As much as I may try to fight it I am a planner at heart. This has both its advantages and disadvantages for getting ready for my PCT trek.
One of the greatest features of the PCT is that it travels
through some of the more remote regions of the West Coast and avoid larger
cities and towns. However this can pose many challenges especially in terms of
choosing resupply points and finding ways for friends and family to come join
you for a segment, especially when most of them live on the East Coast or in
the Midwest. Luckily there are many helpful guidebooks and websites with
valuable information about which towns are worth stopping by and where you can
count on grocery stores with enough food. I have also spent a good amount of
time trying to figure out how to factor in enough rest days and identify where
I might want to take them while still reaching Canada before it gets too cold
or snowy. The trip I have laid out has factored in 22 zero days. A zero day is
a day where you get into the town the night before or set up camp in a
particularly awesome site on the trail you may want to explore more and spend
the day off your feet and doing any necessary resupplies etc. I think in the
end I will probably not need this many zero days but don’t know for sure and
figure it is better to factor them in just in case. Including the zero days I
intend on completing the trail in just under 5 months which works out to a
fairly average pace for the PCT of anywhere between 17 and 24 miles a day
depending on the terrain. I fly down to San Diego on May 11th (just
booked my flight the other week!) and plan on getting back up here to BC by Oct
8th.
The disadvantage of trying to plan your trek is that you
cannot plan your trip. This is part of what I hope to get out of my trip is the
ability to realize that I won’t know every last detail and its okay. Trail
conditions, weather, injuries, and medical issues could all potentially cause
me to have to deviate from my original schedule. I am accepting the fact that I
can only plan so much and just have to get out there and figure out the rest.
While I know I will never be able to fully depart from my inner planner (and
will probably benefit in many ways from the tentative plans I have laid out for
myself) I am slowly starting to embrace the uncertainty.
A full list of my tentative itinerary is outlined below. For
anyone who may want to join me for a weekend or a longer section there is still
time to work things out while I am still around before May. Shoot me an email
with the section you are interested in hiking and I can get you some more
details and try to help you figure out a way to get to the trail.
Month
|
Mile
|
Resupply
|
|
October
|
2,663.5
|
Manning Park
|
 |
2,574.1
|
Stehekin
|
||
September
|
2,401.7
|
Snoqualmie Pass
|
|
2,302.8
|
White Pass
|
||
2,155.0
|
Cascade Locks
|
||
2,006.9
|
Sisters
|
||
August
|
1,912.2
|
Shelter Cove Resort
|
|
1,830.4
|
Crater Lake
|
||
1,726.6
|
Ashland
|
||
1,662.1
|
Seiad Valley
|
||
1,606.3
|
Etna
|
||
1,506.5
|
Castella
|
||
1,415.9
|
Burney
|
||
July
|
1,377.7
|
Old Station
|
|
1,289.3
|
Belden
|
||
1,197.6
|
Sierra City
|
||
1,094.5
|
South Lake Tahoe
|
||
942.7
|
Tuolumne Meadows
|
||
June
|
790.2
|
Bishop
|
|
702.8
|
Kennedy Meadows
|
||
566.6
|
Mojave
|
||
454.4
|
Agua Dulce
|
||
369.5
|
Wrightwood
|
||
May
|
274.1
|
Big Bear City
|
|
178.6
|
Idyllwild
|
||
109.6
|
Warner Springs
|
||
43.0
|
Mt. Laguna
|
||
0.0
|
Campo
|
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