How Much It Cost Me to Hike the PCT

"Money, money, money, must be funny, in the rich man's world." 
-ABBA

As I mentioned in my last post, it's not cheap to hike the PCT. I wanted to include some financial information about the PCT in my blog because I know I was searching for info like this before I left for my hike and really only found vague information like, "Oh it'll cost you somewhere between $3,000-$9,000". Thanks, real helpful. Plus I actually did a really good job tracking my spendings on the PCT and am super proud of myself for keeping meticulous records of my finances for once in my life, so why not document it on the internet?!?!

I've made a handy-dandy color-coded spreadsheet highlighting where my money went on trail, so if you just want to see the numbers, look no further. If you want explanations and hilarious anecdotes and ramblings, please continue reading.

And now a few notes about my personal spending:

Trail Food:
Before I left for my trip, I put together resupply packages for myself for the entire state of California, mailed myself the first three, then left the rest of them with a friend to mail me. So the trail food cost for SoCal reflects a lot of the food I bought beforehand to put into packages throughout the hike; that's not the price of the trail food that I consumed only in SoCal. Hence why the trail food cost goes down significantly in the Sierras and NorCal. I did a pretty good job of packing myself sufficient food supplies for SoCal, but hiker hunger kicked in when I got to the Sierras and I started having to supplement my packages with a lot of extra food in the Sierras and NorCal.

Putting together 23 resupply boxes for CA was no small feat.

I had been living in Ashland before I left for the trail and I had friends in the surrounding area, so I knew that when I got to Oregon, I'd be able to go shopping for more food there, so that's why I only put together packages for California in advance. So in Ashland, I put together a few more packages for Oregon. Then when I got to Bend, I had a friend living there, so I went shopping and put together my last few packages for Washington and mailed them out. So again, this is why my trail food cost looks higher for Oregon than for Washington. By the time I was putting together those packages in Oregon, I had a much better handle on what I was doing and the amount of food I needed, so I didn't really have to buy any extra trail food in towns in Washington. The only town I didn't send a package to was Leavenworth because I hadn't been able to decide if I wanted to stop in Leavenworth or Skykomish, so I decided I'd just resupply in town instead of sending a package, so most of the Washington trail food cost is the resupply I did in Leavenworth.

Lodging/Laundry/Showers:

"Couch-like area in a trailer" Yes, I slept here.

This is probably the area where I was able to be the most frugal. I only stayed in two motel rooms the entire trail (one was split between 7 people) and I only slept in a bed 12 times, a futon mattress in a sauna two nights (in a row), a couch twice and a couch-like area in a trailer once. I tried to camp in town as much as possible and stayed with trail angels a few times. Sleeping in a bed just wasn't that important to me. Well, until Washington. I arrived soaked, frozen and mentally broken to almost every town in Washington, so I sought out more indoor lodging there and my most expensive lodging on the whole trail was the $40 room at Hotel Packwood.

Transportation:
I only paid for transportation a few times; a bus to get to Mt. Shasta and the bus out of Stehekin (I hitched a ride in). And when I got to Ashland, I was able to get my own car and drive around to run my errands, so I paid for gas there. Otherwise, I didn't pay for transportation. I never used Uber or called anyone for a ride or used a shuttle service. I decided it was a pretty easy category to cut costs as I just don't mind waiting for a ride and I don't offer gas money to people I'm hitching from. A lot of hikers do and it's a personal choice. I personally feel that if someone is hitchhiking, it's because they don't have enough money for a ride. If trail angels want to shuttle people back and forth from the trail, then that's either out of the goodness of their heart or they can be up front about the fact that they're doing it as an unofficial side business and expect gas money, in which case I would just decline a ride from them and wait for a free ride from someone who is not going out of their way.

Other:
Items that fall under the "other" category are things like canister fuel, toiletries, first aid supplies and other random things that come up. I tried to be a good scavenger, rummaging for things I needed in hiker boxes, but there were times when I had to buy these little things.

Bills:
This cost will obviously be different for every hiker. For reference, the only bills I paid while I was on trail were my cell phone and my Spotify subscription, which I decided was essential even though I didn't listen to as much music on trail as some hikers do. I cancelled my car insurance, cancelled Netflix, didn't have any rent/mortgage, didn't have health insurance and don't have student loans.

Gear:
I'm working on finalizing my gear lists on LighterPack; I just need to weigh a few items and take some pictures and then I'll post my gear list, so you'll be able to get a better idea of the cost of individual gear items.

Getting There and Getting Home from the Trail:
If you haven't read my post yet about how I got to the trail, check it out! But basically, I stopped in South Lake Tahoe to take a snow hiking skills course before I did the trail, so I spent two nights in a motel there and I actually only paid for two fast food meals. For my other meals on the way down to San Diego, I had some extra trail food that I prepared in the motel room. As you can see, my food costs were much higher coming home as I was not depriving myself of any food after the trail! I actually ate two whole breakfasts at Manning Park Resort the morning after I finished the trail. I spent one night in the hostel at Manning Park (where the food is really expensive) and one night in a hostel in Vancouver. I hitched to Vancouver and I took a bus from Vancouver to Portland and another bus from Portland to Medford. Obviously travel costs to and from the trail will be different for everyone.

Alcohol:

Spoiler Alert: Trail Magic beer is almost always PBR

I decided that alcohol wasn't in my budget and I didn't spend any money on booze the whole trail. OK, that's a lie. But I can count on one hand the amount of alcoholic beverages I bought on the whole trail. The first was at Base Camp Pizza in South Lake Tahoe. They offer a free pizza to PCT hikers and I felt like I should order something else to not be a total freeloader, so I ordered a beer. And a salad. Somehow my "free" lunch turned out to be $20. Sigh. The second was when I went to a Mexican restaurant in Mt. Shasta and I really really wanted a margarita and I'd just hit 1,500 miles so I figured, hey, treat yoself. The third was in Packwood because I'd had a really, really rough rainy couple days before getting to town. And the final was in Leavenworth... it's a Bavarian-themed town with biergartens everywhere, so I had to get just one beer with my vegan sausage and giant pretzel. And I'm pretty sure that's it; I don't think I even got a drink at Manning Park or in Vancouver to celebrate my finish. Oh I take it back; I did get some kind of spiked coffee cocktail with dessert at my first post-trail meal. So that's it; 5 drinks the whole trail! Of course anytime there was trail magic beer or another hiker offered me a beer, I didn't say no, and if there was a bar or restaurant in town that gave a free beer to a PCT hiker, I was there. Because, calories, of course.

