I heard footsteps pass by on the trail while I was laying half-awake in my tent. The air was hot and dry already, and almost no moisture had condensed inside the tent walls – a rare occurence for my single-layer nylon tent.

I pulled my bear bag down from a nearby tree and ate through the last of my oats. With only my base weight, two liters of water, and about a cup of trail mix, my pack felt like it weighed nothing when I put it on my back. I hoped it would be a quick 17-mile downhill hike into town, and it was.

The Whistler Canyon Trail, often more like a dirt road than a trail, carried me gradually downhill with occasional views of the valley to the west. The Canadian smoke was still lingering in the valley, a thick reddish haze. I could still hear the ranger’s voice in my head, spitting out the word “Disgusting!”

It was another 100-degree day. I kept a quick 3-mile-per-hour pace, and my steps kicked up clouds of dust on the trail. In the late morning, I happened upon a small stream and found Bugs, Moose, Justin, and Kate! I sat down for a quick trail mix snack and chatted with them all for a little while. Kate was talking about her sleeping patterns on the trail through the lens of her studies in sleep science. I think we were all a little antsy to get into town, so it wasn’t long before everyone packed up. I followed Justin and Kate down the trail a while, then passed them at a cattle gate (we stood for like 5 minutes trying to figure out how to latch it correctly… There’s a lightbulb joke in there somewhere).

The rest of the descent was totally a mental game. The views from the bluffs were beautiful, but few and far-between, I remember trying to meditate on my breath while I hiked, constantly losing concentration and restarting. It felt like an endless downhill.

The Whistler Canyon Trail ended with a walk through an apple orchard, unfortunately fenced off. I would later learn that the Okanogan River valley was known for its fruit production. After violently driving out the native Syilx people during the Gold Rush, the settlers constructed a system of dams and wooden aqueducts that channeled water all over the valley for orchard irrigation. Some skeletons of the wooden aqueducts remain to this day, and there’s an ongoing fight in the town to remove the dams and restore the river ecosystem that they disrupted.

Only 3 more miles to go – a hot roadwalk on the shoulder of Highway 97. I plodded onward, drenched in sweat and protected from the harsh sunlight only by my straw hat. Bugs and Moose had heard rumors of an apricot tree along the roadwalk, and I investigated every tree I came across. I passed a pear tree, but the fruits were still hard and young.

The apricot tree was visible far in the distance. It stood alone between the highway and railroad line, its branches (and the ground below) absolutely loaded with plump orange globes. I was in heaven. I climbed the tree’s limbs to collect the sweetest-looking apricots, tinged with red where they had faced the sunlight, in my hat. My 6 friends (Bugs, Moose, Justin, and Kate, now joined by Cookie Monster and Morning Star), found me 15 minutes later leaning against the trunk in a state of sugar-drunk bliss.

The seven of us paraded into town, the three couples walking in pairs with me trailing behind. To my astonishment, someone came out of a hair salon clapping and cheering at us, congratulating us on making it this far. This was the first time that a random person in a town recognized me as a PNT hiker, let alone knew what the PNT was.