62-летняя певица из Бейкер-Сити уверенно идет к финишу по тропе Пасифик-Крест

Baker City woman confident she’ll finish Pacific Crest Trail Published 8:22 am Monday, July 6, 2026 Nancy Zelick stood on the highest point of one of the longer trails in the nation, the sort of aerie that enthralls the makers of calendars and gondolas, and she could scarcely see farther than the reach of her hand. It was the most spectacular sight she could imagine. “I’m more impressed by the fog, by a mysterious view, than just seeing blue sky everywhere,” said Zelick, the 62-year-old Baker City woman who aims to hike the whole of the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail this year. Zelick started her epic journey on March 15 at the U.S.-Mexico border east of San Diego, the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail — the PCT. She has taken in many sprawling vistas over 1,100 miles, and she’ll be enchanted by dozens more before she reaches the Canadian border. But Zelick said that moment on May 31, as she stood alone in the snow while fog cloaked the apex of Forester Pass in the Sierra Nevada, will stay with her forever. “It was like being in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ or something,” Zelick said during a phone interview on July 5 from South Lake Tahoe, where she was resting for two days with her husband, Randy, before resuming her trek. “It was so spectacular.” Forester Pass, a precipitous notch in the granite of the high Sierra, at 13,153 feet is the highest point on the PCT. Zelick felt more than just awe, though, as she contemplated what she had accomplished. “I was so relieved,” she said. But as it turned out, an even greater — and much scarier — challenge awaited Zelick beyond. Mather Pass is one of five major summits that PCT hikers have to surmount in the southern Sierra. At 12,068 feet, Mather is more than a thousand feet lower than Forester. But those are just numbers. Other factors matter vastly more, Zelick said. Snow, for instance. Although the winter snowpack in the Sierra was relatively modest, a stretch of cool weather this spring slowed the melt. When Zelick reached the foot of Mather Pass, snow covered the PCT, which ascends the pass in a series of switchbacks — zig-zags that moderate the grade. She followed a line of boot tracks that went straight up the nearly vertical slope. “That was the scariest part for me,” Zelick said. Even with metal spikes attached to her boot soles, and with an ice axe in her hand, she said the possibility of slipping — a potentially life-threatening situation — frightened her to an extent she didn’t expect during her hike. Zelick said she was fortunate, though, to climb Mather Pass with a friend. She had recently met another PCT thru-hiker, a woman named Chris who is a retired outdoor education professor from South Dakota and has extensive mountaineering experience. “I was so grateful to have had her with me,” Zelick said. “I’ll never forget her.” Zelick said Chris is a bit ahead of her, but they still communicate by satellite texts. Finishing the Sierra Zelick, who grew up in Portland and has owned a home in Baker City since 2015, plans to return to the PCT on Tuesday, July 7, after two rest days — “zero days,” in thru-hiker parlance — in South Lake Tahoe with Randy and the couple’s dog, Quinn, and cat, Lancelot. She has hiked 1,092 miles. Although that’s less than halfway, Zelick has passed what most thru-hikers consider the hardest sections in the Sierra. Soon she’ll leave that range and enter the Cascades, the line of volcanoes she’ll follow for most of the rest of the way. Although there are plenty of passes ahead, the terrain, generally speaking, is somewhat less torturous until the final stretch in Washington’s North Cascades National Park. “I feel very confident that I’m going to finish,” Zelick said. Her goal is to reach the Canadian border around Oct. 1. Thru-hikers strive to finish before fall storms arrive with rain and, always possible at PCT elevations, snow. Battling bugs, storms and a sore knee Although Mather Pass posed the greatest challenge to Zelick, it was hardly the only noteworthy obstacle she has overcome in walking almost 1,100 miles — about the same distance from Baker City to San Diego — while carrying her shelter and food on her shoulders. (Zelick said her pack generally weighs around 30 pounds, depending on how much water she’s hauling, but the burden has been close to 40 pounds at times.) Her