[pct-l] advice on start date?

[Eric Lee]

Beth wrote:
>
My son and a friend have been planning for a while now to hike part of the
PCT starting June 23 -- Cascade Locks  to Manning Park. Do people start this
early in Washington?
>

It's hard to give specific advice because conditions at the end of June
could be wildly different depending on what the weather decides to do for
the next three weeks.  Odds are, though, that there will be more snow than
usual and there will almost certainly be significant snow travel involved.

The first 50-ish miles of Washington are all under 4000 feet in elevation so
that part stands a good chance of being mostly clear (assuming we get some
semblance of warm weather), and traveling that part buys you some extra
time, but after that you're up to 5000 to 7000 feet where I'm sure there
will still be lots of snow through the first half of July.
 
Southbound in Oregon might be a little better but not by much.  You'd have
to deal with Mt. Hood within the first 30 miles and there again I'd expect
significant snow.  The trail drops for a while south of Mt. Hood but climbs
back up to over 5000 feet and stays there for pretty much the whole state,
so again more snow.

One useful tool for assessing trail conditions are the trip reports posted
at www.wta.org.  Those trip reports cover much more than just the PCT but if
you're somewhat familiar with Washington state geography you can piece
together a pretty good picture of where the current snow levels are and what
you're likely to find.  I'd suggest keeping an eye out there to see how
things progress over time.  For instance, here's a report from yesterday on
the Snow Lake trail at Snoqualmie Pass which starts at 3100 feet:
http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/trip-reports/trip_report.2011-05-31.7705944994.
As you can see, there's lots of snow on the ground at that elevation right
now.  That doesn't tell you much about what it'll look like when your son's
proposed schedule would have him there, but at least you can get a sense of
current conditions.

Eric