[pct-l] Thru-Hike, Explorer Style

[Eric Lee]

Eric wrote:
>
P.S. I'd actually rather talk about my original question of whether it's
possible to do an Explorer/Survival style thruhike with no resupplies.
>

"Possible" is a squishy sort of word, as I've written about before in
response to other questions along these lines.  Some people take offense at
being told _anything_ is impossible, and yes, history is replete with
examples of things that were simply not possible until, oops, someone went
and did it.  So, I'll just say it's very, very unlikely.

You didn't say whether this is a hypothetical question or an actual proposal
for your thru-hike next year.  As far as crazy proposals go, this one is
pretty safe: go ahead and try it and if it doesn't work out for you, well,
there's probably a grocery store within a couple day's walk for you to
surrender at.  You're not going to starve to death in two or three days.
This idea is a perfect one for empirical experimentation.

Your original question was, "Has anyone ever attempted a thru-hike
completely off grid, if not why not, if so, WHO, and were they successful?"

The answers to the best of my knowledge are that no, no one has made a
serious attempt to thru-hike with no resupplies.  Actually, I dimly recall
one woman several years ago who supposedly was doing the southern California
part of the PCT that way but a) I can't remember who it was, b) it certainly
wasn't the whole trail, and c) there were serious questions about whether
she was actually telling the truth about what she claimed to have done.
Sorry, that's all I got.

As for why not, there are several reasons.  First, the thru-hiking season is
bracketed by snow on both ends.  Each year is different but on average you
have about a five month window of good hiking conditions (and maybe another
month of marginal conditions).  In those five months you have to walk 2,650
miles, and most people need some rest days sprinkled in there, so most
people need to average at least 20 miles a day when they're walking.  Most
people take most of the available daylight hours to walk 20 miles
(accounting for rest breaks, meals, etc.).  There simply isn't _time_ to do
serious foraging for food during a one-season thru-hike.  Walking is your
full-time job.  Finding food definitely means you're not walking.  Or even
worse, it means you're walking a lot but not in the right direction (see
point #2).

Second, the PCT isn't routed where you're likely to find a lot of food
sources.  There's a reason why it's called the Pacific *CREST* Trail.  If
you were an actual explorer or fur trapper in the early 1800's, you wouldn't
choose to travel where the PCT goes.  If you were trying to make miles in
those days you'd stay down in the valleys as much as possible where there's
more to eat and travel is less arduous.  You'd use canoes or rafts as much
as possible.  You wouldn't venture up onto the high ridgelines where the PCT
likes to go unless there was no other choice.  Hiking on the PCT, to
reliably find food you're probably going to have to regularly leave the
trail and go to where the food is.

Third, as people have mentioned, hunting regulations will severely impact
what food you can collect along your journey.  Deer are the most obvious and
plentiful source of calorie-dense food but it's not legal to hunt them for
most of the thru-hiking window.  As you noted, there are other kinds of
animals that are legal to hunt year round but they're not likely to be
present exactly where you are (see point #2).  Please don't be a jerk by
breaking the law - it drags down the good reputation of all PCT hikers.

Fourth, foraging for all of your food is not a scalable or sustainable
practice.  Yes, one person can try to do it and probably not make a lasting
impact on the ecosystem of the trail, but 500 people doing it would clearly
alter it from its current condition.  As a matter of ethics, I believe that
makes it not right for even one person to do.  As an analogy, it used to be
standard practice to cut fresh fir boughs to make a bed when one was out in
the wilderness.  That practice is now extinct, thank goodness, because it's
just not sustainable.  You may have different sense of ethics and I won't
try to brow-beat you on this topic, but that's how I see it.

In your first post to the PCT-L you said you had prior outdoor experience
but you didn't say whether you've previously done long-distance hiking.  If
you haven't, and if the no-resupply thing is something you're actually
planning to do, then I suggest that you first try a shakedown trip of, say,
100 miles over 5 days and get a feel for what it's actually like.  People
who haven't done long-distance hiking often have a distorted view of how
much leisure time and spare energy they're likely to have while on the
trail.  (I.e. they think "plenty" and reality is usually "none".)  If you
really want to know if an explorer-style thru-hike is possible, you should
first experience first-hand what it is that you're proposing to do.  You'll
probably discover that long-distance hiking of that caliber is a lot
different than you're imagining.

Eric