[pct-l] PCT 09'

[Eric Lee (GAMES)]

Broc wrote:
>
I'm planning a thru hike in 09'. Starting south to north, is there a problem
starting in January?
>

Depends on how experienced of a winter mountaineer you are and whether you want to do a contiguous hike.  Despite having a lot of desert, southern California also has a lot of high mountain ranges with often-difficult snow conditions in the winter.  If you're willing to flip-flop a lot, you could pick off sections ordered according their current conditions and that would let you start early (though maybe not January early).  Or you could just gear up for serious winter mountaineering and plow through.

>From the Sierra Nevada north to Canada, there is very little trail that won't be buried under snow until June, so even if you start at Mexico in January and manage to plow through the southern mountains, at some point you'll hit the Sierra and probably have to either take a few months off or resign yourself to continuous winter mountaineering from that point north.

If there's one thing pct-l has taught me, it's that "impossible" is a relative term, but I'd say that there are very few people who could start a PCT thru-hike in January and actually get anywhere.

Most people start in the month of April since most of the snow is gone from the southern mountains and you'll arrive in the Sierra at roughly the same time it becomes passable to non-mountaineers.

Eric