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[pct-l] C.D.T. anyone?



Hi everyone.
As some of you know, my name is Roni, and I am an
Israeli who just completed the P.C.T (well, except for
the 60 north-most miles of it).
I am now planing to attempt thruhiking the C.D.T.
northbound starting around the end of April near the
Mexican border. Just to avoid the Northbound Vs.
Southbound discussion I will mention that from my
experience (I hiked the A.T. southbound) a northbound
hike has many advantages including longer days and the
possibility to flipflop in the middle if the snow pack
in Colorado is too deep.

The thing I hope to avoid is the necessity for hiking
alone. A great part of the experience for me on the
p.c.t. was the companionship of other thruhikers. I
feel I missed a great part of that by hiking the A.T.
alone.
Unfortunately teaming up with other hikers is
problematic, as every hiker has his own style of
hiking, especially me who compensates starting the day
extremely late by hiking into night.
In the 5 months I spent hiking the P.C.T. I met many
hikers who had to compromise their hiking style in
order to remain in a group. Some hikers took more or
less Zero days then they would have preferred, some
hikers skipped sections they would have rather walked,
some hiked faster or slower then their natural pace,
and all because they didn't want to miss their hiking
partners. This means that teaming up with people
before you ever hiked with them has a high chance to
become a mismatch.
On the other hand, hoping to team up with someone on
the trail is even more unlikely, especially on a trail
so sparsely hiked as the C.D.T. The basic problem is
that people who have the same hiking style have also
the same hiking pace, and so they can't catch each
other even if they start only a few days apart.
Luckily on the P.C.T the the kick-off event serves not
only to educate hikers about the trail conditions, but
even more importantly, the end of this 3 day event
serves as a starting date, in which many dozens of
thruhikers leave Lake Morena together on the same day.
For me this meant that I was able to enjoy the
companionship of many more hikers then I would have
otherwise met, and in addition the knowledge that
there are other hikers just behind me was an important
safety consideration for, and enabled me to carry less
water then I would have otherwise carried had I had to
walk the dry sections completely alone. 

Unfortunately, such an great event does not currently
exist on the C.D.T.

What I am hoping to do is to create a group that will
start at the same time at the same point on the
Mexican border (I was told that there are more than
one starting points of the yet to be completed
C.D.T.).

Apart from significantly increasing the chances of
having more than your shadow as a companion on your
hike, starting together might offer additional
advantages in getting transportation to the
trail-head, and maybe even creating water caches in
N.M.

The exact starting date should be selected jointly and
it should probably depend on the amount of snow fall
in Colorado this winter.

So, if you'r planing to hike the C.D.T , or even
segments of it, and you want to start together with
other people, pleas e-mail me at the address:

 roni_hall@yahoo.com




As for now, I was fortunate enough to discover that
one of the nine people who thruhiked the trail this
summer was an Israeli, and I should learn from him
much more when I meet him. He already wrote me that
one can hike the entire trail without mail drops, as
he did, and as I want to do.


Keep warm

Roni  
Now In Tel-Aviv, Israel

www.trailjournals.com/roni




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