Snow Skills Course:
As I mentioned earlier, I stopped in South Lake Tahoe to take a snow skills course on the way down to start the trail. I had been looking for a course like this all winter because 2017 had been a really scary, snowy year for hikers in the Sierra. I also didn't want to be that idiot who showed up in the Sierra with an ice axe and not know how to use it. Well, as it turned out, 2018 ended up being a really easy year to go through the Sierra since the winter had been so dry. In fact, I didn't even need an ice axe; I ended up ditching mine when I got to Lone Pine, returning it to the company I ordered it from for a refund. So I probably could've done without the course and later on trail when I was out of money, I definitely felt like it was a mistake, but I will say that Ned is a really great and knowledgeable mountain guide and teacher, and I learned a lot from him about different hiking techniques for snow, using an ice axe and identifying weather patterns in the sky. So the class was really helpful and now if I do want to do some snow-hiking or get into mountaineering later, I have a good base.

Donations:
I didn't do any crowd-funding, but I did politely notify my friends and family that if they wanted to send letters of support or financial contributions to me on trail, they were welcome to. So quite a few friends reached out and sent me money for my hike, and my mom sent me money from time to time as well. But the most surprising thing is that complete strangers offered me money. I'm not sure that this is totally typical as when I told some other hikers about it, they were like, "What?! People give you money?!" I joked that I must have a sign around my neck that said, "Charity Case". However, I think that when you're alone, especially as a female and a young or young-looking person, people will help you more. Of the people who offered me money, I spent a lot of time chatting with them and they found out more information about me than they would've if I'd been in a group of hikers, so I'm sure that had something to do with it. But I also met hiking couples who unexpectedly had their bill picked up by someone in a restaurant or had someone offer them a $20 to treat themselves to something in town. So it does happen, though I'm not saying any hiker should expect this type of treatment. When I added up all of the donations I received, it was actually quite a lot of money. And that doesn't even take into consideration people who bought me a meal or a coffee or a beer, which happened a lot as well.

Over Budget:
So despite my best efforts at being frugal, which included trying to buy all my gear on discount, never paying for transportation, not staying in motels, not buying alcohol, and then with receiving unexpected donations, I still spent more money than I'd hoped to spend. In fact, I spent imaginary money because I ran out of money to complete the hike and put the last month or so of it on my credit card. I had decided in advance that if I ran out of money, that's what I would do. I just didn't want running out of money to be something that would send me home early. Even though I'm still paying off this debt, I'm still glad I kept going. It just wouldn't have felt like a thru-hike if I'd had to do part of it this year and go back and finish another year. I really wanted to just finish the trail all in one go, so I decided I wasn't going to let money be a barrier. To some, this may seem like a dumb decision, and in a lot of ways it was because I'm in a huge financial rut right now, but yeah, there's just no way I was going to quit that trail because of money.

Where Did I Waste Money?
Well, obviously because of my tight budget and careful planning, I didn't make any financial mistakes. Just kidding, I'm human.

I might've bought a little too much powder.

I watched a YouTube video from a vegan hiker who swore by these Amazing Grass drink powders and I thought I needed to drink them too and I went a bit overboard, ordering a bunch of them in bulk on Amazon without trying them first. They were absolutely disgusting and though I tried, I couldn't force myself to drink them and most of them ended up in hiker boxes or the trash. I also bought a bit too much of a few other things in bulk through Amazon, like cheese powder and butter powder, which I still have a bunch of for future backpacking trips or the Zombie Apocalypse. But most of the food that I bought, I ate. I chose to put together my own resupply packages for one, because I'm pretty particular about what I eat and variety is important to me. I knew I couldn't just eat Ramen every night, so I took the time to assemble my own dinners and I'm glad I did because they were really good. I also had some means of getting a lot of bars and snacks on heavy discount or for free before I left. However, considering the shipping costs, I still can't say with any certainty whether I saved money by putting together my own resupply packages or not. A lot of hikers argue that it's just as economical to buy all of your food in town, but some of the towns had such inflated prices; Julian and Sierra City, for instance, are two that stick out in my memory. Also, there is a huge difference in what hikers eat. Some people don't mind resupplying at Dollar General. I resupplied once at Dollar General and then I got to the trail and looked in my food bag and was like, what is all this crap? It was literally the worst of the worst junk food, but it had only cost me like $20. I usually preferred to have at least a mix of junk food and then some better quality foods, so I'm sure I spent more money on food than some hikers since this is America, the land where highly-processed junk food is much cheaper than organic, whole, nutritious food. And food is one of the biggest costs for a hiker, so it's something to carefully consider.

It's also possible that I wasted some money on gear. While most hikers I met, like me, dropped the $50 on this bear bagging kit by Zpacks, I did meet other hikers who were carrying their food in a plastic grocery bag and getting along just fine. And maybe I made a few other expensive gear choices instead of going for a cheaper, slightly less convenient or comfortable option.

Take-aways/Advice for Future PCT Thru-hikers on a Tight Budget:
-Food and gear will be your biggest costs. Be careful how you spend in these areas.
-Think about what's important to you and what you care less about. Do you want to be able to get a motel room to yourself once in a while? Do you need a lot of beer money? Are you OK with eating Ramen and pop tarts the whole time or do you prefer Good To Go meals and Pro Bars? Do you want to have the highest quality, lightest gear?
-Scour the internet for deals. Almost every gear company and a lot of food companies will offer a 10-15% discount on your first purchase if you sign up for their email list. A lot of outdoor podcasts give out discount codes to their listeners. Watch for sales- black Friday, cyber Monday and after Christmas are great times to find sales on gear at REI and other outdoor retailers. February is a great time to find deals on thermals, puffies, microspikes and other winter items.
-Be frugal with your gear spending, but don't skimp too much. You don't want to compromise and buy a cheaper piece of gear just to have it not be functional and then have to replace it later. And ounce-counting is not overrated. Having a lighter pack is definitely going to make the hike easier, so choose your gear carefully.
-You're more likely to find deals on bigger gear brands like Osprey and Big Agnes than cottage companies like Zpacks and Enlightened Equipment. Think about what's important to you and weigh the options.
-See if you can find any gear second-hand. Check consignment shops, craigslist and maybe even garage sales. This is a bit easier if you live in a city or bigger town, especially one where people do a lot of outdoor recreating, but there are some gear-swap Facebook groups too.
-Apply for sponsorships on gear and food. I always thought sponsorships were for elite athletes, but you can actually qualify for some as a thru-hiker, and I realized this too late. Start early and research the companies you're interested in to see what's available. You don't know until you try.
-Be careful taking purchasing advice from YouTube, blogs, other hikers, etc. Just because another food or gear item worked for another hiker, doesn't mean it'll work for you. Test out things in advance (or at least before you buy in bulk!) when possible to figure out what works best for you. Of course, that's not always possible, so also just accept that you're going to make some purchasing mistakes.
-NOBOs- You will start getting very hungry in the Sierras, if not sooner, so plan your resupplies accordingly. My hiker hunger actually started to curb a bit in NorCal because it was so hot. It was really cold at night in the desert and the Sierras, so I needed those extra calories to stay warm. NorCal is where I dealt with the worst "real food" cravings and started growing terribly sick of trail food. It's where I stopped eating peanut butter. It was so hot and I just felt like every bar tasted so dry and all I wanted was a juicy piece of fruit or a crisp cucumber or a smoothie. By central Oregon, the nights were getting chilly again, so I went back to consuming an insane amount of food in Northern Oregon and Washington. Of course, this was just my experience and this can vary depending on what time of year you hit each section.

