I am pleased to report, the majority of the gear I left the Canadian border with made it safe and sound all the way to Mexico with only a few adjustments. Due to the high snowpack in the Cascades, I started with a beast of an ice axe sent straight from the 80s. Borrowed from my uncle, it became a topic of conversation as I was passed by other hikers with much lighter, more modern axes. It was the first thing to get sent home as soon as I cleared the final snowy pass. I was thankful to have brought it, but ever more so to get rid of it. I felt as light as a feather floating down the trail leaving Snoqualmie Pass.  

Everything else more or less remained the same until I arrived in Kennedy Meadows North, the unofficial start of the Sierra Nevada. There I sent myself a warm hat, gloves, a bear can and swapped out my sleeping bag for a warmer quilt. In hindsight, I should have sent them a few towns earlier to Truckee or Sierra City. The Sierra technically “start” much further north than Kennedy Meadows, and what do you know, it sure got cold a few times.

I hauled all that warm gear all the way south to Mexico as hikers around me shipped them home in favor of lightening their load. My two cents… don’t do that. I spent the final 500 miles of my thru-hike outrunning storms as they proceeded to dump early season snow in the Southern Californian mountains. I was grateful to have every extra layer as those who sent them home scrambled to find alternative options for warmth.