[pct-l] Fit for a thru-hike?

[Joe McDougall]

Wonderfully put!  

On Feb 4, 2010, at 6:07 PM, Diane at Santa Barbara Hikes dot com <diane at santabarbarahikes.com> wrote:

I think your math is a little harsh. Most people are able to hike  
more than 10 miles per day after the first week, and even within the  
first week. You are almost forced to do this, adapt or die of thirst  
basically.

Hiking lots of miles is just a matter of how many hours you want to  
keep walking. It's not a matter of how fast you go. So to increase  
your miles you just have to hike more hours. This is actually quite  
easy. You can walk only 2 miles per hour and after 10 hours of  
walking, you will have gone 20 miles and still have plenty of  
daylight. The real challenge is going less than 20 miles. You aren't  
on a camping trip. You're on a hiking trip. The difference will  
become apparent once you get out there.

The only kind of shape you need to be in is the kind of shape where  
you know you can put on a pack and hike all day. It doesn't have to  
be any more than that. If you can do that but you are 100lbs  
overweight, that's ok. If you can do that but you are a slow-moving  
old lady, you'll be just fine.

People go home early on because of acute blisters or other injuries  
or because the trail wasn't the experience they expected or wanted.  
Because the trail is so very consistent in the grade and in the way  
it is laid out, all it takes is a little blister and you start  
favoring your foot and then you start walking a little off kilter and  
then the repetitive condition of the trail starts beating that little  
off-kilter gait into your bones. Next thing you know, your knee is  
shot or you have even worse blisters or your back is whacked.  
Eventually you may be totally ruined. Even more than being in tip-top  
condition, you have to have awareness of the little problems and take  
care of them before they snowball.

I am 45 years old. I'm female. I'm not super human by any measure. I  
did not hike the entire trail in one season (I did it in two), but  
both seasons that I did the trail, I was able to easily hike between  
20 and 35 miles per day. Usually right around 28 was a typical day  
for me.

So, yes, get in shape as well as you can, but don't sweat it. Hiking  
the PCT is not a super-human endeavor requiring you to grit your  
teeth and go all out like a race horse. Even more important than  
completing the whole trail is the experience of living 3, 4, 5 months  
out there on the trail. It's an amazing and wonderful lifestyle.  
Since coming home, it seems most things about our "normal" way of  
life are just wrong. We are meant to move our bodies and be out in  
nature. Even if I had never seen the Canadian border monument, I  
would still have had that wonderful awareness of being fully alive.  
Completing the trail is only one reward. The others are much bigger.


On Feb 4, 2010, at 2:14 PM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:
I would like to add that starting slow becomes a math problem.  The  
trail is 2655 miles long and you have a small window of about 5  
months or 150 days to safely hike the trip.  So that is 17.7 miles  
a day..every day (2655/150= 17.7).  Start off hiking 10 mile days  
and you have to make up that 7.7 miles for each 10 mile hiking  
day.  Think this is easy? It isn't.  Look what happens if you start  
hiking 10 mile days for the first two weeks taking a zero day every  
week (10x12=120 miles), then 14 mile days for the third and fourth  
week (14x12=168 miles).  You will have traveled a total of 288  
miles in a month.  You will have 2367 miles and only four months  
(150-28=122 days) to finish the trail.  Taking one zero day every  
week to heal (or to wait for resupply, fun etc.) you only have a  
remaining 105 hiking days.  So that means you will have to hike  
22.5 miles a day (2367/ 105 = 22.5).  Hike below 22.5 mile days  
after your first month and you will have to hike even more miles.   
Remem
ber this isn't including the off trail miles to resupply get water  
etc.

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