9 months later and I'm still trying to make sense of this place.

-Be weary of "trail angels" trying to exploit hikers and make an extra buck and remember that a donation is just that, and not an obligation. While it is customary to make a donation to trail angels who put you up for the night, this is ultimately your decision, as it is to offer gas money to those who give you a ride and to donate at some of the water caches. There are people out there who are trying to make unofficial businesses/side hustles (cough, cough, Hikertown) through hosting hikers and driving hikers around, and maybe that's OK. But there are also a lot of legit businesses like hostels who follow zoning rules and pay taxes, so just be mindful of how you spend your money and know that how you spend your money is your choice and you don't have to "donate" money to someone if you don't want to. I think there's often a lot of pressure on hikers to "donate" and it's easy to feel guilted into spending on something you're not comfortable with. In that realm, there's also a lot of pressure to drink, so remember that you can always say no to your trail family or new hiking friends. You can say, "No, I don't drink," or "No, I can't afford to go to the bar with you guys." Or maybe it's "Sorry, I can't afford to split a room with you guys; I'm camping in the park and I'll catch up with you tomorrow." Or even, "Sorry, I can't afford to take another zero; I'll see you down the trail." It's easy to fall into a lot of spending traps on the trail, and you probably worked really hard and made a lot of sacrifices to save up enough money to hike the PCT, so you get to decide how you want to spend your money.
-And finally, be respectful of other hikers' financial decisions. No need for gear-shaming or any other kind of shaming on the trail. There's no need to feel resentment toward or mock that hiker with the $450 Hyperlite Mountain Gear rain jacket, nor is there reason to make fun of or feel sorry for the hiker with the outdated, oversized backpack. People come to the trail from very different economic backgrounds, and it's really not productive to concern yourself with what other hikers can or can't afford. Just focus on your own wallet and the financial decisions that feel right to you.

Was it worth it to hike the trail even though I couldn't really afford it?
Well, I really don't have a clearcut answer for this. I would love to tell aspiring thru-hikers who are unsure if their savings are sufficient to just go for it and it'll all work out. I'd love to say, don't worry about money, just believe and keep going, and it will be fine. Don't wait another year so you can keep saving; go now! Don't let the means stop you! You'll get your money back, but you won't get your time back! These are all things I've heard and even said before, but I don't know if it's necessarily good advice. I've had a really difficult winter financially because of the decision to hike the PCT last year and some unexpected circumstances regarding employment since the trail. So I just can't really advise anyone on this topic. I'm sure in a few months when I get back on my feet financially, I'll say, oh yeah, it was totally worth it! But for now, I'm still questioning myself. All I can say is save as much as you can beforehand because it's really expensive! In both of the big, long, adventures I've embarked on in the past few years, traveling a year in South America and hiking the PCT in about 6 months, I've blown through my savings and returned completely broke. I always seem to find a way to make money and save up again, but I would like to make my life and my adventure habit a little more sustainable, and I'm still working on it. I'll let you know when I have the answer, but for now, I'm still a work in progress.

OK it was probably worth it.

Happy adventuring, happy thru-hiking, and please feel free to leave comments, especially if you have questions or monetary advice for future PCT thru-hikers!

Why I Hated Hiking the PCT, But I’m Still Glad I Did It

When I was hiking the PCT, I’d often come across people I like to call “thru-hiking cheerleaders.” These hikers were loving the experience of hiking the PCT. They’d write things on their Instagram like, “I’ve never been happier than I am on the trail” and “the trail feels like home.” In town, they’d say they felt antsy. “I don’t know what to do when I’m not hiking. I feel guilty just sitting here. I MUST GET BACK TO THE TRAIL!” Some of them had already hiked the AT and were planning to go for their Triple Crown and hike the CDT after they finished the PCT. Some of these lunatics were actually hiking the PCT for the second time.

I, as indicated by the title of this essay, had some different feelings about the trail. On a pretty regular basis, I screamed “I hate this!” and “Fuck my life!” into the wilderness. I didn't want to bring anyone else down, though, so for the most part, I did a pretty good job of hiding how miserable I was and put on a good face when I was hanging out with the thru-hiking cheerleaders. So I was really relieved when I met a hiker named Calves one night at a camp-spot in a parking lot between Mt. Shasta and Etna. I’d never seen him before and he walked up when I was making my dinner. As he set up camp and got out his dinner, we chatted a bit and when I told him about the anxiety I carried the whole way about not making it to Canada before the snow and not finishing the trail, I said, “I mean, I’ve come to terms with the fact that if I don’t finish and I only make it, say, 2500 miles, that’s still an accomplishment. But I really want to finish.”

“Oh, I’d be crushed if I didn’t finish,” he said. And he went on to explain how much he was hating the hike, and how if he didn’t finish, it would all be for nothing. And I could totally relate, and was so glad to meet someone else who was hating the experience of hiking the PCT just as much as I was, but who also had the same strange drive to finish the thing anyway.

So why did I hate thru-hiking so much? And why didn’t I just quit if I hated it so much?

Why I Hated Hiking the PCT:

1) It was really hard.

A blowdown in Washington

It may not come as a surprise that hiking an average of 20 miles a day with a 30-pound backpack on a diet of terrible junk food is hard. The hiking part is hard- while the SoCal section isn’t terribly challenging, the rest of the trail has difficult terrain ranging from rock, scree, large rock steps, lava rocks, blow downs, overgrown sections, stream and river crossings, and a lot of elevation change. Along the way, I’d meet people who had already hiked the AT and they’d say, “Oh, the PCT isn’t hard,” and “The Sierras aren’t nearly as rocky as Pennsylvania” and I’d want to punch every single one of these people. I don’t care what anyone says; the PCT is a difficult trail. So that’s just the hiking part.

And then there’s the weather. You deal with just about every kind of weather- extreme heat, extreme wind, smoke, hail, rain, snow, cold and mosquitoes that will seriously wear you down.

Then there’s the physical pain you endure everyday as your body protests the abuse you’re putting it through.

Then there’s all of the logistics, the constant calculating and planning- where’s the next water? How much do I need to carry? How many miles to the next town, how much food do I need to pack out, how many miles do I need to hike tomorrow? What time will I get to town? Will anything be open when I get there? Where will I stay? How much longer will this pair of shoes last and when should I order my next pair and which town should I have them sent to? So there’s constant planning and decision making to do. A lot of thru-hiking cheerleaders talk about “the simple life” of the trail and I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Yes, you’re traveling with everything you need on your back, including your home. Yes, you don’t have to think about what you’re going to wear because you wear the same outfit everyday. Yes, you don’t have to think too hard about what you’re going to eat for dinner because you probably have between 1-5 choices. But I don’t know; in off-trail life, most of us don’t have to think about where we’re going to sleep every night. Or where we’re going to get water. Or where we’re going to poop.

