Our Honorary Gearheads backcountry.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from backcountry.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The two long-distance hikers had met ten days
or so into a thru-hike of the remote Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT). For three weeks they burned through the miles and, that night, crammed into a double bed in a stranger’s house in Washington, they were much too exhausted or so Ryan “Constantine”
Bunting thought for a first kiss. “We
did make out,” remembers Dana “Magpie” Pica, with a laugh. “But we realized we were both so sore that we just went to sleep.”
Before beginning the PNT in Montana’s Glacier National Park in June 2019, Magpie had endured a breakup. She’d had on-trail romances before, and Constantine, she thought, was funny and handsome enough for a rebound fling some “trail tail,” she kids. Their biggest challenge soon became privacy, or finding enough time and space away from other hikers to be like any other zealous young couple.