“They call it the YoYo when you attempt the return trip in one go – and the test it presents is hard to imagine. With her husband, Darrell Johnson, she left the starting point at El Cajon, near Campo California, on April 25th, taking the first of tens of millions of steps that would bring them to the Canadian border and back. On August 3rd they touched Canada and immediately turned around and started walking back to Mexico, reaching it on November 5th last. Borders are powerful but it was what the landmass of the US offered them between these two borders that mattered.
Average 27 miles per day - that’s more than a marathon every day for 195 days straight.
On the road, they were hungry all the time. The quantity of calories needed to keep going was phenomenal and while they had planned everything carefully, there was rarely enough food to sustain them. This is a pretty standard experience for hikers, carrying only the most basic of supples, as every extra ounce of weight increases the load. Olive talks of lying awake at night with hunger cramps, willing the morning to come so they could have breakfast. But sunrises that greeted them made it all worthwhile. The views that met them almost every day were humbling, she says, and gave them a renewed sense of their place in the world. They were incredibly happy together on the trail, she says. They had such a simple purpose: just keep going. The people that they met along the way were wonderful, she says. Helpful in the true sense of the word, bringing her to a belief that maybe the world isn’t as bad a place as we all think, once you put yourself out in it.”
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/a-walk-on-the-wild-side-meet-the-first-woman-to-yoyo-the-pacific-crest-trail-1.2071182
