{"id":225592,"date":"2026-03-18T18:08:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T18:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/225592\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T18:08:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T18:08:07","slug":"pacific-crest-trail-tradition-is-now-out-of-bounds-for-hikers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/225592\/","title":{"rendered":"Pacific Crest Trail tradition is now out of bounds for hikers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A tradition for Pacific Crest Trail hikers is out of reach \u2014 literally \u2014 after the Mexican border fence has been put behind barbed wire.<\/p>\n<p>It has long been the custom for those trekking the full, 2,650-mile Mexico-to-Canada trail to touch the border fence at the start or finish of the journey. But the National Defense Area created by the Trump administration in San Diego and Imperial counties means public access now ends several yards north of the fence.<\/p>\n<p>The trail\u2019s southern terminus marker \u2014 a cluster of wooden posts \u2014 remains accessible, to the north of the barbed-wire barrier.<\/p>\n<p>The new restriction comes a year after border security concerns <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/2025\/02\/03\/pacific-crest-trail-border\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">complicated the trail\u2019s northern crossing<\/a>, into British Columbia\u2019s Manville Park.<\/p>\n<p>The Canada Border Services Agency announced in 2025 that hikers would no longer be allowed to continue into Canada after reaching the Pacific Crest Trail\u2019s northern end.<\/p>\n<p>Because that terminus is far beyond the last road on the U.S. side, most PCT hikers would walk 8 miles into Canada to reach Highway 3. Under the new order, they have to double back 30 miles to reach the road at Hart\u2019s Pass, in Washington.<\/p>\n<p>The Canadian agency said the rule was put in place to align with the U.S. prohibition on southbound hikers crossing the border.<\/p>\n<p>The great majority of PCT thru-hikers \u2014 those traveling the trail\u2019s full distance in one season \u2014 start at the south end in the spring with the intention of reaching Canada before snow falls.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcta.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pacific Crest Trail Association<\/a> said 550 people reported completing the trail last year. There was a spike in trail traffic after the movie version of Cheryl Strayed\u2019s memoir \u201cWild,\u201d topping out with 1,196 reported completions in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tradition for Pacific Crest Trail hikers is out of reach \u2014 literally \u2014 after the Mexican border&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,12672,181,2457,23332,100,420,70970,2422],"class_list":["post-225592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-canada","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mexico","tag-mexico-united-states-border","tag-news","tag-things-to-do","tag-trail-mix-hikes","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}