RE: [pct-l] AT vs PCT 2

Listening to Jim and Ginny's discussion on the PCT, I was beginning to
wonder if we'd hike the same trail last summer.

As Jim said the PCT isn't the AT and visa a versa. An apple and an orange
may both be fruit, round and  grow on trees, but they are not the same. Like
the fruit, some people prefer apples and others prefer the oranges.

Personally I prefer the PCT. I do enjoy a trail bed that doesn't make me
spend the entire day wondering if I'm about to break an ankle. One that
allows me to enjoy the view laid out before me. And views there are. There
are more views in a day on the PCT than in two weeks on the AT. 

I don't know how many mountains I climbed on the AT only to get to the top
to see a view no larger than the picture window in my living room, if there
was a view to be had. Except for a few places, gone are the sweeping views
from southern balds. They've grown over considerably in the 20 some years
since we first did the AT. And if you expect to have a 360 degree view on
the AT, you're most likely to get it at the top of a fire tower.

The Whites do offer some decent view. But nothing one could really call
spectacular. They hardly have anything to take your breath away like the
Sierra Mountains. After all how much time did Ansel Adams spend
photographing the Whites? 

Even you do enjoy the views in the Whites, it's damn hard to do so while
hiking. If you're not spending every ounce of energy concentrating where
your next foot or hand hold is, you'll be eating a lot of granite. 

On top of all that, if you stop for awhile to enjoy the view, you'll get
trampled on by a few hundred other soles who what to share your perch.  Or
you can climb to the top of Mt. Washington and suck on the coal smoke
belching out of the train. 

Ginny's right the about the stronger sense of community on the AT than the
PCT. But that's changing. I doubt if the PCT will ever get the kind of
starts the AT does. But who knows.  More people started and finished the PCT
this year than started and finished the AT the year I did it. We didn't have
a sense of community much back then. You could  easily go a couple of months
without seeing another thru-hiker, on the trail or in towns.

In some way's though the AT maybe in the process of loosing some of its
sense of community as it becomes more popular.  In any case the AT will
always be a more social trail. It's constant crisscrossing of roads and
shelters, tends to force people together. 

The AT no longer provides that sense of being away from roads and people.
The two longest roadless stretches of the AT are now the Southern and
Northern sections of the Smokies. About 30 miles each. For the rest of the
trail, you'll have a hard time going over 10 miles without crossing a road.
The once beautiful and isolated Maine wilderness has long been trashed.

On the PCT you can still travel over 200 hundred miles without crossing a
road. 

Again I'm don't claim one trail is better than the other. As with all things
beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 

Ron
---------------------------------------------
Ron "Fallingwater" Moak 
www.fallingwater.com/pct2000


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To:            "Ronald Moak" <ronm@fallingwater.com>, "'Ginny & Jim Owen'" <spiritbear2k@hotmail.com>, <pct-l@backcountry.net>