So then there’s the fact that you only have a certain window of time to complete the hike. If you start too early in the spring, you’ll run into snow in SoCal and the Sierras, and if you finish too late in fall, you’ll run into snow in the Cascades. So you feel this constant pressure to rush and hike fast if you actually want to complete the whole hike, which, in my opinion, is incredibly stressful.

So while there are many difficult challenges people take on and hardships people endure in this life that are probably much more difficult, I still think hiking the PCT is pretty dang hard.

2) I was slow.

I am a slow hiker and I’m of the opinion that thru-hiking is not as enjoyable when you’re slow. When you’re a fast hiker, you get to take longer breaks, you get to camp earlier and you get more sleep at night and you can rest longer in town. And it’s also cheaper. If you complete the trail in a shorter amount of time, it will cost you less money overall. But when you’re slow, you have to be really conscious about your time. And then there’s the constant self-loathing, “Oh why am I so slow?” And even though you try not to compare yourself to others and just focus on your own hike, it’s hard when you have to move aside for nearly every hiker to pass and you think, “What is that person doing that I’m not doing? Why can’t I just walk faster?”

3) The food sucks.

First, a little background about me. I gave up eating processed foods several years ago. You know how they say you should only shop the perimeter of the grocery store and not go in the middle? I do that. My pantry is a bunch of beans, nuts, grains and seeds in mason jars, a variety of oils, vinegars and spices, and my fridge is full of organic produce. I rarely go to restaurants and I never go to fast food restaurants. Eat the rainbow? I do that too. If I eat a cookie or granola bar, it’s one that I baked myself. I make my own veggie burgers, granola, hummus, kombucha, etc. The summer before I hiked the PCT, I worked on an organic vegetable farm.

"This high-sugar, low-protein junk food is a terrible choice to start off your day."*

So… on the PCT, I had to let all that go. I did put together most of my own resupply packages in advance and I put together many of my own meals with freeze-dried veggies, beans, TVP and a variety of instant rice, noodles, cous cous and quinoa flakes. I picked out bars that I know have cleaner ingredients, like Larabar and Probar. I bought Amazing Greens drink powders and I got organic energy chews instead of candy. But when I started starving in the Sierras, I went to the dark side. I still remember the first time I ate a pop tart on trail, something I’d sworn I wouldn’t do even though I’d heard they were a popular trail food. I was frighteningly low on food two days before VVR and when I mentioned it to two fellow hikers, they said they had some extra and offered me some instant potatoes, oats, and a pop tart. The next afternoon, I pulled out the shiny silver wrapper and thought, “Well fuck.” I went on to eat many more pop tarts, Snickers, Twix, almost every type of Little Debbie and Hostess snack imaginable, packaged doughnuts and a lot of snacks I’d never even heard of, like Planters Crunchers and Oreo Hot Chocolate. When you’re burning more calories than you can consume on a daily basis and you have to carry all the food you’re going to eat for 3-7 days at a time, it becomes all about calories and about how many of them you can cram into the lightest-weight food at the cheapest cost. And for me, food was crucial. It didn’t seem to matter what I ate; I couldn’t consume too much sugar or too much caffeine. It only seemed to matter that I ate enough of whatever kind of food, and when I didn’t, I’d crash hard. Not only would my energy level plunge, but my mood would deteriorate. Most of the time, I hated the trail, but when I was hungry, I HATED the trail. It was all, “These fuckin’ rocks, who fuckin’ put them here? This isn’t even a trail, this is just a pile of rocks. I can’t believe this is a national scenic trail, they didn’t even move the rocks to make it a proper trail. This is crazy. This is stupid. This is ridiculous. I hate this. What am I doing out here?”

I spent a lot of my time on the PCT being mad at rocks.

A 550-calorie snack = thru-hiker gold

So, to get back to my point, trail food sucks. And it’s not that in non-trail life, I don’t eat junk food just for health reasons. I care deeply about the environment, sustainable agriculture, my carbon footprint and childhood obesity. Eating whole foods isn’t just better for me, it’s better for the planet. Less processing of foods means less energy and resources used to produce foods, less packaging and less waste. And then there’s the fact that lots of companies that produce cheap, high-calorie, low-nutrient foods market directly to children and low income families. I do believe that you vote with your wallet and when I was on the PCT, that meant I voted for a lot of food companies whose practices I don’t like, and that still disgusts me. So, it’s not just that the food sucks as in it doesn’t taste good, but for me, I felt like a lot of the food I consumed on trail went against my morals and that has been hard to reconcile. And I’m not saying that if you hike the PCT, you have to start eating candy and junk food. Nobody forced me to eat that food; I made a choice. I gave into my hunger and started eating everything so that I could keep hiking.

And one last thing about food is that even though town food trumps trail food any day, town food starts to get pretty old after a while. You can get some variety in some of the bigger towns like South Lake Tahoe, Ashland, and Bend, and I was able to get some awesome food from the farmers’ markets in towns like Wrightwood and Tehachapi, but a lot of the time, you’re eating in a diner or a mountain resort that has about 5 items on the menu, and if you’re vegetarian, one. I ate numerous veggie burgers and boring salads and even the omnivores got burnt out on burgers and chicken strips. And while at the beginning, going out to breakfast seemed like this huge luxury and fun thing since it’s something I never do in off-trail life, after a while I even got sick of pancakes, eggs, potatoes, toast, and breakfast burritos. Let’s just say that when I got to Vancouver, I was in heaven with the restaurant selection and I made a bee-line for the first bohemian, vegan, gluten free restaurant I could find, not just because I knew I’d get something healthy, but also because I knew I’d get something creative.

Indigo Age Cafe, Vancouver, B.C.

4) It’s really expensive.

Yes, it costs a surprisingly large amount of money to spend 5-6 months in the woods. I’m going to write a separate post where I break down these costs a bit more, but overall, it cost me about $7900 to hike the PCT, and for context, it took me 5.75 months to complete the hike. Now some of that was spent on gear and clothing that I still have and will continue to use on future backpacking trips, so not all of the money is completely gone. But still, it’s a lot of money that could’ve been spent in a lot of other ways, and I think there are certainly a lot of cheaper ways to have an adventure. I didn’t track my finances quite as carefully when I did my “mid-thirties gap year” in 2016, but I think I had about $10,000 for a year of travel through five countries in South America, and most backpackers I met down there had even less. In fact, I’m sure you could travel a year or maybe even a year and a half in Latin America with $7,900, whereas that money only got me half a year of travel hiking in the US.

5) I hiked alone.

