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!