What's your opinion of the most difficult segment?

imported
#1

Looking for opinions: After reading Yogi’s excellent book, and the Schaffer guide books, I’m still hazy on what is/are the most difficult (physical / psychological) segment(s) on the PCT.

Factors that seem important (to me - what do you think?): Distance between resupply (more weight carried), total elevation gain and typical grade, elevation, adverse weather typical for the through hiker season (heat, cold, rain, snow - possible additional gear needed=weight, plus the discomfort), bugs, distance between water (again, more weight to carry), typical trail conditions (tough tread, overgrown, difficult stream/pass crossings), critters of the 4 legged variety, and any other conditions that you found made for a particularily difficult section either physically or emotionally.

How about your top 3 overall? Toughest for each state? Why?

Of course, what did you think was the best segment?(can’t just hear about the tough parts without also getting views on the best.)

‘Otto’

#2

Forest fires make hiking the most difficult in my opinion. In both OR and WA we had to hitch around a fire. Missing trail is not my game. I had it set in my mind that nothing could possibly even temp me to diverge from a border to border walk, but the arsonists had other plans. Knowing that it was arson made it far worse than a natural blockade. We heard about the B&B north of Sisters, OR while in Ashland. I figured it would die before we got there. I was very confident it would. But then reality set in when we saw a mushroom cloud 35,000ft in the air to our north. That was the day the two fires combined.

Emotionally, it shocked me severely. i had tempered my mind to accept no other alternative than foottravel all the way, and I had trouble accepting that there was no other way around.

Of course, after we hitched to Olallie Lake, missing 60 closed and burning miles of the trail, I saw a sign left by a famous thru who had taken a series of FS roads around the closed setion. That made it sting even worse. But soon, we hit The eagle creek trail, and I really haven’t thought about that much until now.

FS officials said the blaze was unstoppable because of unnatural tree density resulting from logging. The twin blazes were started on the same night, before the Bush W. puppet was to speak to loggers in town about how he would loosen all the logging regulations. Sometimes actions speak louder than words I reckon.

The toughest for CA was the heat in the desert!8)

Tha Wookie

#3

Parts of southern California were difficult psychologically because of the heat (we stopped and waited out the worst of it under a bush from 11-2 on some days), the long water carries, the endless switchbacks and the destruction of the trail by the motorbikes and ATVS. The wildflowers were good though, and the rock formations made life interesting. The snowy passes and river crossings in the Sierras were difficult and sometimes dangerous (we were were early), but the worst only lasted a couple of weeks. The Sierras were also very beautiful, so were worth risking our lives, I thought. Northern California was great - especially Section P. The Sisters Wilderness area in Oregon was also a highlight, along with Crater Lake, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood and Eagle Creek. Oregon was easy walking, though much dryer than I expected. Washington was beautiful, but had a few steepish sections of trail and enough rain and snow to make life difficult. I’d like to go back to see those places we missed due to fog and rain. What we saw (Glacier Peak and Goat Rocks and parts of the Pasaytan) was terrific. We saw little wildlife anywhere on the PCT - just lots of snakes, horny toads and lizards for the most part. We did see two black bears in Northern California and a couple of newborn fawns right on the trail.

Spirit Walker

#4

The toughtest for me were the first ‘blisterfull’ weeks and the heat in the desert. The Sierra’s were beautiful, the bugs were quite annoying though. We had decided to not ressupply between Kennedy Meadows and VVR which gave us some heavy packs and some very empty stomachs right before VVR, I would still do it like that though. Some stretches (Grace Meadow) were mosquito hell but they’ll go away eventually. Some people hate the Poison Oak in section O (CA) I’ve been pretty lucky with that. I loved Oregon for the easy hiking and the lakes, yes, the fire sucked, have to get back there sometime. Washington was my favorite, it was so beautiful. Too bad I missed a lot of the good views (I also plan to go back to hike it without rain) but Glacier Peak wilderness was the best! The last couple of days were really hard on us physically because we had to do an alternate because of the second fire and it was so steep we barely did 20 miles a day. But I think the absolute hardest part of the hike is the reentry into society when you’re done, it sucks big time!
Shouldn’t stop you from hiking though! Have fun!

Apple Pie