Wednesday, November 20, 2019
March 23, 2020. That’s my start date from Campo, California on the US-Mexico border. This blog will serve as my journal and a way for friends and family to track my progress and join in the adventure.
A quick note on how I got here. I started hiking regularly in 2013 and have been following PCT hiker blogs (and other trails – AT, CDT, Te Araroa, etc) ever since. However, the PCT has always been the trail that has captured my imagination.
I don’t know exactly when I finally decided I was going to seriously attempt a thru-hike, but I’m going to say it was somewhere around 2016 or 2017. Since then I’ve been gathering gear, going on hikes, and mentally preparing for this epic adventure and now that I have my permit, it’s starting to get real.
I applied for my permit from a small lodge on the outskirts of Yosemite National Park on October 29th. That was the first day the permit application portal was open for 2020 and I happened to be in Yosemite for the wedding of two of my best friends.
It was a nerve-wracking morning, as I was placed in a virtual queue on the website with several thousand people (it ended up being far fewer) all vying to get permits themselves. I was logged in on three different browsers, giving myself three virtual spots in line. My best spot was 3,264. Didn’t seem like great odds, considering there are only 50 spots per day available (35 until January) on each day. However, when my turn finally came up 2.5 hours later, the day I was planning on, March 23, still had 6 spots available.
I filled out my info, submitted, and received confirmation a couple of weeks later that I was good to go.
The blog right now is in it’s infant stages, so the layout and content will evolve in the next few months. I will include posts on my training, any additional gear purchases and testing I do, and anything else leading up to my start date that seems interesting. Once on trail, I don’t intend to blog every single day, as some of the blogs I’ve followed in the past have tried to do. I feel that’s a way to get burned out. Indeed, many of those blogs started strong and then somewhere around Northern California or Oregon they started to fade out and the updates were less frequent, if not altogether absent. I will certainly try to blog as often as possible in order to maintain a good record of my trek and also to keep friends and loved ones apprised of where I am and what I’m doing.
Finally, I want to give a big shout out to Rozanne, aka MukMuk (PCT 2013), for being one of my main inspirations. Her blog was (and still is) a great source of information, wisdom, entertainment, and just an overall wonderful expression of life on the trail. I gave a wink and a nod to her blog with the title of this site. Thanks Muk!
Mexico to Canada 2023 