Yes, like many other people, I started off the PCT alone. But unlike a lot of other hikers, I continued to hike alone the whole way and never found a hiking partner or trail family. And no, I don’t mean that I camped alone every night and never talked to anyone. I definitely met a lot of really awesome people and shared those special bonds that only thru-hikers can share together. But I never found a set group of people to hike with, and I think that’s what makes the PCT so special for so many people. I hear a lot of other hikers say that it’s the friends they make on trail that make the experience, those friendships are why people don’t want the trail to end and being away from those trail friends is what makes post-trail life so difficult. So I really didn’t experience that; there’s no one I met on trail who I missed once I got back home. And I think I did miss out a bit and that it would’ve been easier and more fun if I’d had hiking friends to lift me up in the difficult times.

6) It wasn’t my first big adventure.

I think another reason why people love the PCT so much is because it’s their first big adventure. A lot of people are right out of high school or college when they hike the trail. Others have quit a job they were bored at to hike the trail. And still others are recently retired, having finished a career they were bored at for years when they hike it. For a lot of people, thru-hiking opens up this whole new perspective on life and I think that’s one of the reasons why they fall in love with it and decide to keep thru-hiking other trails. And I’d already had the experience of quitting a job and lifestyle I was unhappy with to go on a big adventure back in 2016. For me, backpacking in South America was my first big adventure and I think I’ll always look back and know it was a really big turning point in my life because everything has changed for me since then. And I know that it wasn’t all good, I had major lows on that trip like running a disastrous 50K in Patagonia, pretty much the entire 2.5 months I spent in Uruguay, and getting stuck in La Balsa, Peru for 3 days trying to cross into Ecuador. But we tend to romanticize our first adventure a bit and even though they were such different experiences, when I was on the PCT, I kept comparing it to my South America trip and wondering if I was spending my $8,000 in the right way, torturing myself hiking through the US, wishing I was traveling abroad again.

Why I’m Still Glad I Did It:

1) Eternal bragging rights and sense of accomplishment.

I may have been slow, but I hiked that whole dang trail, in one try, in one direction, without skipping any of it, and no one can ever take that fact away from me. I’ve gotten praise from a lot of people, and it definitely feels pretty good to get those congratulations, and I know they’ll continue for the rest of my life whenever I tell people about it. And yeah, I’ll always have the self-satisfaction of knowing that I once finished something really, really hard.

2) I experienced more human kindness than I ever deserved, and that was incredibly humbling.

With one of my trail angels in Stehekin, WA

I’d heard a little bit about trail angels and trail magic before starting the trail and was like, oh yeah, that sounds cool. But I was absolutely not prepared for how nice people would be to me. I didn’t know that complete strangers would give me money or buy me a coffee, a beer or an entire meal. I didn’t know that a mom of three boys who lived in a small 2-bedroom house with them and her husband would let me camp out in their yard for two nights, feed me, take me to run errands around town and drive me back to the trailhead. I didn’t know that when I was walking down the street in Tehachapi, a couple who had just pulled into their driveway would yell to me and ask if I needed a ride somewhere. I didn’t know that when I told another hiker I didn’t know if I had enough food left to make it to town, they’d give me their last bar. I didn’t know that an old friend from college who I hadn’t spoken to in years, but who had been following my journey on social media would send me a surprise care package, somehow knowing exactly when and which town to send it to. I didn’t know that when I arrived in Stehekin, a wet and battered wreck, that a lovely couple would drive me to town, buy me a meal at the bakery, and when there was nowhere available to stay, would invite me into their home to stay with them for the night. And I didn’t know that when I arrived at the Northern Terminus, a group of hikers who I’d met toward the end of the hike would show up a few minutes later and while they were prepared to celebrate with champagne and beers and I was empty-handed because I hadn’t gone into Mazama and I didn’t want to carry a celebratory beverage for 80 miles, one of them would pull an extra beer out of his pack and say, “Here.”

I still tear up a bit when I remember all of these small and large gestures of kindness. I still wonder at why, why people did those things for me. I literally did nothing to deserve any of it. All I can come up with is that when you take on a big challenge, people might just start to believe in you. And when you are vulnerable, and stay open to accepting all of the help that is offered to you instead of saying, “Oh no thanks, I’m fine,” you’ll find yourself shaken to the core with gratitude.

3) I became a better backpacker/hiker.

While I say that I hiked slow compared to other hikers, I still improved a lot on a personal level. Through researching the gear I’d buy to take on the trail, I realized that I had been hiking with lots of heavy, bulky gear in the past and I learned a lot about all the lightweight gear on the market and how it can make backpacking a lot easier. I learned about backpacking food, how to deal with blisters and other first aid issues in the wilderness, how to pick out a good campsite, and in general, just became a lot more skilled and confident backpacker, and I know in the future, that I won’t have to hesitate about going on a backpacking trip on my own because I know what to do.

4) I was reminded of how important the human connection is.

I know how important the human connection with nature is; I know how healing nature is for me and how I need to spend time in it often in order to be a happy, healthy and productive human. And I thought the PCT would be about exploring my connection with nature, but what I realized was how important my connection with people is. It hit me hardest the first time I went the wrong way. Coming down Mt. Baden-Powell, I was completely exhausted; it had been a really long and difficult day. My pack was heavy since the day we climbed the biggest peak yet was also the first day out of a town, when your pack is always the heaviest. So I was pretty much out of gas on the way down and couldn’t wait to get to camp. When I got to a trail junction, the sign seemed a bit confusing and I went down a side trail instead of the PCT. After a bit, I checked Guthook to see how much further it was to camp, and realized I was not on the PCT and that I had gone the wrong way at the trail junction and was going to have to walk uphill to get back to that junction. I cried and cursed myself and when I got back to the trail junction and looked again, I realized the sign actually was pretty clear and just felt like even more of an idiot for going the wrong way and wasting 40 minutes of energy I didn’t really have. The next afternoon, I met up with some other hikers at a picnic table in a park where a man had brought some trail magic and after talking a bit over beer, bananas and Oreos, found out that a German couple I’d been hiking near had also misread the sign and taken that side trail. In fact, they had gone further than I had, all the way to a road before they realized their mistake. And I suddenly felt relieved. It was like, OK, I’m not the only idiot out here. Someone else made the same mistake as me. I’m not alone.

