Missoula man backpacks 1,500 miles from Pacific Ocean to Mount Jumbo

Leland Earls was exhausted and a little bit depressed on the night of Sept. 5 after spending nearly three months backpacking 1,500 miles from the Pacific Ocean to his home in the lower Rattlesnake.

His journey was coming to a close, and “there’s never any big epiphany,” he explained. So it was a melancholy moment as he hiked down Mount Jumbo while the sun set.

But then he heard cheers coming from Poplar Street, near where he lives. 

Leland Earls hiked from the Olympic Peninsula to his home in the Rattlesnake neighborhood in Missoula spanning over 1,500 miles. Earls arrived home on Sept. 5.

BEN ALLAN SMITH, Missoulian

His friends, including all the neighborhood kids, had come out to cheer him on and were holding large, colorful welcome signs.

“They had signs and balloons and cake for me,” he recalled. “It was unreal. I was less depressed after that.”

A map of Leland Earls’ route.

Earls, 35, took off from the Olympic Peninsula on June 14 and traveled by foot for 1,200 miles on the Pacific

View Source