Rlhdancer - Camino De Santiago Journal - 2026

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Grizzly bears at Brooks Falls Alaska

A Pilgrim Walk on The Camino del Norte - Our 2026 Adventure

Welcome to our 2026 journal that will document our 2nd El Camino hike. This year we are embarking on a different path.

First a little background on us, a little history, and then the path of this year’s journey.

We are Chris and Becky Haynam from Pleasanton, California, a moderate sized town of 77,000 about thirty miles east of San Francisco. This is part of the “East Bay”, a region that includes 73 parks and over 1,330 miles of trails across 124,909 acres.

In 2012, we stepped our weekend and occasional few-week hiking expeditions to a new level and thru-hiked the 2200 mile Appalachian Trail (AT). Over the 5 months and 1 day it took us to backpack this National Scenic Trail, we became official ultra-long distance hikers and picked up trail names. Chris became known as Split due to his insertion of gymnastic moves into his competitive dance routines, while Becky became known as Two Step after her favorite dance. Since then we have added to the AT complete hikes of the Pacific Crest Trail (2013) and the Continental Divide trail (2017 and 2018), each about 2700 miles. We received our prized Triple Crown Award from ALDA-West in 2018, an award given to less than 400 total individuals at that time. After those three two season (spring through summer) hikes, we continued to backpack in Colorado and California, but we were content with more modest distances of a couple hundred miles.

We again stepped up our distance in 2024 with an 11 week backpack trip along the Camino de Santiago. That previous Camino started in Le Puy en Velay in France and transited about 500 miles along the trail named Via Podiensis - also known as the GR65. That first portion ended at the French town of St. Jean Pied de Port, where we rested for a day. The second portion was on the most popular Camino route that goes through the center of Spain and is called the Camino Frances. This second portion took us over the Pyrenees into Spain and then another ~500 miles to Santiago de Compostela - the official end of the Camino Frances. However, in order to walk completely across all of Spain, we continued our journey to and along the ocean coast to Finistere and the mile zero marker at the point known historically as the End of the World. If you are interested in that first epic journey, you can find a link to it, and all our other backpacking adventures, at the bottom of this page.

This 2026 journal, to be updated daily, will discuss a shorter but more challenging Spanish Camino along the Northern/Atlantic coast of Spain. This route, called the Camino del Norte, hugs the hilly coast of Spain. Our daily hiking distances will be an average of 15 miles per day, more reasonable than the 20 to 30 miles per day we needed to do on our AT, PCT, and CDT thru-hikes. We hope this less physically demanding schedule will allow us additional time for personal reflection and communion with our fellow pilgrims and the many local citizens that live on or near the Camino.

Our travels the last few weeks have somewhat limited our ability to train. Our current trip has taken us to Palmer, Alaska, where we have enjoyed stunning views of glaciers, flew to the Brooks River Falls bear refuge and saw giant grizzly bears caring for their young and hunting and consuming wild salmon, rising at 3:30am to salmon fish ourselves, and generally being amazed at the rugged natural beauty of the largest and northernmost US state.

We return to our California home tomorrow for three days before we set off for our Camino del Norte Pilgrimage.

Anticipating our upcoming Camino,

Chris and Becky Haynam

(aka Split and Two Step)

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