Trail Art

And there were many times on trail like this. Sometimes it was something as silly as seeing a random cooler that looked a little too beat up to seem like trail magic, but peeking inside just to make sure, only to find a bunch of trash. Then an hour later, I’d meet another hiker who had done the same and we’d both laugh because we were both living this crazy, hungry existence. And there were other times when people lifted my spirits so much just by making me laugh. Like when somebody left this piece of “art” in the middle of the trail. Or the hiker who adopted the persona, “poopreviews420”, and wrote a review on Guthook of toilets on the trail, rating them on a 1-5 poop emoji system. And I can remember the feeling of being so happy to see another hiker I’d met earlier on the trail, who I maybe hadn’t seen in a few weeks or months. They’d suddenly appear and I’d have this inexplicably happy feeling to see this person again, this person I actually barely knew, and maybe the only thing we had in common was that we had both started the trail on the same day or we both camped in the same spot one night, and now this person is like this great, long-lost friend. Or there are times when someone seems to come along at just the right moment. In Washington, when I was about 200 miles or so from the end, a hiker passed me and then I passed him a few minutes later when he was taking a break and we chatted for a few minutes. Then I continued on and when I was in the middle of another grueling climb and thinking, “Oh my god, when is this trail going to be over? I don’t know if I can keep doing this,” he popped up again and when he passed me, he said, “We’re gonna make it to Canada, Firearm.” And I felt instantly better and was like, OK, yes. We are gonna make it to Canada.

Through all these little moments, those of experiencing intense sadness and despair and then feeling immediate joy after some human contact, I realized just how much we all need each other. And as Barbara Streisand sings,

 

“People, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”

5) I got to see some of the most beautiful places in the US in a very unique way.

Holy moly, we have got a beautiful country. My main reason for hiking the PCT was to see all these beautiful places I’d never seen before and I definitely got to experience an insane amount of natural beauty and see sights I never would’ve seen otherwise. And I’ll always be grateful for that.

Tuolomne Falls, Yosemite National Park

6) I gained a new appreciation for our national park system.

I had a bit of a proud to be an American moment in Tuolomne Meadows. I arrived at the campground after dark and I set my stuff up to cowboy camp and did something I rarely did- decided to just eat a bar for dinner because I too tired to cook. As I was taking my food to put in the bear box, I realized I’d set up right near a British couple I'd been leapfrogging with throughout the Sierras and they were having their dinner at a picnic table and I sat down to talk to them for a bit and they told me how they’d gone to the ranger talk earlier in the evening and said how much they love the National Park system in the US and how they don’t really have this concept and even the option of going backcountry camping in the UK and it hit me, like wow. I’m so lucky to live in this country that has such an amazing infrastructure of trails and parks because it is pretty unique. I mean, the US is the home of the world’s first national park. And while I know it’s not a perfect system, it’s pretty awesome that it exists at all and that we have so many opportunities to recreate in these beautiful places because not every country has that.

So there you have it, the reasons why I hated hiking the PCT, but I’m still glad I did it. And as for why I didn’t quit, well I guess I just wanted to complete the goal I’d set for myself. In life, we all take on challenges; it could be a new job, a relationship, a physical challenge, a creative endeavor; and we’re going to hit a point where we have to decide if it’s worth it to continue. Life is short and we do have to choose carefully what to put our energy into. And I guess for me, even though the trail was hard and I struggled a lot, I always felt like it was worth it to keep going. I’d visualized the end so many times and every time I imagined myself walking up to that monument and touching it, I got teary eyed. So I guess in a way, I always knew that I'd finish the trail.

Since finishing the PCT, I've had a lot of time to reflect upon the experience and I still wonder if hiking the trail in 2018 was the right choice for me. Was that really what I was supposed to be doing? Was that the best use of my time and money? And even though I just listed the good things that came out of it, I still have my doubts. 

In the fall of 2017, I took a dayhike on the Mt. McLoughlin trail and took my first steps on the PCT and something about seeing that trail sign; I don’t know, I felt called to hike the whole trail, so I did. It's like when you meet someone you're attracted to and you feel like you've just got to ask them out. They might reject you or they might say yes. You might go on one date and then realize it's not a good fit, you might end up getting married and living a beautiful life together or you might get involved in this really complicated, heartbreaking 6-month relationship and then go your separate ways. But if you don't take the first step, you'll never know. And I had to know.

 *Pop tart fun fact taken from The Fifteen Unhealthiest Junk Foods in America

A Woman on the Road Is Alone

Photo by Tommy Corey

On April 13^th, 2018, I set off from the Southern Terminus in Campo, CA to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. This is the story of how I got from my home at the time in Ashland, OR to that Southern Terminus.

In the months leading up to my start date, I debated how I was going to get from Ashland to San Diego, where I’d stay with Scout and Frodo, two magnificent humans who would put me and 25-ish other hikers up for a night and ensure I got to the trail head early the next morning, fed and well-rested. I looked at flights. They were expensive. I looked at train tickets. They were expensive. I looked at bus tickets. They were slightly more affordable, but they made for a long and inconvenient trip considering the price. I posted on the PCT Facebook page to see if there were any thru-hikers from the Pacific Northwest starting around the same time as me who might be driving or getting a ride down to San Diego. I only got unhelpful replies to my post like, “Why don’t you just fly?” So I continued to think about it and I was like, you know, it’s a straight shot down I-5. Maybe I could hitchhike.

Photo by Tommy Corey

Well, as the time drew nearer, I ended up pushing my start date back in order to work an extra week and a half because I was starting to worry that I was going to be way under budget for the hike (I was). So it ended up being a good thing that I hadn’t booked a flight in advance. Another curve ball got thrown into my plans when I heard back from Ned at Mountain Education. I’d written him a few months earlier to express my interest in a one-day snow hiking skills course he was offering. Originally, he planned to offer it at Chicken Spring Lake, right off the trail at the beginning of the Sierra section of the PCT, which would’ve been really convenient as I could’ve just hiked up, taken the course, and then continued into the potentially snowy section of trail where I'd use those skills the next day. But that didn’t work out, so instead he decided to try and offer it just outside of South Lake Tahoe for any hikers who might be able to get to that area to take it before starting their thru-hike. I’d replied and said maybe and so did another hiker, Jimmy, from the bay area, so he agreed to offer the course to the two of us, and it was arranged just a few days in advance. Jimmy and I exchanged a few details about where and what time to meet up and we agreed to split a motel room in Tahoe the night before the course since it would start early in the morning. So I just had to get myself from Ashland to San Jose and then I’d ride with Jimmy to South Lake Tahoe. After the course, though, he’d be driving back home and then flying down to San Diego as he was starting the PCT a few days after me, so I’d have to get down to San Diego on my own.

I’d been checking the ride share section of craigslist and the night before I left Ashland, I just happened to find a woman who was driving from Shady Cove to San Jose. I messaged her and she agreed to give me a ride. It was a miracle. And I was so happy to find a woman because when I’d posted an ad that I was looking for a ride, the only responses I’d gotten were from men, “I’ll give you a ride in exchange for some serious road head,” and “I’ll give you a ride, but I just want to be upfront about the fact that I’m an exhibitionist.” And it’s not like I posted a picture or anything. I just put my name, which is a clearly female name, at the bottom. Rookie mistake!

