[pct-l] Thru-riding, north to south

[Eric Lee]

Dorian wrote:
>
My name is Dorian, and I will be coming in USA in one month to try to
thru-ride from north to south. I'm a very experienced rider, and I decided
some times ago to have a 6 months break to do such a trip. To be honest, I
did not know about the PCT before yesterday, but it seems to fit perfectly
well what I want to do.
>

I'm glad you're excited about the PCT - it's a great trail!  However, you
might want to consider doing a little more research before you make a
serious commitment to this project.  For example, a month from now most of
the PCT in Washington state will still be covered in snow.  While
south-bound hikers can deal with that, I'm pretty sure a horse wouldn't deal
with it well at all.  Even the south-bound hikers don't typically start
their hikes until the last half of June and many of them find the conditions
to be challenging even then.

Also, there's typically a lot of storm damage and downed trees on the trail
after every winter and the trail crews can't get that cleaned up right away.
A single big tree over the trail on a steep side-hill traverse can make the
trail totally impassible for a horse.  Considering both snow and blow-downs,
I wouldn't expect the northern part of the PCT to be reliably passable for
horses until probably August.  (Disclaimer: I'm not a horseman so I'm making
educated guesses here.)

As for access to the northern terminus - the north end of the trail is in
the middle of a large wilderness area.  You're probably going to have to
purchase your horses somewhere else and trailer them in to Hart's Pass which
is 35 miles south of the border.  At that point you could choose to just
start riding south or you could go 35 miles north to the border, turn
around, and come back.  There is easier access from the Canadian side but
it's illegal to enter the US from Canada via the PCT (you must go through an
official border crossing point to enter the US).

Resupply  would also be a huge pain and honestly I don't think you could do
it without caching stuff for yourself ahead of time at road crossings,
and/or having a friend ready to assist you.  In the state of Washington the
trail doesn't through or even near *any* significant towns.  Hikers have to
mail resupply boxes to themselves or hitchhike out to find a store.

If you're really serious about doing this, I'd suggest that you first plan
on renting a car to drive around Washington state.  See what the road access
is like and what the resupply options look like.  Do a few day-hikes in
various locations to assess whether the condition of the trail is something
you're able to handle.  There are a handful of people who have done
long-distance rides on the PCT but it's not at all common so you're going to
have trouble finding a lot of information about it.  The best thing you can
do is come scout it for yourself.

The bottom line is that the PCT trail itself is graded for horses, and
horses are allowed on the entire trail, but the *logistics* of the trail are
not friendly for long-distance riding.  There are a couple of experienced
horsemen on this email list who can give you lots of advice, so hopefully
they'll jump in with more words of wisdom.

Eric