left knee, for instance. Zelick said she injured the knee while playing softball when she was 12. Surgeons removed the medial meniscus — cartilage that helps cushion the knee. Zelick said the knee bothered her most while she was climbing yet another of the great passes — Pinchot, which peaks at 12,090 feet. Snow was again the problem, but in this case the dilemma wasn’t the danger of falling. The issue, Zelick said, was “postholing.” That’s the term hikers use to describe the experience of slogging through deep, soft snow, when with each step their boot plunges far into the slush. Zelick said the snow was up to her hips while climbing Pinchot Pass. One foot actually got stuck, and she had to use her trekking pole to free it. Zelick said she was able to avoid postholing while crossing snowbound passes in most cases by camping as close to the top as possible — including camping on snow — and then starting the climb around dawn, while the snow is still relatively firm from the chilly overnight temperatures. That was a rare case, though, in which the weather has helped rather than hindered Zelick. She endured an early heatwave while hiking through the deserts of Southern California in her first month. She has dealt with a few snowstorms, one of which slathered Forester Pass with several inches of fresh snow the day before she climbed it. Thunderstorms have pelted her tent’s rain fly multiple times. “If there’s a storm I’m going to be in it,” Zelick said with a laugh. Mosquitoes were “horrible” in Yosemite National Park, Zelick said — although no worse, and perhaps not even quite as obnoxious, she concedes, as the bugs she has battled in the Elkhorn Mountains near Baker City. “The first thing I do when I camp is put my rain gear on because they can’t bite through that,” she said. “They’re just annoying.” Zelick swapped backpacks at Sonora Pass, north of Yosemite, and she said it was one of her best decisions. She said she had noticed, in the preceding weeks, that “I was feeling really tired at the end of the day.” After switching to a Gossamer Gear Mariposa 60, an ultralight pack, “I don’t feel that way anymore,” Zelick said. Hiking becomes ‘a new way of life’ Zelick, who retired in September 2025 after a 25-year career with Intel, where she worked in semiconductor research, said in an interview in early April, after she had hiked more than 250 miles, that she was “highly motivated” to finish the trail. Although Zelick said she has always enjoyed walking, she describes herself as primarily a day hiker rather than a long-distance backpacker. She hiked the 24-mile Elkhorn Crest National Recreation Trail near Baker City, alone, last summer, camping one night. She backpacked the Rogue River Trail in Southern Oregon about 15 years ago. But when she stepped onto the PCT, with the whole of California, Oregon and Washington ahead, it was just her fifth backpacking trip. The PCT is not totally new territory, though, in one sense. In 2021, Randy Zelick hiked about 1,200 miles on the trail, ending in Sierra City in Northern California. Now, having walked more than 1,000 miles, Nancy Zelick said has started to ponder completing the journey rather than wondering if she actually can. “The initial nervousness of wondering if you can do it goes away,” Zelick said. As the weeks passed, and the miles accumulated, she said she realized that, almost imperceptibly, the PCT had become, in effect, her world. “It becomes a new way of life,” she said. Zelick said she had an epiphany of sorts on the Fourth of July, when Randy arrived to drive her to South Lake Tahoe. “It was the first time that I actually thought I might really miss this when I’m done,” she said. Riding in a car, sleeping in a bed, flipping light switches — the routines of “normal” life had become a trifle strange. The simplicity, and tranquility, of the trail is wonderful, Zelick said. “Leaving all your cares behind, you just don’t think about the house restoration that has to be done, or politics,” she said. “I love the breaks, spending time with Randy and the pets. But I don’t feel badly about going back to the trail.” Zelick said she’s averaged about 15 miles per day, a figure she hopes to boost to around 20 to 25 miles as she reaches the somewhat easier sections of trail ahead. Her longest day so far is 24 miles. She’s confident that she’s ready to do, as thru-hikers put it, the “big miles.” “I feel much stronger now than when I entered the Sierra,” Zelick said.