Saturday, January 9, 2016

PCT section hike in 2016

If all goes according to plan, in early summer I'll set foot on the PCT at mile 1716 and walk south till I get to Tuolumne Meadows at mile 942.  Totaling 774 miles, give or take, I plan on taking somewhat less than two months to hike it, averaging around 16 miles a day. I have 6 months to get back up to hiking shape, which might be a bit difficult, but I'm gonna give it a go. I've begun the planning phase, which is super beneficial because it provides focus to my training. Planning includes, for me, looking at resupply stops, seeing whether or not I can resupply some foods at that stop and if not, what I'll need to send myself in each box. Some folks might find this tedious but for me it's part of the fun.
A few of the 33 boxes I had for my 2014 thruhike attempt
My current plan calls for 9 resupply boxes sent to myself at nine different stops. Some of these towns, such as Dunsmuir, have good grocery stores so I'll only send myself breakfasts and dinners, picking up lunch/snacks in that town.  Some stops, such as Belden, have no stores at all so I'll have to include everything I need to get from there to Sierra City, 5.9 days ahead. Speaking of dinners I will rotate through 6 dinners over the whole trip which turns out to be 51 dinners. How do I know this? I use Craig's PCT Planner which is a fabulous resource for folks wanting to hike the PCT. You plug in your start and end spot, plus dates, input hours walked per day and miles per hour and it gives you great data to help with planning. I also recommend Yogi's PCT Guidebook which has lots of information about towns along the way as well as best shipping options. 

So that's it for today. I just wanted to get the rust off of my blogging fingers and announce my intentions to do a big section hike this year. If I'm successful this summer then I hope to be able to finish off Oregon and Washington in 2017 and have this PCT bad boy done!