face, so the falls run full even in drought. Theodore Roosevelt is said to have called the cascade the eighth wonder of the world.

55. 

    2,245 km in · Water

    Lake Britton

    A long forest reservoir spreads behind its dam here. The railroad trestle over its arm is the one the boys walk in Stand By Me, running for their lives from an oncoming train. The Pit River fills the lake, draining the volcanic highlands to the east.

56. 

    2,327 km in · Water

    Deer Creek

    Black oaks and ponderosa shade the Deer Creek crossing in the Shasta-Trinity forest between Burney Falls and Castle Crags, a reliable flow in a stretch where hikers count the miles between water.

57. 

    2,371 km in · Summit

    Castle Crags

    Towering granite spires erupt from the forest like a ruined cathedral, glacier-carved and pale against the sky, with Mount Shasta floating white and immense on the eastern horizon.

58. 

    2,396 km in · Mountain pass

    Gumboot Saddle

    Gumboot Saddle rides the crest of the Trinity Divide, a ridge of rusty serpentine rock with small glacial lakes cupped in the bowls below. Mount Shasta stands on the eastern skyline, immense and white above the forested valleys.

59. 2,422 km in · Water

    Deadfall Lakes and the Trinity Divide

    A cluster of clear alpine lakes lies cradled below the trail in the Trinity Divide, a blue oasis on a long ridge walk. Mount Eddy rises just above, the highest peak west of the Cascade crest in this corner of California.

60. 2,450 km in · Water

    Bull Lake

    Red-rock peaks of the Trinity Alps country cradle a small alpine tarn, its still water mirroring the bare summits above. The rock glows a strange rusty orange, stained by ancient seafloor minerals thrust up into the range.

61. 2,538 km in · Mountain pass

    Etna Summit

    A high road pass looks down on the friendly little town of Etna and opens the way into the rugged Marble Mountains. The peaks here are streaked with bands of pale marble and red peridotite, a geologist's wonderland.

62. 

    2,579 km in · Summit

    Marble Mountain

    The pale band of ancient marble that names this wilderness runs along the ridge, metamorphosed seafloor lifted high above the conifer forest. The Forest Service walled off the Marbles as a primitive area in 1931, three decades before the Wilderness Act; eighty-nine lakes sit inside its 241,744 acres, and black bears work the alpine meadows in summer.

63. 2,631 km in · Town

    Seiad Valley

    A tiny settlement sits on the Klamath River, where the roadside cafe will hand you a stack of pancakes free if you can finish them. Almost nobody does. This is one of the lowest points in the northern half of the trail.

64. 2,640 km in · Summit

    Lower Devils Peak

    The climb out of Seiad Valley is among the steepest on the whole trail, gaining the ridge in a relentless series of switchbacks. From the top the Klamath River winds far below through its forested gorge.

65. 2,716 km in · Landmark

    The Oregon Border

    California finally ends and Oregon begins at this line, more than seventeen hundred miles from the Mexican fence. The trail ahead eases into rolling volcanic forest, graded so gently that hikers who crawled through the Sierra suddenly find themselves walking thirty-mile days.

66. 

    2,776 km in · Water

    Hyatt Lake

    The gentle forests of the Cascade-Siskiyou country lead to a quiet lake with a resort that has long been a hiker waypoint. The terrain here is softer and rolling, a marked change from the rugged ranges behind.

67. 

    2,861 km in · Forest

    Sky Lakes Wilderness

    Hundreds of glacial ponds and lakes scatter across a high plateau of quiet fir forest beneath the cone of Mount McLoughlin. In early summer the mosquitoes rise off all that standing water in clouds. Hikers eat lunch walking, headnets on, and do not sit down.

68. 

    2,917 km in · Water

    Crater Lake

    The rim of Crater Lake curves around an impossibly blue circle of water filling the throat of a collapsed volcano. At one thousand nine hundred and forty-three feet, it is the deepest lake in the United States, fed by nothing but rain and snow. The caldera falls away beside the trail, and the color lingers long after.

69. 

    2,964 km in · Summit

    Mount Thielsen

    A sharp volcanic spire known as the lightning rod of the Cascades stands ahead. On the shoulder below it the trail reaches its highest point in Oregon, and the summit rock above has been struck so often that it has fused into natural glass.

70. 3,005 km in · Camp

    Tolo Camp

    A quiet trailside camp waits among the mountain hemlock, a welcome flat after the long pumice slopes below Mount Thielsen. The volcanic soil drains so fast that water is scarce here and worth carrying.

71. 

    3,044 km in · Water

    Shelter Cove and Odell Lake

    Deep, blue Odell Lake holds a resort on its shore, a busy resupply stop framed by Diamond Peak to the south. Cold and trout-rich, the lake fills an old glacial trough beneath the Cascade crest.

72. 

    3,082 km in · Water

    Charlton Lake

    Lodgepole pine rings a still, dark lake here, one of countless tarns on this glacier-smoothed volcanic plateau. The Waldo Lake Wilderness begins just west, thirty-seven thousand acres set aside in 1984 around one of the purest lakes in the world. Huckleberry edges the shore and reddens in autumn.

73. 

    3,126 km in · Water

    Elk Lake

    A resort stands beside a bright lake set against the Three Sisters volcanoes. South Sister, the third-highest peak in Oregon, dominates the skyline ahead.

74. 

    3,178 km in · Landmark

    Obsidian Falls and the Sisters Lava

    Dark fields of glittering obsidian and broken lava stretch beneath the Three Sisters, where a slender waterfall slides over a cliff of volcanic stone. The black glass underfoot was prized for tools by peoples here for millennia.

75. 

