New FAQs! (As of September 29)

How long is the trail?

Nominally, the whole trail is 2650 miles. Small changes and reroutes since it was completed mean it’s slightly longer. And year-to-year changes and reroutes mean it’s never the same. This year, it’s about 2655.8 miles. Who’s counting?

How efficient is the trail?

What a weird question! Jason’s had this same question. If we use the definition from thermodynamics, efficiency is the ratio of the result over the cost. In this case, we’ll use the linear distances. As the crow flies, the distance between the northern and southern termini is 1155.8 miles. The trail requires us to walk 2655.8 miles (see above FAQ). Therefore, η=1155.8/2655.8 or about 43.5%. How about that?! Jason thinks this is neat, but probably nobody else will.

Who’s asking these questions? And how?

Sometimes the questions come from conversations with our family or people we come across on the trail when the trail intersects with people not hiking the PCT (sometimes people don’t even know about the PCT while they are standing on the PCT. Then, we come lumbering along, probably frightening and confusing them). Most of the FAQs, however, we came up with (mostly Jason). We tried to cover as much detail as we thought necessary. Jason also can’t figure out how to implement a comment box on the FAQ page with the WordPress mobile app. If you have a question you want answered, you’ll have to ask us directly.

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Old FAQs! (as of sometime in mid-August)

Why are you doing this?

We’re both outdoorsy people, we’re currently able-bodied, and we had an opportunity between jobs. Why not?!?! It’s an awesome undertaking and should be memorable.

How long will it take?

Between 4-5 months. We started June 29 and are aiming to finish in early November, but that could change! We’re flexible and don’t have a defined end date… yet.

How far do you walk in a day?

These days (about 45 days in), 17 to 25 miles, but we started slow. We budgeted <13 miles/day for the first week and slowly ramped up from there. Repetitive stress injuries are a common reason people leave the trail, so we wanted to give time for our legs to adapt to this new life. The terrain also plays a big role; long ascents or descents, rocky or rooty trails, river crossings, overgrowth, weather, jaw-dropping scenery, wildlife sightings, or a myriad of other things can slow or quicken our pace.

How fast do you walk?

If the trail is easy, 3 mph. If we need to carefully watch our steps or it’s hot or we’re tired at the end of the day, we can slow to 1.5 mph.

What are you eating?

Dehydrated meals, protein bars, granola, and candy bars. Before we left, we made over 500 dehydrated meals and vacuumed sealed them (Alex here – this was all Jason! Somehow Jason found to the time and energy to do this while working his full-time postdoc job, conducting a job search, packing up the apartment, and training for hike. I am most grateful and impressed. Jason here – it was productive anxiety about all those things that Alex mentioned). The meals are portioned out in our resupply boxes for the number of days we expect in that stretch. Since we’re burning so many calories on the trail >3000/day (maybe >4000/day for Jason on some days), we are carrying and eating high calorie foods – even if they’re not always the healthiest.

How are you cooking?

We have a little backpacking stove (Soto Windmaster) that screws onto a fuel canister (thanks to Jodi for the Christmas gift!). We are both carrying a fuel canister and will get some a replacement canister in resupply boxes. Sometimes we also snag people’s donated half-used canisters from hiker boxes. We rehydrate and heat our food in titanium pots (Toaks 1100ml pot).

Where do you get water?

In Washington, Oregon, and California through the Sierra Mountains, river, stream, and creek crossings are very common. Lakes and ponds are a good source, but we make sure to get the cleanest water we can and avoid any debris or algae. We can collect water from these natural sources as we need and carry enough to get us to the next water source. We both have water filters (Sawyer Squeeze) which make the wild water safe to drink, and the redundancy in two filters between us means we still have access to safe water if one fails. In addition, we’re carrying some chemical treatment solutions as a backup in case of emergency or especially suspicious water. As a last resort, we can boil the water on our stove. In some of the notably long dry stretches, anonymous trail angels will put a water cache (usually a pile of 5-gallon water jugs) at a road crossing or trailhead.

How do you know where to go?

We have maps and the trail is very well defined. The PCT is heavily trafficked, so the trail itself is easy to follow. Occasionally, it can get tough if there’s a blowdown or overgrowth, but we’re quick to regain our bearings and ensure we’re on track.

