[pct-l] Keeping a trail journal

[Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes]

Miner summed it all up for you pretty well. I don't think you'll find  
consensus.

I am not a cellphone kind of person so I used a pencil and small  
notepad to keep my journal. I was glad I had a pencil because I had  
to swim a few swollen rivers and everything written in pencil  
survived while everything written in pen did not.

I also wrote my journal online once a week or so when I got to town.  
I wrote everything I could remember. That way I had an online journal  
that had highlights and a private journal that had every little  
boring detail.

There was less internet access the further north I went so eventually  
my online journal got pretty skimpy.

I used trailjournals because I like reading the journals on  
trailjournals better than reading the ones on postholer. I've heard  
that as a poster, postholer is better but as a reader, trailjournals  
is better. It seems true to me, although I've never been a postoler  
poster.

At the end of both my hikes, I took my paper journals and my online  
journals and combined them and uploaded the contents to lulu.com  
where anyone who wanted, mostly myself and my mom and a few friends,  
could purchase my trail journal as a bound book. It is really cool to  
have it as a bound book.

Diane

On Nov 12, 2010, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:
> Greetings-
>
> I know many people have kept a journal along their hikes of the  
> PCT. I have a few questions regarding journals... Do hikers keep a  
> paper journal and then when they get to town get hooked to the  
> internet? What website has the best journals? Is a phone the best  
> way to keep it? When do you do your journal-evening, morrning, or  
> before a afternoon siesta?
> How often do you communicate with home? Just wanting to get a  
> concensus as to what would work best for communication of a website/ 
> journal for others to see how I am doing on the thru-hike...
>
> Cheers-
> trackz man
> Sisters, OR