Good afternoon. My name is Austin, and I am a Wilderness Explorer in Tribe Next Adventure, Sweatlodge Evolution.
Welcome to my first blog series! Go Me! A documentation/rambling of my little trek from northern California to Washington border along (mostly) the Pacific Crest Trail. The motivation for this blog series is to document my first ever thru-hike and hopefully (if all goes well) inspire others to get out there on a big hike of their own. Or, at least give my family and friends some pictures and a story to live vicariously through me (Hi Mom).
The start of my PCT adventure!
Okay, let’s get hiking! Just kidding, we have homework to do! Let’s assume you know where you want to hike, and for convenience sake, you chose the Oregon section of the PCT. Sweet, this should be a really helpful read. If not, most of the planning we’re about to do should apply to other thru-hikes longer than about seven days.
There are several great resources that will help you specifically for the PCT (more on those later), but the first two things you need to decide are, how many miles you want to hike each day, and how long you want to go between resupplies. The longest you would want to go is 6-7 days. The reason being is food is heavy, and heavy sucks, especially when you plan on hiking every day, for weeks at a time.
As far as miles per day, you will be surprised to find out just how easy getting in 20+ miles a day is when you have all day to do it. My advice is, if you want to sleep in every day, like to take lots of pictures, and take naps, then 12-16 miles per day should be your goal. Most of the hikers on the Oregon section aim for 20+ per day, some crazies do 30+ every day!
Oregon is a flatter section than California, therefore you can hike more miles per day meaning you get to carry fewer days food between your resupplies. One of the nice things about the Oregon section of the PCT is the abundance of resupply points (at least 8) over the 460 miles of the state. Including starting with food in your pack (a pretty good idea), you could theoretically resupply every 51 miles! Which is two kind-of long days, or three easy days. For my trip, I chose to resupply every six days, because I was stupid, and that’s how many days of food I could fit into my pack. Also, logistically, I figured it would be easier to resupply fewer times and carry more days of food on me.
So, day one of my hike starts in Seiad Valley, 35 trail miles south of the CA/OR border. I chose to start here because I wanted to do the entirety of the Oregon section, and starting from the actual border is rather difficult and requires several logging roads and a car more suited for such roads than our 15-year-old Corolla. I mention this in the planning section of this blog because Seiad Valley is one of the hardest ascents when you’re heading NOBO (north bound on a trail) on the entire PCT. Silly me had seven full days of food in his pack and lots of “must haves” that made my pack, with water, weigh 35 lbs. Which, depending on how much you know about backpacking is a ridiculously heavy weight for a modern-day backpacker. So, let’s learn from my mistakes so you don’t have to.
The awesome Callahan’s lodge in Ashland (Hello all you can eat spaghetti plate!) is just 63 trail miles from Seiad, and I could have very easily sent a resupply there, only needing to do the Seiad climb with 3-4 days of food. I also could have started with about six lbs. less of “stuff” that I thought I just couldn’t live without. Well, let me tell you, that first day hiking with nearly 5,000ft of gain in just over eight miles I thought about every single one of those “must haves” and wanted to throw them off a cliff. This is the main reason I decided to write this blog after I completed the hike, vs. while on the trail. Every time I wrote down some advice, I would learn a new “trail lesson” shortly after and have to go back and revise my previous advice.
My first night camping on the PCT at the top of Seiad Valley.
After the hellacious climb out of Seiad Valley, the Klamath Mountains were genuinely beautiful, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. There were fantastic water sources every few miles (more on water sources and water management in a later post) and great campsites a plenty. Even though I started my adventure in the middle of an epic heat wave with a pack that was unnecessarily heavy, in brand new shoes, I was already having the time of my life.
Stay tuned next week as I get into the hiking grove and lighten up my pack, on my way to Crater Lake!
Pro tip!
Instead of packing the footprint for your tent deep in your pack and it just being useless weight all day, keep it accessible and pull it out to lay on when you take your lunch break or afternoon Siesta!
Adventure is out there!
