Day in the Life of a PCT Thru Hiker

As odd as it seems, thru hiking starts to take on the nature of work and it has a sort of daily rhythm. Being a creature of habit, and taking into account my military background, I found that this grueling process is more repeatable day after day with a daily process.

My process has changed over the course of this thru hike but it normally begins by waking up around 5:15 a.m. and beginning to get going. One of the ways that I force myself to get going is to both deflate my air mattress and stuff my quilt into its stuff sack shortly after waking up. I’m committed by this point. In this manner, there’s no delaying in my warm, cozy quilt and prolonging the inevitable.

At one point I actually took the time to boil water and make myself a hot breakfast along with hot coffee. I’ve since determined that that takes too much time and so now I shake up some cold coffee in one of my water bottles and have a bar or pop tart for breakfast as I load up all my gear in my pack. I’m usually ready to get going between 6:00 and 6:15 a.m. and start hitting the trail. I’ve found that I walk at around a 2.5 to 3.5 mph pace depending on the terrain and if there are any steep climbs or descents. So I’ll hike from anywhere between two and three hours and then stop to take a break.

I’ve found that I need to really give my feet a good rest during these breaks. I’ll take off my shoes and socks and lay out on a foam mattress pad. Often I’ll elevate my feet as I dig through my food bag for snacks. Inevitability early on in a food carry, I’ll binge through my snacks on a pace way too fast for my number of days expected on the trail. But at the same time, that tends to make my pack lighter which is always nice:) I’ll usually rest for about 45 minutes and then pack everything back up in the backpack and get back on the trail.

If I’m hiking with other folks we will often chat as we hike. If I’m hiking alone, then I’m often listening to audiobooks, podcasts or music on my phone. I actually use cheap, wired headphones and cut off one of the ear pieces so that I only have one headphone in. In this way I can hear my surroundings as I hike. It’s worked well because I ran into a Mojave Green rattlesnake early on in the trip and even though I had an earphone in, I could still easily hear the snake when I approached.

My lunch break happens after another two to three hours of hiking. I usually like to find either a spot with water nearby, or at least a tentsite with a flat area. Again, I lay out my foam pad and relax on that as I eat my lunch and look at the map on my phone and study the afternoon section. I look for locations where I might have another break and then a possible campsite for the night. I love that aspect of this trek. I don’t have to make any hard plans each day. I just walk as far as I feel each day and then find a campsite and pitch my tent and call it a day.

Just like in the morning, I take an afternoon break after hiking two to three hours after the lunch break. Then after about 45 minutes, I’ll start up again until I get to a good tentsite location.

I usually like to find a campsite near a water source. It helps immensely when cooking dinner as there is no lack of water. I can filter water using my Sawyer Squeeze (which I’ve set up using a gravity feed system) and cook dinner as well as have water for cleaning up and then for use the following morning. There have been times when I’ve had to load up on water, carrying up to four liters with me so that I had enough at a dry campsite and then enough the following morning to get to the next water source. A recent example of this was when I filtered water, then hiked ten miles and dry camped, then had another twelve miles the following morning before another water source.

Many people have asked how much water I take with me each day. Each day revolves around water planning – especially in the desert portion of the hike where you can have 20 mile stretches between water sources. I base my water planning on generally needing one liter of water for every two hours of hiking. If I’m going to be doing a steep climb and gaining 1000 feet, or it’s very hot, then I add half a liter to that rule of thumb. I generally hike at an average pace of two and a half to three miles per hour so that means I use a liter of water for every five to six miles hiked. I’ll look at my Guthook App (what I use for navigation) on my phone and check out where the next water source is. If for example, the next water source is seven and a half miles away, I’ll bring about one and a half liters of water with me (assuming a two and a half mph average pace in this case).

And that’s what a typical thru hiking day looks like. It starts to seem like groundhogs day really quick but at least the scenery is constantly changing from day to day and even from morning, to afternoon, to evening. Depending on the difficulty of the terrain and the amount of climbing/descending, a day’s mileage for me can range between 12-17 in the High Sierras to 20-30 miles in Northern California or Oregon. The biggest challenge is waking up each successive morning – feeling the wear and tear on my body and feet – and doing it all over again. But that’s why I periodically take zero days to rest, recuperate and resupply for the upcoming section. I’ll try and do a blog post on zero (town) days in the future.

Trail Facts:

• Trail miles walked – 739
• Current PCT mileage marker – 1193
• Current Audiobooks – Character is Destiny by John McCain, Wilderness Essays by John Muir, Team of Teams by Stanley McChrystal
• Additional PCT Thru-Hikers I’ve met – Shortcut, Twister, Wooter, Sparkles, Firefly, Owl, Phoenix, Sea Egg, Stumblina, Tailgate, Hydra, Bilbo, Hoss, Boss, Taco Raptor, SOS, Stitch, Thirds, Buffy
• Additional wildlife seen – California deer mouse