Campsite at mile 1434 to Burney Falls State Park (mile 1419)
Total PCT miles hiked: 821
Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.
This is the second part of a monthly series where I detail what I’ve learned or been thinking about during the last month on the trail. I can’t believe it’s been two months already. Sometimes Campo felt like a lifetime ago, sometimes it feels like last week. The last month has been wonderful, we’re finally out of the desert, we had a little taste of the Sierra and now we’re on our SoBo Flip north. Which I know was a choice I’ve hemmed and hawed over, but now that we’re up here walking south and it’s so beautiful and quiet I’m really happy we made the choice that was right for us.
One thing that I’ve found frustrating is that I feel we haven’t really hit our stride yet. Our wake up time and on the trail times still vary wildly, and I worry that our lower milage days while I was sick have erased any lead time we’d built up. It feels strange to already be looking to the end of the trail, even if only as a means for assessing our current pace, but it’s also an important thing to consider. Winter in the north Cascades can come really quickly and I don’t want to have the season suddenly shut us out. It’s also sad to think that this whole experience will come to an end some day, as I suppose all things do.
1. People who say “Cheryl Strayed didn’t hike the whole PCT” can be summarily ignored.
Those who say this couldn’t be bothered to finish a whole book, or even a movie, if they had they would know that Cheryl’s goal was to hike 100 days on the PCT, which she super did; good for her. Ideally those people would have also realized that hiking the PCT is really really not the point of the narrative in “Wild.” This phrase is usually used to express frustration at those who are hiking on the PCT because they were inspired by the book or film. It’s dismissive of someone’s effort and nobody has the right to judge why anybody else is out here. I’m certain there are worse reasons to hike the PCT than being inspired by a good book.
2. Distance is an illusion and a lie.
Sometimes five morning miles can feel like a 30 minute stroll while the last tenth of a mile during a long day can stretch into an hour. Nothing is as it seems.
3. Our personal standard for cleanliness has drastically decreased.
At the start of the trail I would wash all of my clothes in every town unless I literally hadn’t worn the item at all. Today after wearing the same clothes for a week through astonishingly high humidity and a muddy rain storm I rinsed only my daily wear items in a shower without any soap, which I was also washing myself in. Then I told Keith that we could skip laundry tomorrow if it was a pain and go another five days in the same clothes because, after all, we’d rinsed these ones out and gotten rained on.
4. The people who give you rides are really interesting; it’s worth the effort to ask them about their lives.
It’s a privilege to get to spend some time with a person you’d never would have had the chance to meet otherwise. Plus, it’s nice to talk to folks who aren’t in the isolated bubble that is the PCT.
5. Unfortunately, the folks who think there is one right way to hike the PCT and judge others for not conforming to the standards to which they hold themselves are totally out here too.
Luckily if you don’t conform to their strict rules they’ll basically start ignoring you and you won’t have to interact with them.
6. It’s worth it to always do your own research and check the data yourself.
People get things wrong or are told inaccurate information about the trail or water or the weather and they spread the bad beta around in an effort to be helpful. It’s not malicious, but it is rampant when hikers group up. We’ve all got the same apps and the same internet with weather reports, double check for yourself.
7. Stretching is your friend, remember to stretch!
Lots of folks will say that they never stretched on the PCT, and maybe that’s true for them, but it’s terrible advise. For most people, myself included, a thru hike represents a massive uptick in daily activity – your body needs all the help it can get in adapting to the new workload. Plus, stretching or self massage can make you feel better almost instantly. Why limp along with a tight hip for hours when you could feel better in five minutes.
8. Socially and culturally the PCT can feel very isolating.
In some ways it’s a welcome vacation from the daily barrage of news and and advertising and social media and the constant access to content. And I very much enjoy spending undiluted time in nature. It’s very pleasant to just check out from being an informed person. But then one day you’ll walk into a grocery store and you’ll overhear the clerk talking to the customer in front of you about the congressional vote to stop the repeal on Net Neutrality and you’ll realize that the world is moving on while you’re out here walking through the woods. And you’ll pause because you can’t recall what films are in theatres or which Whitehouse employee was fired this week and you’re not really sure when you last checked the news.
9. I miss route planning and navigating.
It’s very hard to get lost on the PCT, not impossible mind you, I’ve seen people do it, but it’s a very well marked trail. Both officially through blazes and unofficially through cairns and the footprints of other hikers. Because of this you rarely need to make any choices besides where you are going to stop to get water, eat snacks, and camp, other than that you just follow the trail as it goes north. In contrast, most of my hiking experience before the trail had me mapping out my own routes for weekend adventures. Even when using existing trails it’s fun to decide where you’re going to go and build a route to take you there. If I do another thru hike I’d like to try something where the route is only partially dictated and some navigating is required.
10. Finding a trail family is not as easy as it’s made out to be.
Unless you find people who hike the exact pace and style as you, and whom you like and like hiking with, you’re going to have to compromise in order to hike or even end up in the same camp sites as people. It’s not impossible, and making friends while traveling is always easier when you’re solo instead of in a group, but it does require you to give something of your hike in order to be around others.
11 – Bonus Lesson! People who have hiked the AT really love complaining about it.
It’s so strange, folks who did the AT before the PCT love to complain about how miserable hiking the AT was. They’ll say there are only four views in all of Virginia. How the climbs are heinous unrelenting. The tread is awful! Eaten alive by black flies! Humid, raining, snowed on in Maine! And then. And then! If you express that you’d never really like to hike the AT, they’ll turn right around and tell you that you have to! As though they didn’t just give you 16 reasons why the trail sucks. AT hikers, y’all got issues.
It’s my dream to hike the AT and I definitely think I would complete it before the PCT, black flies and all. What a thing to complain about, lol. But, that’s life — nothing is forever beautiful and cool. Adjusting expectations and enjoying what comes is a lifelong lesson to learn. For your next installment, I’d love to know more about your camp setup. Do you always set up your tent? How do you deal with a bear bag? Do you have tips about how far to set up your tent from certain spaces, like your cooking space? I’m currently assessing my own “camp” layouts and would love to know how daily backpacking affects and changes one’s setup.
Good questions! I’ll try and remember to address these in a full post, but in short – we almost always set up our tent, sometimes because of cold but now more commonly because of mosquitos, and I find I sleep better in a tent than without. We only hang our food in areas where there is noted bear activity but we don’t need a bear cannister (which is only in the Sierra). Most of the time our food spends the night next to us in our packs where our human smell is enough to deter the small critters who might want it. As for location, we always camp away in designated spots, never on anything green or growing, and 200 feet away from water or the trail, though if push comes to shove I’ll camp closer to the trail to be away from the water. Typically we cook in camp, again with the exception being in the Sierra where we’ll cook and store our bear cannister 200+ feet from camp.