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