Cassadaga Valley graduate Brian Barmore stands at the northern terminus of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail. Barmore began the Pacific Crest hike April 21 and finished Saturday.

Submitted photo

Five months ago, on April 21, Brian Barmore set his hiking boots down into the hot sand near Campo, California and looked north.

Ahead from that starting point near the United States/Mexico border lie an arduous journey that stretched the complete height of the contiguous United States to a finish in Manning Park, British Columbia.

Despite embarking on this adventure with no thru hiking experience, the 2010 Cassadaga Valley Central School graduate arrived at his destination Saturday, completing the Pacific Crest Trail right on schedule.

“It turned out to be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” Barmore said while enjoying some rest in Seattle on Monday evening. “I think most people I know do it in five to six months. I really had a goal to finish now and I wanted to get home for the game on Sunday.”

The game Barmore is referring to is a 1 p.m. meeting between the Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots at New Era Field, where he will have the opportunity to reconnect with friends and family after five months of isolated hiking across 2,600 miles of terrain.

After traveling through early sections of desert in southern California, Barmore and a fellow group of hikers moved on to one of the most taxing stretches of the PCT — the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range.

Due to especially high snowfall in the region this year, the Sierra proved to be even more of an obstacle than usual.

“It was tough, especially in a really high snow year,” Barmore said. “That was the highlight of my hike — that section — and it’s the same with everyone I talked to. I’m glad I got to see it in a way most people never see it, with a lot of snow.”

Barmore had a cache of extra clothes in tow during his time in the mountains that he mailed home after completing that section of the trail, but as his journey continued toward the Pacific Northwest, those clothes had to be returned as temperatures dropped once again.

“I was on a really good pace, but the last two weeks of Washington it rained really hard every day and it was really cold. It was really tough physically, but the bigger hurdle was emotional,” Barmore said. “I had an extra layer of clothes from the Sierra I had sent home and I got them back for the Washington stretch. It still wasn’t enough. I was still cold.”

Not only was Barmore finishing off his hike in some of the most miserable conditions imaginable, but he was also doing so without the benefit of company for much of the time.

Many of the hikers that had joined him on the trail during the Sierra had fallen victim to common problems — injury, homesickness and fatigue. In the face of difficulty, Barmore ended up finding part of what he was searching for when he first stepped onto the ground near Mexico so many months earlier.

“One of the reasons I wanted to do the hike was for the solitude of being alone. Having to depend on myself and go my own pace and do whatever I wanted to do,” Barmore said. “There was a section of northern California where my shoes were all worn out, I had really bad poison oak and at that moment I wished I was with a group because it got so hard mentally. I worked through all the challenges on my own, and I guess I’m just proud of myself for doing that. For 1,500 miles I was mostly on my own.”

On his own with nothing more than a pack of clothes and food, Barmore spent the last stretches of his hike with temperatures often dipping below freezing during the night. During those especially difficult times, he turned to one of few personal items still in tow — a football.

On a hike where every ounce of weight matters, the lifelong athlete saw fit to make sure that the pigskin made the journey with him.

While in earlier months Barmore had been able to surprise fellow hikers with the ball for a little bit of recreation, in the end a utilitarian use was found, just like for everything else in the wilderness.

“It became a great pillow,” Barmore said, “but that’s all I used it for the last two months.”

On two separate occasions, Barmore was joined on sections of trail by his sister Kari, who was there to meet him at the Northern Terminus of the PCT this past weekend.

“It was a pretty emotional moment seeing her, she was proud of me,” he said. “It was just so nice to see her and I was proud of her, just making it out.”

The pair will now reconnect at New Era Field, and maybe even have a conversation about the next time they get to spend some time hiking together.

“I really want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa,” Barmore said. “My sister and I visited Africa in 2014 and we spent two months there. It has a really special place in my heart. We were in southern Africa and I would like to see some more of the continent.”

NOTES: Nine bears and 10 rattle snakes were spotted, but happily avoided.