I hope to try a thru hike starting next year. However I have a slow pace and am concerned about bagging enough miles to make it to Canada before the heavy snow. What do you think about starting in early March, and doing a number of flip flops to avoid snow? Any recommendations on sections which would usually work with this approach? Are flip flopers considered a lower species of thru hiker?
Richard
yes but we love the species as one as ours.
flip flopping is 9 out 10 times the best way for slow hikers to get where they have to go. You actually get the medal of “Honorific mention” Like the rest of us “True Blue Through” Hikers.
But,you lose our connection until we see you coming the other way, And we are resentful of the fact that you have seen the “promised land” before us.
But seriously I have this sister who hikes so slow that if you do not look carefully, it seems that she is almost hiking backwards.
Most "Flip-floppers hike north until mid June or July and flip and come back south from what I have read.
jack bailey
Richard -
Almost everything is dictated by the weather on the PCT. This year would have been a great year to start early in SoCal & possibly hike straight north to Canada. The last time I thru-hiked the PCT ('05) was a classic flip-flop year, perhaps the best ever. There was heavy snow in the Sierra’s while the Pacific Northwest had one of the lightest snowpacks in 100 years.
If next year shapes up like this one, you could start really early (you’ll still have to deal with reall cold temps even in the desert & the possiblity of a storm) & try to hike NOBO straight thru. If its an avg. year, you could jump around a bit to finish your hike, but be sure to check to be sure that you are not jumping up to another snow-bound area. (In '05, a few hikers skipped up to OR and ran into tons of new snow near Crater Lake)
If you have decent mountaineering skills, you could always just forge ahead into the snow, but as you probably know, snow travel becomes quite tedious after a few weeks!
A great website to check snow depth is postholer.com
happy trails!
freebird
Unless there is a really low snow year somewhere (in WA or CA), you’re going to have to deal with a lot of snow. There are only a few sections of trail (mostly in SoCal) where you could avoid snow. However, if you have a low snow year, then you’re going to deal with water issues coming from low mileage days. If you’re looking at a 25 mile waterless stretch and only cover 12 miles a day, they you’re going to have to haul a (literal) ton of water to support yourself.
Instead of thinking in terms of flipflops, why not look at the hike as a 2 year process? That is, hike, say, the CA section one year and OR-WA the next year? Take advantage of this to visit both in their best seasons. You could arange things so that you pass through WA in August or even July and have really great weather.
Suge