60 days on the Pacific Crest Trail

This entry starts with sad news; on day 37 Mom flew home.

Mom hiked the first 100 miles and did amazing! Alas, the combination of heat, elevation and miles was too much and she decided to hike closer to home. I was so sad to see her go, but we had an awesome trip with Mom, and she will return for some section hikes later on.

In previous blogs, I’ve talked about things on trail, so this time I thought it would be fun to talk about things off trail.

Every 50ish miles, give or take, the trail goes near a town and we go off trail to resupply. Most of the trail towns are small, with only a hotel, post office and handful of restaurants; they are quaint and cute and easy to navigate on foot. Since we don’t have a car, staying near amenities is important, so I rather love the ease of small towns.

We get to town in one of two ways. Sometimes we are lucky and the trail goes very near a town so we can walk right in. More often, the trail crosses a road that leads to town and we hitchhike to town. It’s fun to meet the folks who pull over. Jojo and I are most commonly given rides by older gentlemen in extended cab pickup trucks. Don’t know why, but it’s a strong trend. No BMW’s or other luxury cars have ever pulled over to offer a ride, can you imagine?

So far it’s been easy to catch a ride into town, the longest we’ve waited to get a ride is 10-15 minutes. Most people that live near the trail are aware of the PCT and are very welcoming. When the trail crosses a road that leads to town someone usually pulls over quickly and offers a ride, sometimes before you even have a chance to put your thumb out. These drivers are so nice, especially considering how bad we smell after a week on the trail. Many of the trail angels that give rides also give a little driving tour of town, pointing out things hikers need, like grocery store, laundry mat, restaurants, etc.

We were only in one town that didn’t seem to be terribly aware of hikers, Cajon Pass. Some folks were very nice, of course, but this is the only place we were not able to catch a ride back to the trail, and people looked at us with suspicion when we asked for a ride. It felt like “real life”, what you’d expect from the general public. It makes me wonder why “real life” is our culture? Why can’t we all be nice and supportive like the trail towns? It’s so much nicer to be a human when surrounded by love and courtesy rather than distrust and suspicion.

I digress…  Once in town we find a place to stay. We don’t book in advance, because we want the flexibility to arrive earlier or later, and sometimes we don’t have cell service to be able to make a booking anyway. If we are making good miles we may arrive a day earlier than we expect, which has happened several times. Or if we get hurt or tired we may arrive a day later than expected. Like when I rolled my ankle, that slowed us down a bit.

Once we settle into a hotel, we do lots of chores: laundry, showers, clean gear and wipe the packs out. We collect our resupply box and divvy up the food and supplies and pack it into our bags. If we have unneeded gear or food, we may ship a box home. And rest! We are usually pretty exhausted by the time we reach town, and we need time off our feet to recuperate.

Hotels are not the only place to stay. There are hostels, camping and often trail angels will open their homes as well. Jojo and I tend to stay at hotels for their convenience, but there are lots of options depending on a hiker’s goals and budget.  

The next step, resupply wise, is to look ahead to plan our next resupply box. We look at the distance to the next city, estimate how many days we will be on tail (based off miles and elevation gain). Then we look if we need any different gear. For example, if we are going to be hiking in a lot of snow, we will request micro spikes, or if we are in bear territory, we will carry a bear can. Or if it’s extra cold or wet we will carry warm weather gear or rain gear. We only carry what we need, because our packs get heavy! If we don’t use it that week we generally aren’t carrying it.

Once we know what we need, food and gear wise, we email our friend James and he prepares the resupply box. We stocked food and gear back home just for this purpose. James, packs up what we need and ships it ahead to our next stop. Call out to James for being a rockstar!!! He packs the best treats, everything is exceptionally organized and always arrives in perfect condition. He is the best. 🙏🏻❤️

We learned early on that in these small towns UPS is much more reliable than the post office. We used to ship to the Post Office c/o the Postmaster. You can ship to any post office in the USA and they will hold the package for 30 days. You just go to the front desk at the post office, show your ID, and they will hand over the package. The problem is that several of our packages were 2+ weeks late AND the post office has limited hours and often aren’t open on the weekend. Through trial and error we learned that shipping to a hotel or other hiker friendly business was much better because 1) it will be there when we arrive, no special trip to the post office and 2) hotels are not closed on the weekends and the front desk is open longer than the post office. What we do is to identify a good hotel (not too expensive, has laundry, close to restaurants and other amenities), then we call and make sure it’s OK to ship a package in advance of our arrival. Once or twice the hotel was fully booked when we arrived, or the rate was much higher than quoted, in these few cases the hotels have still graciously handed over our package and wished us well.

Choosing to ship in resupply boxes has some benefits, such as: right gear at the right time, preferred food, electrolytes and snacks. The drawback is that it takes much more planning, is more costly (shipping fees), and package delays can be a pain. We prefer shipping our resupply, and tend to plan 2 stops ahead to avoid package delay problems. So far so good!

Here are some highlights since the last post.

Near Pioneertown, CA.

Some cool wildlife