The Marrow Walk: the Route, the Awareness Days, and How to Walk a Day

In 2009, Jeana Moore laced up her walking shoes in Seattle and started east. Fifteen months and 4,434 miles later she reached New York City, averaging 12 miles a day. In 2012 she walked Sea to Sea Europe — more than 1,000 miles in 137 days, from the Baltic to the Adriatic, through Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Part of that walk she did alongside Torsten Huber, the man whose marrow saved her granddaughter.

She is doing it again. This is the fifth Steps to Marrow walk. She steps off from Fred Hutch on Monday 7 September 2026 and expects to finish at the Washington State Capitol on 21 October. There is a public send-off on the morning of the 7th at 1959 NE Pacific St in Seattle, from 9am; she starts walking around noon.

The route

It is a loop around the Salish Sea: 356 miles over 45 days and 46 stops, on foot the entire way except for two ferry crossings and one border crossing made on foot.

It starts at Fred Hutch in Seattle, which is not sentimental geography. E. Donnall Thomas began the work elsewhere, at Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, New York, and brought it to Seattle in 1963; it was here that it became a treatment people survive, and it took a share of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It is also where a 1979 transplant from an unrelated donor gave one family the reason to start building a national registry.

From there the route runs north through Shoreline, Everett and Marysville, up through the Skagit Valley and the Chuckanut corridor to Bellingham, and on to Blaine, where it crosses into British Columbia on foot at the Peace Arch — open around the clock, free to cross, passport required.

In Canada it passes through Surrey, North Delta and Burnaby to Vancouver General Hospital at 899 West 12th, home of the bone marrow transplant programme that serves adults across British Columbia and Yukon. Then west through New Westminster and Delta to Tsawwassen, and across on BC Ferries to Vancouver Island.

The island leg runs from Sidney south through Saanich to Victoria. Victoria is a milestone, not the end. From there the walk takes the Black Ball ferry back across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Port Angeles, re-entering the United States on the water, and turns east along the Olympic Peninsula — Carlsborg, Discovery Bay, Quilcene — then south down the Hood Canal through Brinnon, Triton Cove, Lilliwaup and Potlatch to Shelton.

It finishes at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia.

Ten days of standing still

Thirty-three of the 45 days are walking days, and two more are the ferry crossings. The other ten are Bone Marrow Awareness Days, and they are the point of the whole thing. In Jeana's words: "I stay where I am to educate about donors, transplants, how and why they should join."

Those days fall in Everett, Mount Vernon, Bellingham, North Delta, Vancouver, Sidney, Victoria, Quilcene, Hood Canal and Olympia. No walking, no mileage — just a day in one place, talking to whoever will stop.

That rhythm is why a person arriving on foot matters. Walking into a town invites a question, and the question is the opening.

Two countries, one ask

The walk crosses a border, which means it crosses registries. In the United States that is NMDP, which joins people aged 18 to 35 free. In Canada it is the Canadian Blood Services Stem Cell Registry, which joins people aged 17 to 35. In Quebec it is Héma-Québec, ages 18 to 35.

The ask does not change at the border, only the address does. If you are reading this from somewhere else entirely, find the registry that serves your country.

Why the walk goes where it goes: HLA markers are inherited, so patients are most likely to match donors who share their ancestry, and registries can only match patients to the donors they already hold. A registry that does not reflect the people it serves cannot serve them.

How it is being done

Cheaply, and mostly on hospitality — parish halls, community centres, temples and gurdwaras, Salvation Army posts. The framing is deliberate and borrowed from the Buddhist idea of dana, generosity both given and received. Beyond food, the fixed costs are two ferry fares.

That is not a fundraising gimmick. It is what makes a 45-day walk possible for a foundation this small.

How to help

Three things are genuinely useful.

Walk a mile and ask one person. Any single leg, or any single mile of your own. Walking days run from 5 to 14.6 miles between towns, and the company matters more than the mileage.

Offer a room or a hall. If you know a congregation, community hall or fire station anywhere on the corridor between Seattle and Olympia anywhere on the loop — north to Blaine, through Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island, or back down the Olympic Peninsula and Hood Canal to Olympia — that might host an evening or a night, that is the single most valuable thing you can offer.

Tell your town she is coming. An awareness day works when local people already know about it. A post in a community group two weeks ahead does more than a poster on the day.

Get in touch through the volunteer page.

Some of this route crosses or runs near tribal land. Where it does, we have listed the place and nothing more: no nation has been asked to host or endorse this walk, and none will be named as taking part until that conversation has happened and been agreed in writing.

The daily route is followed on the walk page, which is updated as she goes.