Pacific Crest Trail Journal

It wasn't long after my first backpacking trip in 2016 that I heard about the Pacific Crest Trail. The PCT is a 2,650 mile long hiking trail that runs from Mexico to Canada through three states: California, Oregon, and Washington. Internet searches for the "best backpacking trails in California" pretty quickly brought me to PCT About pages and Blogs. Weekend trips out in the Sierra Nevada revealed PCT trail markers. Cheryl Strayed's trauma healing journey on the PCT showed me images of the trail on the big screen.

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I was hooked. But I didn't just want to hike parts of it. I wanted to thru hike the Pacific Crest Trail all the way from Mexico to Canada. Weekend trips were great, but they didn't feel long enough to completely let go of my city life and embrace life on trail. I wanted a full wilderness immersion experience. A 2,650 mile trail that takes 4-6 months to complete seemed like the perfect way to achieve this goal.

For the next several years I collected information about the PCT. I read books and trail guides, researched gear, and obsessively bought anything that had a PCT logo on it. In the Fall of 2019, I took pause. I looked around at my collection and I asked my best friend, and at the time roommate, "Do I have too much PCT paraphernalia for not having hiked the PCT?"