[pct-l] Age, demographics, and engineering on the PCT

[Town Food]

> On 5/9/20 12:10 PM, marmot marmot wrote:
>> What Medicare Pastor said what I have observed also. On long trails, the bulk of the hikers fit into 2 categories, the twenty somethings and the over 60’s.—
>>   And lately the over 70s.


On my 2016 thru-hike, I thought thru-hikers usually fit into one of 4 
groups.  In order from youngest to oldest:

1. People taking a year or two off after graduation.  Usually early 20s, 
but sometimes between high school and college.

2. People in their 20s and early 30s who only work seasonally, so they 
can do long trails when the seasons are right.  I.e. people who have 
structured their lives around thru-hiking.  The smallest group, and 
usually the fastest hikers.

3. People in their 30s and 40s who just had a life change, e.g. got laid 
off, divorced, or became empty-nesters.

4. People who are retired, and find long trails to be an excellent way 
to spend their time.  Mostly over 60, but with the occasional early retiree.

Aside from age, I've noticed a few groups are wildly over- or 
under-represented among PCT thru-hikers, and for some of them I don't 
have a good idea why:

- Far more of them are/were engineers than you'd expect.  Many were 
computer engineers of some sort, but there were also engineers of other 
disciplines (e.g. in the Southern California section I hiked with a 
dairy scientist, a nuclear waste storage container designer, and an 
Antarctic mechanical engineer).  I can't quite fathom why, perhaps 
there's an engineering-like appeal in choosing what you carry and how 
you use your equipment.  For example, paying attention to weight 
numbers, finding ways to use different pieces of equipment together, 
measuring how it affects your pace, etc.

- There were few if any black thru-hikers.  This doesn't reflect what 
I've seen in backpacking outside of thru-hikes.  I have heard that 
random racial violence can be a real risk in some parts of Oregon that 
the PCT goes through.  So hitchhiking to a resupply, for instance, could 
be dangerous perhaps?  I have no idea if that rumor is really true though.

- Of the International thru-hikers, far more were South Korean than one 
would expect based on non-thru-hiking tourism in the US.  Is there a lot 
of long-distance hiking in South Korea?

- About a third of thru-hikers were also marathon runners.  This one is 
probably not so confusing, since it's another form of going a long way 
on your feet.  Though come to think of it, marathon runners also seem to 
turn out to be engineers fairly often -- Alan Turing was a famously good 
distance runner, for instance.  Maybe there's some connection between 
endurance exercise and engineering, but I just haven't figured it out.

  -=Town Food