Photo by Tommy Corey

I met my ride and her dog, Bailey, early the next morning in a shopping center parking lot. Veronica was in her mid-forties, thin with curly dark hair and glasses. She was going down to San Jose to spend the weekend with her new boyfriend, who lived there. To say that Veronica talked my ear off during that 7-hour drive to San Jose would be an understatement. She told me all about her life and her children, her dog, her new boyfriend in San Jose... Like me, she had a passion for cooking and baking and she offered me homemade banana muffins, which I happily accepted. Through all our conversation, which was mostly one-sided, it became clear that Veronica was, above anything else, a loving mother. In fact, by the time we arrived in San Jose where I would meet up with my next ride and she would meet up with her boyfriend, she was mothering me. When my ride, Jimmy, a big guy in a big truck, pulled up and started walking over to us, she asked me, “Do you know this guy? Do you have a weapon?” I assured her that yes, I had both pepper spray and a pocket knife, and that I would be fine. And I just kind of laughed to myself because while I didn’t know Jimmy, we were both thru-hikers who had written to the same adventure company about taking a course through them and then the instructor had put us in contact when we all agreed on a day to take the course together, and then we had exchanged a few emails and texts to coordinate how we would meet up and get to Tahoe together. Whereas Veronica was the person I’d just found on the craigslist rideshare section the night before.

So off drove Jimmy and I to South Lake Tahoe where we’d split a cheap motel for the night. We talked about the gear we were bringing on the PCT, what kind of food we were packing in our resupplies, our biggest fears/worries about the hike and all the other stuff first-time thru-hikers talk about. The next day we met up with Ned at Carson Pass to take our snow skills course and after the course, Jimmy dropped me off at a different budget motel and he drove back home.

Photo by Tommy Corey

The next morning, I awoke early and looked outside with dread. There was fresh snow on the ground and it was about 30 degrees out. I’d made a post on the Reno craigslist rideshare section the night before (this time omitting my name), but hadn’t gotten any replies. I checked to see if anyone was offering rides. Nope. So there was only one way left to get to San Diego. At 7:30am, I crossed the street and put my thumb out. At first, things were not looking good. I walked down the road a bit to a place where cars would have more space to pull off to pick me up. After about 30 minutes, a car pulled over. I was so stunned at first that I didn’t realize it was for me. I went up to the passenger window to talk and he told me he could take me to the state line. As my first time in Tahoe, I didn’t really know what that meant and I told him my end goal was San Diego and he said, “Don’t you wanna go the other direction?” But I said that no, I wanted to go down 395, not back toward Sacramento and down I-5, so he said OK and I got in. After the introductory questions during which he asked me where I was going and what I was doing and I asked him where he lived and how long he’d been in the area, he took a phone call from his wife and talked to her the rest of the ride. About 15 minutes later, he dropped me off at a corner where I needed to go right; I thanked him and he went on his way.

Photo by Tommy Corey

It wasn’t a good spot to hitch because there was nowhere for cars to pull over, so I walked up the hill to a gas station and set up there. It was still pretty chilly out, but after a while, a man in a pickup pulled up and said he could take me to the top of the barge. I didn’t know what that meant, but learned that basically it was a very short distance up the road at an intersection where he said people would be driving down from the ski area and going in the direction of 395, where I needed to go. He said that he’d hitched a lot in his life and that a big backpack and a big smile usually goes a long way.

He dropped me off at the intersection and maybe 20 minutes later, I had my third ride from a kind, middle-aged man, bald on top with straight, thin, white, shoulder-length hair combed back below. He was pretty chatty and told me a lot about his life and a lot of the history about the valley we were entering and how it had changed over the years. As I listened, I was absolutely mesmerized with the scenery. The Sierra Nevada mountains were so stunning and the views as we dropped down into the valley were mesmerizing. He dropped me off in Gardnerville, Nevada, at the intersection of 395 where he stopped to get gas. I was so relieved to finally be getting somewhere and to be at the highway that would take me to San Diego.

Photo by Tommy Corey

It was a very busy intersection with a lot of shopping centers and an exhausting place to hitch as I had to hold my thumb out continuously while cars came toward me from every direction with the changing traffic lights. I wasn’t having any luck and I was starting to get pretty hungry. I looked around at all the fast food restaurants and thought this might be the best time for me to get a meal today, so I went to Subway for a quick lunch break. On my way out, there was a table of four senior citizens who saw my backpack and asked where I was going. I said I was headed down to San Diego to hike the PCT.

“Oh, just like Reese Witherspoon?” one of the women said.

“Yeah I guess,” I laughed politely.

When I told them I was hitchhiking down to San Diego, one of the men gave a worried look. “Have you had any trouble with the cops?”

“No,” I said.

“Because hitchhiking is illegal in Nevada.”

“Oh,” I said. Whoops. I said my goodbyes and they wished me luck.

I headed back to my intersection and after a bit longer, a Jeep pulled up and I walked over. An older woman with long, straight, white-dyed-purple hair got out. “Now honey, you’ve gotta be careful. There’s a lot of wack jobs out here,” she said as she made some space for my backpack in the trunk.

“OK,” I said.

Her husband sat in the passenger’s seat and as we drove, they brainstormed a spot where they could drop me off. They’d be heading down 395 for a bit, but would then be heading east towards Smith Valley when I needed to continue southwest. As we left Gardnerville, the strip malls faded away and the landscape became more barren. They kindly decided to go a little out of their way and drop me at a large pull out area on the side of the road, close to the California border. It was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so not a place I’d want to be for long, but thankfully, the first vehicle heading southbound pulled over.

Photo by Tommy Corey

My fifth ride was in a work truck and after he moved some tools and things aside, I hopped in. He lived in Bishop, but said he could only take me to Walker because he was on his way to do a job there. He was an electrician. I’d heard of Bishop because it was one of my resupply points on the PCT, but I didn’t know anything about Walker. I told him that I was heading down to San Diego to hike the PCT and he said he often shuttles hikers to and from Bishop and the trailhead in summers as a way to make a little extra cash and gave me his card in case I needed a ride when I came back through in a few months. He said I had a beautiful drive ahead of me, and that just before Lone Pine, I’d be able to see Mt. Whitney from the highway, which I got very excited about since I planned to summit it. He dropped me off in Walker and said that if I was still there in a few hours, he’d give me a ride to Bishop.

Walker was basically a parking lot and a general store on the side of the road. I put my thumb out and after a while, a car heading northbound pulled over. It had initially been heading south, but turned around to come back and pick me up. “Sorry, I didn’t see you at first,” he said to me through the passenger window.

Sorry? For driving past a hitchhiker? He was so polite! He asked where I was going and when I told him San Diego, he said, “No way, me too.”

And I think I heard the Hallelujah chorus. “Really?” I said. “Oh my god, that’s amazing!” And after dropping my backpack in his trunk, I hopped in and we were on our way.