    3,234 km in · Mountain pass

    McKenzie Pass and Belknap Crater

    Jagged black basalt spreads across one of the starkest lava landscapes on the trail, a vast sea poured from Belknap Crater and Mount Washington. A small stone observatory stands at the pass. It was built from the very lava that surrounds it.

76. 

    3,279 km in · Water

    Olallie Lake

    A serene lake mirrors the perfect cone of Mount Jefferson rising to the north, a rustic resort on its shore. No power lines reach this quiet outpost, only lantern light and still water.

77. 

    3,322 km in · Water

    Warm Springs River

    The eastern slope of the Cascades drains into a clear river here, the boundary of a tribal reservation whose people have fished and gathered along it for countless generations. The forest of fir and hemlock closes in cool and deep.

78. 

    3,366 km in · Landmark

    Timberline Lodge

    Timberline Lodge stands on the shoulder of Mount Hood, a grand pile of stone and timber built by hand during the Depression years and still warm with woodsmoke. Hikers come for the breakfast buffet, which is all-you-can-eat and has ended many a day's mileage plan.

79. 

    3,380 km in · Water

    Ramona Falls

    A delicate fan of water slides down a stair-stepped wall of mossy basalt, one of the loveliest cascades on Mount Hood. Hikers gather at its cool spray. It is the first shade and damp after the dusty traverse of the mountain's western flank.

80. 

    3,447 km in · Bridge

    Bridge of the Gods

    The Bridge of the Gods carries the trail over the Columbia River at little more than a hundred feet above sea level, the lowest point on the entire route. Its steel deck has no walkway, so foot traffic shares the lane with cars as the great river slides below. Washington, the final state, begins on the far bank.

81. 

    3,453 km in · Water

    Gillette Lake

    A small, reedy lake appears soon after the Columbia, the first quiet water as the trail climbs back into the mountains of Washington. Frogs call from the shallows, and tall, dark Douglas firs crowd the shore.

82. 

    3,501 km in · Forest

    Indian Heaven and Wind River

    Meadows, huckleberry fields, and small lakes roll across a gentle high plateau between the great volcanoes, ground sacred to Native peoples who have gathered berries here for generations. In late summer the bushes hang heavy with fruit.

83. 

    3,576 km in · Summit

    Mount Adams Traverse

    Mount Adams, second-highest peak in Washington, throws its western shoulder across the trail, milky glacial streams pouring from its ice. The mountain looms so close its summit seems almost touchable.

84. 

    3,649 km in · Mountain pass

    Goat Rocks

    The Knife's Edge runs along the crest here, a narrow rib of rock with the ground falling sharply away on both sides. Mount Rainier fills the sky to the north. Mountain goats pick their way across the scree above.

85. 

    3,685 km in · Mountain pass

    White Pass

    A ski-area highway pass sits just north of the Goat Rocks, offering a welcome resupply at a small store. To the south the knife-edge ridges fall away; to the north the deep Cascade forests roll toward Rainier.

86. 

    3,772 km in · Water

    Dewey Lake and Chinook Pass

    Beneath Naches Peak lies a lovely subalpine lake, Mount Rainier filling the sky in towering white just to the west. The loop trail here is among the most photographed in the Cascades.

87. 

    3,847 km in · Mountain pass

    Snoqualmie Pass

    Snoqualmie Pass notches the Cascades where the highway and the ski lifts cut across the trail, the last easy road crossing before the wild and remote north.

88. 

    3,879 km in · Water

    Spectacle Lake and the Alpine Lakes

    Below the trail opens the granite heart of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, a broad lake spreading beneath the spires of the Chikamin and Lemah peaks. The polished rock and clear water recall the High Sierra far to the south.

89. 

    3,905 km in · Water

    Waptus Lake

    The largest lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness stretches ahead, a long sheet of water framed by Bears Breast Mountain and the jagged Summit Chief. Old-growth forest crowds its shores in deep green silence.

90. 

    3,956 km in · Mountain pass

    Stevens Pass

    Days from the nearest town, the toughest and most remote stretch of the entire trail begins at this ski-area highway pass, the wild traverse around Glacier Peak. Far below, the Cascade Tunnel bores nearly eight miles through the mountains, the longest railroad tunnel in the United States.

91. 

    4,064 km in · Summit

    Glacier Peak and the Suiattle

    The ice-clad cone of Glacier Peak, most isolated of Washington's volcanoes, presides over a country of plunging valleys and roaring glacial rivers, the trail climbing and falling thousands of meters between its deep canyons.

92. 

    4,096 km in · Landmark

    Stehekin

    Down through the jagged North Cascades lies Stehekin, a tiny settlement at the head of a long mountain lake, reachable only by boot, boat or floatplane. Hikers time their whole day around the shuttle to its bakery, and then eat standing up in the parking lot.

93. 4,152 km in · Mountain pass

    Rainy Pass

    The last highway the trail will touch crosses at Rainy Pass, a forested gap deep in the North Cascades where the road climbs to nearby Washington Pass. Larches blaze gold here in autumn beneath sheer granite walls.

94. 

    4,213 km in · Mountain pass

    Cutthroat Pass and the Pasayten

    An open, larch-clad pass gives a sweeping view over the serrated peaks of the North Cascades, the last great vista before the border, and in late September the larches turn the slopes to gold.

95. 4,265 km in · Finish

    Northern Terminus

    Monument 78 stands in a forest clearing, a wooden obelisk marking the border with Canada and the northern end of the Pacific Crest Trail. Two thousand six hundred and fifty miles of desert, snow, lava, and forest fall away to the south, an unbroken line all the way to Mexico. A final trail register rests at its base, and the path runs on into Manning Park, the whole Pacific Crest Trail complete.