Thru-hiking the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail (PCT)
Apr 01, 2022
Kelly Flynn
Thru-hiking the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail (PCT)

Kelly Flynn has been adventurous, outdoorsy, and hardworking for most of her life. Growing up east of Los Angeles, in a small city called Walnut, she found herself surrounded by a lot of concrete, buildings, and cars, and fell in love with the outdoors almost immediately during annual summer camping trips with her family in State and National Parks. She joined Girl Scouts in 1st grade, where she gained further exposure to some of her life’s greatest pleasures and passions: hiking, camping, kayaking, music, arts and crafts, community service, and volunteer work. She ultimately stayed in Girl Scouts until her senior year at Walnut High School, earning her Gold Award for an extensive educational community service project involving over 100 hours of work. 

She entered the world of adulthood attending the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she achieved a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and met many friends and mentors that she is still in touch with today, including her partner, Garth. She next earned teaching credentials in English/Language Arts, history, and English as a Second Language (ESL) at San Jose State University and went on to teach middle school language arts at Benjamin Franklin Intermediate School in Daly City and Isaac Newton Graham Middle School in Mountain View.  

Kelly subsequently set her sights on the great outdoors and physical fitness, moving to Bend, Oregon, where she continued teaching, and earned her master’s degree in education, while finding time to hike, camp, swim, run, kayak, and stand-up paddle board on a regular basis. She lived in Bend for five years, but ultimately moved back to her present home in the Santa Cruz Mountains with Garth. When she is not thru-hiking, swimming, gardening, or doing home improvement, Kelly works as an independent tutor for K-12 students, and serves tables at Sidecar Modern Tavern in Los Gatos. 

About the Topic:

Kelly’s presentation will about thru-hiking the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail (PCT). The PCT is a 2,650 mile trail that begins in Campo, California, at the Mexican border and attempts to maintain a high point as much as possible until reaching the Canadian border near Manning Provincial Park, traversing through the Mojave Desert, Sierra, Cascade, and North Cascade mountain ranges along the way. Kelly first attempted a thru-hike of the PCT in 2019, but ultimately only completed about 1,100 miles of it. She intended to complete her thru-hike again in 2020, but was waylaid by the global COVID 19 pandemic and associated risks of thru-hiking. She ultimately succeeded at completing the entire trail between April and September of 2021, beginning again at the Mexican border and repeating all her miles from 2019 and then pushing on towards Canada! Kelly started her thru-hike alone, and completed the majority of it in solitude, but made and hiked with many other friends she met on-trail over the course of so many miles. Kelly is also a Type 1 Diabetic and used her thru-hike to raise money for two causes important to her life’s journey: depression and Huntington’s Disease. She will provide further information on the adventure and experience of her thru-hike as well as her charitable causes during her presentation at the Saratoga Rotary Club on Friday, April 1st.