[pct-l] Start Dates, Fact Checks, and Ursaks

[Brett Fisher]

--Randy Writes: I have read stories about the unbearable heat in So Cal and in the Mojave. I wanted to get started a little earlier in the season to maybe avoid that. Starting by April 15th would give me a liberal amount of time (I think) to get to Kennedy Meadows by the recommended date of around June 15th (retiring from my job!)? I won't be limited by a time schedule other than finishing the North Cascades by mid October.--

--John Replies: I only have one suggestion for you at this point.Change your finish date to more like the 3rd week of September not sometime in October ... Also note that the couple that finished this year on Nov 18 were carrying an 80# pack, snowshoes, and ice axes to try and be prepared. Would the ice ax done any good in those conditions of fresh snow? I think we just had that discussion involving skiing.--

Start Dates: Once you start down the trail, you experience a different outlook on life. Like, the day is what it is. Whether it's brain cooking hot, thunderstorms, postholing in snow, crossing raging creeks, twenty miles to your next water. It is what it is and you will do what you need to do to continue walking and take care of yourself. As you will hear in this forum, this means you will need to be prepared with gear, skills, and experience, and you will need to be flexible and make adjustments as you go. You will hear a lot about the optimal PCT hiking window of five months starting in mid or late April and finishing in mid or late September. But should you hike in this window? It depends. There are some that start in March, those who walk the desert section in June, and more than you think who finish in rain and snow in October to mid November. Sometimes it seems to me ironic all the discussion of walking through snow in the Sierra, but in the North Cascades ... nope, can't do that. Yes, it's a different kind of snow, but can still be traveled. There are many that start at Kick Off, pound the miles, and finish mid September. What do you want your hike to be like? And what are you prepared to handle?

Fact Check: The "couple" that finished November 18th were not a couple. Just two hikers that met on the trail and decided to hike Oregon and Washington together. Silent D had an 80 lbs. pack for the last 80 miles. His pack was always heavy. I lifted it out of a truck once in Northern California. Ouch. He refused to weigh it until Stehekin. I bet it usually weighed around 60 lbs. Sometimes he would pull things out of it like canned chili. They had snowshoes from Holden Village to the end, but didn't use them much. Silent D had an iceaxe, Dances With Lizards did not. They both had hiking-type crampons/spikes which they used quite a bit. They carried seven days of food and a lot of cold weather insulation (hats, socks, fleece tops and bottoms, complete set of sleeping clothes). They also had a GPS, maps, compass, SPOT and knew how to use them. And, they both had previous experience in snow and mountains.

Ursaks: I carried a bear canister from Kennedy Meadows to Echo Lake. I carried an Ursak the rest of the time. You can read about it here in my article After the Trail - Cooking Gear (http://www.wanderabout.org/2012/11/13/cooking-gear/). Hikers ahead of us saw a bear in the Mission Creek drainage before Big Bear. I saw a bear in the hills before getting to Hiker Town. There was a lot of bear sign between Walker Pass and Kennedy Meadows. Some hikers had all their food eaten by a bear 18 miles from Kennedy Meadows (they had an Ursak, but it wasn't the bear resistant model). The bear is in the Sierra and plenty of them all the way to Canada after that. My point being is that you need to deter the bear from getting your food your whole walk. And an equal consideration is that you need to deter rodents from getting your food as well. I liked the Ursak for these reasons.

- Backtrack