10 Rattlesnakes, 222 Chipmunks, 7 Dead Mice: Number Crunching My Pacific Crest Trail Thru-Hike

This post is a sequel to my Appalachian Trail number crunch.

Since hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2015, I finally found the time to complete another thru-hike and knew immediately I would continue my pointless and methodical cataloging.

I completed a NOBO PCT hike this year and received a more fitting trail name, “The Animal Accountant,” as I tediously counted and tallied everything I saw. This ranged from people (2,263), lizards (1,949), water resupplies (415), hitchhikes (27), all the way down to a singular horsefly bite (1).

Most of my thru-hiking cohort this year probably remembers me as either 1) the crazy guy counting everything or 2) the crazy guy not filtering water.

Some are likely more curious to know if I died or became riddled with Giardia rather than how many deer I saw, so I’m sorry to disappoint if you’re in the first category. My only regret is that I can’t count the different bacteria species in my gut.

Here are some of the highlights from this data. You can see the full day-by-day spreadsheet breakdown at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!

Days on Trail

118

Total Miles

2,786.3

Trail Miles

2,655.2

Off-Trail Miles

131.1

Average Daily Mileage

23.61

Bears

1

Days with over 500m of Snow Travel

39

Number of Times Purchased Food

40

Cats

4

Chipmunks

222

Dead Mice

7

Deer

55

Dogs

151

Books Read

13

Hitchhikes

27

Homeless Wanderers

1

Times Doing Laundry

16

Lizard

1,949

Marmot

54

People

2,263

Rattlesnakes

10

Days with Rain

7

Resupplies in Town

23

Resupplies by Maildrop

11

Scorpions

2

Showers

22

Squirrels

115

Thunderstorms

3

Ticks

1

Trail Magic

18

Water Ford

50

Water Resupply

415

Wildfire Smoke Days (Significant & On-Trail)

6

The Full Dataset

Check Out My Full Spreadsheet Breakdown

Let me know what you think!

Thanks,

-Robert “Animal Accountant” Beaumont