[pct-l] What is a "Thru Hike?"

[Diane at Santa Barbara Hikes dot com]

I actually agree with the hard-core, purist definition of a thru- 
hike. I chided myself every time I skipped any little part of the  
trail. I beat myself up in trail registers along the way, posting  
confessions of my sins.

After a while, I learned that those who never skipped anything at all  
were few and far between. Nobody ever treated me as harshly as I did.  
After I skipped the snow in Wrightwood, I slinked into Agua Dulce  
ready to be shunned by the trail community. Instead they had heard my  
tale of crazy "heroism" for actually attempting to hike the trail in  
the snow and bailing out cross-country down a gully to the highway.  
They all told me to quit beating myself up.

I was very surprised by that. That was when I learned that a pure  
thru-hike is a very rare thing and that once you are part of the thru- 
hiker community it matters little the finer details of your hike.

I guess there's the pure thru-hike, which I believe in, and then  
there's thru-hiker culture, which welcomed me with open arms, even  
refusing to accept it when I said I wasn't going to Canada. I know my  
hike was not a thru-hike, and I make that clear to everyone, but I  
also know that I was a thru-hiker while I was out there.