David, my sixth ride, was a tall, Mexican American man with long dreads pulled back into a ponytail and we listened to Nahko the entire car ride. Unlike most of my other hitches, he seemed like he might actually be my age, or even a bit younger. I told him about my life in Southern Oregon and my PCT plans. He told me how he had lived in Tahoe for a while, but had moved down to San Diego to be with his girlfriend. They’d broken up recently, so he’d just moved back to Tahoe. This trip to San Diego was to hang out with some friends for a few days and then fly out on a 3-week trip to Bali. I asked him if he could point out Mt. Whitney to me when we got close and he tried, but in the end, he wasn’t really sure which one it was. And I admit that even though I’ve now climbed it, I don’t think I’d be able to point it out from the highway either.

Photo by Tommy Corey

The drive down 395 was absolutely stunning and I’d recommend it to anyone who is ever taking a roadtrip in that part of the world. The snow-capped Sierra Nevada to the west and the infinite desert stretching out in the east was one of the most scenic drives of my life. And it was especially meaningful to me to because I got my first ever glimpse of those beautiful mountains and in a few months’ time, I’d be back, except instead of looking up at them from a tiny car down below, I’d be walking through them.

As we approached San Diego and changed from a little two-lane highway through the desert to a 6-lane-on-each-side-highway with lots of traffic, I began to get a little nervous because I didn’t think we’d get to San Diego before dark and I figured David would drop me off at an exit somewhere and then I’d have to figure out how to get to Scout and Frodo’s in the dark. So I asked David what part of town his friend lived in, and I pulled up the address of where I was going and it turned out they were in the same neighborhood. Another Hallelujah moment.

I still figured that David would drop me off at some intersection wherever he had to turn off to go to his buddy’s place and I’d still have a few miles to figure out on my own, in the dark, but when we got close, he said, “You wanna pull up that address?”

Inside I squealed with relief. This kind stranger was going to take me all the way to my destination. I pulled up the address, and at about 8pm, he dropped me off right in front of their home. I thanked him profusely, we hugged and wished each other “have fun” on our respective trips. After 12 and a half hours and 6 rides, I’d arrived. And the next morning, I’d sign my name in a log book and stand at the monument that marks the Southern Terminus of the PCT to pose for a photo, and start the next part of my journey.

I was inspired to tell this story because of an episode from the Bitchface podcast that I listened to a few weeks ago on which three women hitchhike from LA to Las Vegas, pretty much just for the fun of it. In the Epilogue of the story, narrator and producer, Nicole Kelly says:

Photo by Tommy Corey

“We’re used to seeing men as the protagonists in adventure stories like On the Road, Into the Wild, Ishmael, Huck Finn... whereas very few road stories are ever told about women. Boys and men are written as agents of change, but there’s no space within patriarchy for female narratives of quest. Women with wanderlust are subtly told it’s best for them to stay at home. Women are expected to maintain, to wait and most of all, we’re told to stay home in order to stay safe.”

The ladies of Bitchface were inspired to tell their story because of the writer, Vanessa Veselka. Here is a quote from her essay, Green Screen: The Lack of Female Road Narratives and Why It Matters:

Photo by Tommy Corey

“True quest is about agency, and the capacity to be driven past one’s limits in pursuit of something greater. It’s about desire that extends beyond what we may know about who we are. It’s a test of mettle, a destiny. A man with a quest, internal or external, makes the choice at every stage about whether to endure the consequences or turn back, and that choice is imbued with heroism. Women, however, are restricted to a single tragic or fatal choice. We trace all of their failures, as well as the dangers that befall them, back to this foundational moment of sin or tragedy, instead of linking these encounters and moments in a narrative of exploration that allows for an outcome which can unite these individual choices in any heroic way.”

And here’s some more food for thought. Just think about the way we view Cheryl Strayed vs. Christopher McCandless. I’ve heard a lot of criticism of (the young, book-version of) Strayed, especially in the PCT community, about how she wasn’t prepared, she didn’t know what she was doing, she carried too much stuff, she was reckless… and yet she survived her journey through the wilderness and got on with it just fine. In fact, later in life she went on to become a successful author, activist, public speaker, and a wife and mother. Yet so many people still praise McCandless for his “fuck society!” attitude and Into the Wild has become a bit of a cult classic, in spite of the fact that McCandless was completely reckless and headed off into the Alaskan wilderness totally unprepared and did, ultimately, make a fatal choice. And maybe I’m reading too much into this, but look at the way these two characters, both 20-something, white Americans who set off on their respective journeys through the American west in the early 1990s, are portrayed on these film covers. Look at Witherspoon's face; anxious, scared, searching, with her classic overstuffed backpack, the empty wilderness stretching behind her. Then, look at Hirsch, chillin’ on top of a bus, eating a can of beans, cool as a cucumber, staring off into the endless possibility of life. If you didn’t know the stories, which one of these characters would you guess is going to die?

Vaselka goes on to say, “A man on the road is solitary. A woman on the road is alone.”

My story may not be the great female quest story that Vaselka says our culture needs. It’s just a small one, taking place in the course of three days. I didn’t hitchhike to make a statement or even out of necessity, but just as a way to save money. But as I mentioned in my first blogpost, I think that it’s important to share stories, long or short, simple or complicated, where women go off on adventures and nothing bad happens to them. We have to start rewriting the story that a woman on the road must be running from something, and that inevitably a solo female traveler is going to get raped or murdered. We have to lift up the stories of women like Cassie De Pecol and Laura Dekker and hundreds of others.

Photo by Tommy Corey

On my day of hitchhiking down to the starting point of the PCT and in my time hitchhiking between towns and trailheads throughout my 6 months on the PCT, most of the people who picked me up were men, though a few were women. A lot of them were people who’d traveled and hitchhiked themselves, and many were parents or grandparents. Some were strange, most were extremely kind, and several were curious and had a lot of questions. And fortunately, I never felt threatened by any of them.

Now I’m not recommending that all young women go out and start hitchhiking to get around. You’ve got to consider place and purpose, take some basic safety precautions, and be honest about your comfort level in taking that kind of risk. And I’m not saying that all women will have the same positive experience that I had. Veselka certainly had many frightening experiences in the 20,000 miles that she hitchhiked.

What I’m saying is that it’s time that women started having adventures unapologetically and it’s time that we started shifting the narrative about female quest. Vanessa Vaselka wrote an essay that inspired a few women to make a podcast episode that inspired me to write this blogpost, and I hope this chain of inspiration continues to the next woman because as Nicole says:

“WE are worthy protagonists.”

Photo by Tommy Corey

This blogpost is illustrated with the beautiful photography of my friend, Tommy Corey, aka Twerk. I asked Twerk if I could use his photos to help tell this story because he portrays the women of the PCT for what we are- bosses. Ownin' it. You can find more of his compelling photography and pre-order a copy of his book, which highlights his brilliant project- Hiker Trash Vogue on his website. You can also follow him on Instagram @twerkinthedirt.

To listen to the episode, "A Woman on the Road Is Alone", check out the Bitchface podcast. It was also replayed on The Heart podcast.

And be sure to check out Vanessa Vaselka's essay about the lack of female road narratives as she is much more of an expert on the subject than me.