[pct-l] miles per day

[Eric Lee (GAMES)]

Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes wrote:
> Well, I assume I'll be flexible in regards to the conditions of the
> trail, but if I went 20-25 miles a day I'm afraid I'd be done way too
> quickly. I don't want to go back to work! I want to stretch it out as
> long as I can. And I'm not going to Canada because I don't like the
> rainy stuff.
>
> Diane

There's a lot to be said for aiming for less than 2,650 miles of trail.  I've section hiked in Washington and Oregon for the past six years and a *lot* of the thru-hikers I meet up there are burned out on hiking.  They keep going because they want to finish, but they're not really having much fun anymore.  It seems that the cross-over from fun to not-fun happens somewhere around the Oregon-Washington border for a lot of people.  It's not just because of the rain, either - people's bodies just start wearing out.

If you want a ~5 month experience but fewer miles, then there are maybe some other techniques you could consider, depending on how you find you actually hike once you're on the trail.

If you're not philosophically opposed to skipping around, you might flip from the Sierras up to the middle of Oregon (say around Section E) around the middle of July and continue up to Canada from there.  That puts you back up at the front of the pack and you can see everyone else again as they pass you at your slower pace.  If you have a choice between northern California or northern Oregon and Washington, you should probably choose the latter.  There's always the risk of rain in Oregon and Washington, of course, but August is a pretty safe risk.

If you find that you do tend toward a faster pace, then once you're done with the two northern states you might still have time left and you could flip back down and pick up Northern California in September which may still give you some rain but probably less than Washington would have.

There are probably even more complex flipping arrangements you could think up depending on how your hike goes.

Eric