[pct-l] Thru-Hike, Explorer Style

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good evening, Eric,

I’ve not heard of anyone completing such a feat, nor anyone having even
attempted such.  The difficulty would be food.  Most of us have eaten a few
pine nuts, huckleberries here and there, a few wild greens, and an
occasional string of trout, but all that has devilishly few Calories
compared to the necessary 3-5,000 Calorie/day requirement on a sustained
basis.  After all, the indigenous peoples of old didn’t live in the high
altitude areas where the PCT is found, and even at best most of them were
subsistence hunter/gatherers who spent all day just looking for food with
little time for anything else.

About the only hope for living off the land would be for a skilled big-game
hunter with a serious rifle who would hope to take a large animal about
once a week and (semi)preserve enough of the meat to last till the next
kill.  That's how the early explores did it.

In this day and age I believe that such activity would draw the attention
of the game officials and put an end to the trip.

Steel-Eye

-Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965

http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye

http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09/


On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 6:42 PM, <eric at ericwichman.com> wrote:

> Has anyone ever done the whole trail "Pioneer" or "Explorer" style? In
> other words, no resupply points, no postal service, no shipping food,
> basically completely off the grid, living off the land the whole way.
> What I'm talking about is a cross country survival trip.
>
> My question is. Has anyone ever attempted a thru-hike completely off
> grid, if not why not, if so, WHO, and were they successful?
>
> ~Eric
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