[pct-l] PCT & AT: Exact same effort

[CitrusHicker@aol.com (CitrusHicker@aol.com)]

This is the kind of stuff I spend many hundreds of miles pondering.  
Admittedly I'm kind of weird.  Don't read this if you hate numbers.

The conventional wisdom is that the AT is shorter but has more up and down so 
is the same level of difficulty as the PCT.  I wanted to see if numbers 
justified this.  Since I did all the math while walking I kept the figures 
kind of simple.

Given:  The AT is 2168 miles and has 450,000 feet of elevation gain (VF or 
Vertical Feet).  The 450k comes from that great research source of "I heard 
it somewhere once".  The PCT is 2660 miles and has 300,000 VF.

Assumptions:  All elevation gain is at 500 feet per mile, about 10%.  I hike 
2 mph up and down hill and 3 mph on flat terrain.

Figuring:  So the AT has 900 miles up and 900 miles down for a total of 1800 
miles of up and down or 900 hours of hiking.  This leaves 368 miles of flat 
that can be traversed in 123 hours for a grand total of 1023 hours of hiking.

The PCT has 600 miles up and 600 miles down for a total of 1200 miles of 
hills for a total of 600 hours of trudging.  This leaves a whopping 1460 
miles of flat trail to be traversed in 487 hours for a grand total of 1087 
hours of hiking.

When I did this while hiking I came up with 1084 hours for the AT.  Still the 
difference of 6% is pretty darn negligible considering the broad assumptions 
made......

Therefore the PCT and the AT take the same amount of walking time.  

What this means I have no idea.  It just gave me something other than food 
obsession and flatulence to think about while walking in Washington a few 
weeks ago.

Live Free or Die,
Citrus, PCT 2001