[pct-l] Age, demographics, and engineering on the PCT

[Mike Flannigan]

Interesting analysis.

I didn't know about the Engineer prevalence.
Part of it is Engineers make good money, but
often do work that can be interrupted (compared
to a Dr or lawyer).

I didn't know about South Koreans either.
That really surprises me.  Europeans often
do Orienteering, so they are used to being
out in the woods and are fairly fit.



Mike
Engineer



On 5/12/20 12:00 PM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:
>> On my 2016 thru-hike, I thought thru-hikers usually fit into one of 4
>> groups.  In order from youngest to oldest:
>>
>> 1. People taking a year or two off after graduation.  Usually early 20s,
>> but sometimes between high school and college.
>>
>> 2. People in their 20s and early 30s who only work seasonally, so they
>> can do long trails when the seasons are right.  I.e. people who have
>> structured their lives around thru-hiking.  The smallest group, and
>> usually the fastest hikers.
>>
>> 3. People in their 30s and 40s who just had a life change, e.g. got laid
>> off, divorced, or became empty-nesters.
>>
>> 4. People who are retired, and find long trails to be an excellent way
>> to spend their time.  Mostly over 60, but with the occasional early retiree.
>>
>> Aside from age, I've noticed a few groups are wildly over- or
>> under-represented among PCT thru-hikers, and for some of them I don't
>> have a good idea why:
>>
>> - Far more of them are/were engineers than you'd expect.  Many were
>> computer engineers of some sort, but there were also engineers of other
>> disciplines (e.g. in the Southern California section I hiked with a
>> dairy scientist, a nuclear waste storage container designer, and an
>> Antarctic mechanical engineer).  I can't quite fathom why, perhaps
>> there's an engineering-like appeal in choosing what you carry and how
>> you use your equipment.  For example, paying attention to weight
>> numbers, finding ways to use different pieces of equipment together,
>> measuring how it affects your pace, etc.
>>
>> - There were few if any black thru-hikers.  This doesn't reflect what
>> I've seen in backpacking outside of thru-hikes.  I have heard that
>> random racial violence can be a real risk in some parts of Oregon that
>> the PCT goes through.  So hitchhiking to a resupply, for instance, could
>> be dangerous perhaps?  I have no idea if that rumor is really true though.
>>
>> - Of the International thru-hikers, far more were South Korean than one
>> would expect based on non-thru-hiking tourism in the US.  Is there a lot
>> of long-distance hiking in South Korea?
>>
>> - About a third of thru-hikers were also marathon runners.  This one is
>> probably not so confusing, since it's another form of going a long way
>> on your feet.  Though come to think of it, marathon runners also seem to
>> turn out to be engineers fairly often -- Alan Turing was a famously good
>> distance runner, for instance.  Maybe there's some connection between
>> endurance exercise and engineering, but I just haven't figured it out.
>>
>>    -=Town Food