Where do you sleep?

Wherever we can! Our permit allows us to setup camp anywhere along the trail with only a few exceptions. However, many campsites are well defined and labeled on the map. We aim for a preexisting campsite to preserve the trail as much as possible. This is an important principle of Leave No Trace.

We share a tent that can be set up quickly and uses hiking poles for supports rather than separate tent poles. Efficiency! It’s more durable than other lightweight tents and should handle a storm without much problem (hoping we don’t have to test). Perhaps once or twice we’ll try cowboy camping, but the barrier the tent provides between us and the mosquitoes and creepy crawlies of the night is a nice security.

How much do your packs weigh?

Jason’s base weight is about 20 lbs, and Alex’s is about 15 lbs. This includes all our gear that isn’t worn (e.g., clothes, poles) and that isn’t food or water. After a resupply and with lots of water, our packs might be close to 30-40 pounds, but it gets lighter the more we eat! Our packs are also well fit for us, and we’ve gotten stronger carrying them, so the weight isn’t as burdensome as it might seem. Our packs put most of the weight on our hips, not our backs or shoulders.

Are you carrying bear spray?

No. We’re going through black bear country. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them. Unless we encounter a mama bear with cubs, black bears are nonaggressive towards people. There are no grizzlies out here – if there were, we would be carrying spray.

How are you keeping your food safe?

We’re both carrying bear canisters. These are bear-proof containers which lock and unlock easily if you’re not a bear, and can take on a bear attack without breaking apart. Some parts of the trail require a bear canister, but we decided to carry the entire way. With the bear cans, we don’t have to worry about finding a tree for a bear hang (where you suspend your bag of food from a tree using rope) every night. The bear cans also help keep our food safe against other critters that might be interested and who can sometimes defeat bear hangs: mice, squirrels, chipmunks, etc. The bear cans also act as stools, tables, and leg rests.

Do your feet/legs/bodies hurt?

We generally begin to feel the discomfort after 15 miles, and it’s constant after 20. Sitting breaks and taking off the pack help. Sleep is the best remedy. We usually wake up and feel ready to go after some mild stretching or walking around.

What do you think about?

We have a lot of time for our minds to wander. This is a cleansing experience for our synapses. We sometimes have memories from many years ago. Or we sing the same lyric of a song over and over and over again for hours. Or we just zone out. Or we think about our feet and legs, and how they hurt. We do a lot of math: speed, time to get to the next way point, how long it’ll take to get up a hill, etc. 

How many people do you see a day?

It varies. As we crossed the bubble of northbound hikers, we could easily see over 50 a day. Sometimes, we will only see a handful. If we’re near a popular trailhead or resort, especially near weekends, we see lots of day hikers, dogs, and others enjoying the trails and scenery. We rarely run into other southbound hikers on trail since we’re all marching at the same speed, just spaced apart a few miles. Resupply towns tend to be a bottleneck where we’ll catch up to people or see large groups all at once.

Your posting is erratic and unpredictable.

We post our daily updates when we have reliable cell service or access to wifi. We usually write each post at the end of each day, usually in the tent as we’re about to fall asleep. Service can be spotty in these remote forests or if we’re tucked into a valley away from a cell tower, and especially uploading the large image files can be challenging to get through on a weak connection (or no connection). We once tried to force through a post on a weak cell service connection and it maybe corrupted on our data in the post. Sorry if you signed up for notifications and got like six notifications that the same post was posted. That was the poor connection. (WordPress still thinks it’s corrupted or something. I don’t know why. It looks fine on your end, but it throws us an error message when we look at it on our end of things 🤷‍♂️).

Sometimes the distance you walk doesn’t add up to the difference in the mile markers between days. Why?

Great observation! Sometimes, we take sidetrips down a different trail or an alternate route, and sometimes we count those miles and sometimes we forget. If we end up camping on an alternate route, the mile marker for our location is approximate to the actual trail. The math gets a bit handwavy. All we know is that when we wake up each day, we walk south. How embarrassing would it be if we walked the wrong way and had to write a negative distance?