[pct-l] PCT Alternate Routes

[brick@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Brick Robbins)]

At 07:01 PM 4/28/03, Slyatpct@aol.com wrote:
>The guidebooks have numerous alternates and all are valid.  Wait until you
>get on the CDT, you'll know just what I mean.

I think that the focus on purity is a result of the difficulty of
completion of a trail, or at least the number of completions. The
"difficulty" of a trail is not just the difficulty of the tread, but the
difficulty of resupply, remoteness, weather, support in towns, etc.

The easiest of the 3 long trails is the AT (not that it is "easy") and that
community has the biggest focus on "purity." With the blue blaze vs white
blaze wars, and folks trying to make their way of hiking "better" than
someone else's. You even have Ding-foot with his own completion award
becasue the ATC's isn't "pure" enough.

The PCT falls in the middle, and you don't hear that much about purity. For
example, if the trail in the Sierra is 10 ft under snow, and you walk up
the wrong drainage, and then X-C back over to the correct drainage after
the next pass, are you going to worry that you didn't hike past every white
blaze? Hell no! Your just happy that you found the trail again before you
ran out of food. The few blazes that exist are under several feet of snow
anyway.

The CDT is the hardest of the 3, and much of the trail doesn't really exist
as such, and the trail "corridor" is pretty losly designated, so route
finding is a major part of the trip, and probably no two CDT hikers even
follow the same exact route. I have yet to EVER hear any "purity"
discussions about a CDT through hike

All IMHO, YMMV and HYOH.

--
Brick Robbins

I don't have time to participate in arguments:
I barely have time to instigate them