Don’t Call it Spontaneous: The Financial Reality of Hiking the PCT

My announcement of my plan to thru hike the PCT with Keith has kicked off a veritable whirlwind of activity. We’ve started to pack away our apartment, we’re preparing to leave our jobs, anxiety/excitement has been on the rise, and I’ve been hearing one thing over and over again: “What? you’re leaving?! This is so sudden, so spontaneous!”

To which there is only one honest reply: No it isn’t.

I decided to hike the PCT in April of 2016. Which means, by the time I get on the trail on March 27th, it will have been nearly two years since I made the choice to attempt this trail. The reality is, this only feels spontaneous to the people I’m telling about it now, and there are a handful of very good reasons for that. The first being that employers really don’t want a worker bee who is going to up and leave in a few months/years. As they say in the advertising world: it’s bad ROI. The second reason, is that a million things could have happened between deciding I wanted to hike the PCT and actually leaving on the trip. A million tiny little things that could have derailed this entire dream. I don’t want to be the kind of person who says she’s going to do something and then bails, so I decided that I’d only tell a select few people in my life about my plans until they were all but certain. And frankly, when you talk about thru hiking, almost nothing is certain.

The third and biggest reason for a two year gap between deciding to hike the PCT and actually doing it: money. Yes, thru hiking is cheaper than living in a big city like Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean it’s cheap, and it doesn’t mean it’s free. The financial reality of undertaking a trip like the PCT is something that is rarely discussed in the hiking community, and as a result planning a trip like this can seem incomprehensible. However, I think it’s important to be more honest about where our money goes and what we spend it on, and this post is a stab at doing just that. Below you can see how I’ve saved for and budgeted for this trip, and since this post has the likelihood of getting a little long, I’ve broken it down by topic.

Estimating Cost:
Based on my calculations I needed to save a minimum of $10,000 in order to hike the PCT.  If I could get closer to $15,000 that would give me some much appreciated wiggle room for after our hike, since we’ll be relocating to Seattle, WA and I will be jobless upon arriving.

If you do a cursory search for what it costs to do a thru hike you’ll find that not many people are talking about this in concrete dollar amounts, but those who are estimate around $5,000  for their entire hike, including things like food, gear replacements, getting a hotel room in town, and rides to and from the trail. Then how did I settle on $10,000 for my hike?

Student loans baby!

At the writing of this post, I have close to $25,000* in student debt (down from nearly $47,000 when I graduated college). Those loans need to be paid come rain, shine, unemployment, thru hikes, and in some cases even death. When I started saving, I paid close to $650 each month in student loans, now I pay closer to $450 since I’ve been able to pay a few loans off. Furthermore, I assumed I wouldn’t get a job right away upon finishing the trail, so I threw in a couple more months of payments, rounded up for sanity and ended up at another $5,000 that I needed to save just so I could continue to pay back my loans while on the trail.

NOTE: I’m sure some of you are thinking, with $15,000 in savings you could pay off a lot of that debt! And you’re not wrong. But I could also be hit by a car tomorrow and killed, so I’d rather pursue this dream now. Also, I didn’t ask for your opinion or approval, so kindly keep it to yourself.

The Savings:
Time for honesty! Saving money is not sexy, it’s not cool, and it’s not fun.

To save for this hike I stopped buying new clothes for close to two years, I didn’t go on vacations, I packed my lunch every single day for months and months, I set budgets for myself for every single thing in my life and tried my best to stick to them. I said no to fun things like concerts, weekends away, and little treats. It was stressful, and lame and boring at times, but that’s the truth of it.

In addition to being more frugal with my spending, I also started freelance writing where I made $100-$150 an article. For the last nine months I’ve been constantly pitching and writing articles – a task that often felt like I had two or more jobs at any given time. Beyond writing, I took any and all overtime work I could get, I got a new day job with a higher salary, even though I didn’t love the work, and I said yes to any paid gig that came my way. Because I am good at video creation and editing, and built a solid reputation during my time in advertising, I was able to snag some lucrative projects from old contacts which served as big capital windfalls (around $2500) that helped me reach my $15,000 savings goal. Sometimes this meant that I was exhausted, working multiple jobs, and sleeping very little. Again, it’s not sexy or fun, but it’s also true, and it’s what it took for me to pursue this dream.

Pre-Trail Costs – Gear:
Lucky for me, both Keith and I are avid backpackers. This means that when I set out to hike the PCT I already had a lot of the gear I needed, much of which we used on our JMT hike in 2017. So this was a cost, but not one that came in a big lump sum. Instead it was handfuls of little to moderate costs strung out over the last two years*.

An added bonus, is that Keith is an incredibly generous and talented human being and he made many of the items that we’ll need on the trail. He designed and made me my own sleeping quilt and gifted it to me for my birthday, as well as making gaiters and a pack covers which are nicer and cheaper than ones I would have bought. Keith is also the most frugal human I’ve ever met, which means he knows how to score a deal! When we settled on buying Mountain Hardware Ghost Whisperer Jackets (MSRP $350) we waited for a sale, and then bought our jackets in kinda weird colors – allowing us to get the jackets for less than half price. And since we’re doing this hike together, we can split the costs of things like our tent and stove (this also saves pack weight). I know I wouldn’t be starting the trail half as well prepared if it weren’t for Keith, so he deserves a huge amount of credit for all his help.

*NOTE: I did not include gear purchases in my savings calculations for this hike. Another note, if you’re planning your own thru hike, or simply want to get into backpacking in any capacity, don’t be an idiot and buy this stuff off the shelf at REI. Shop around and use the dozens of discount gear sites like MooseJaw, Backcountry, Sunny Sports,  Steep and Cheap, Sierra Trading Post, and even Amazon. Paying MSRP is for fools.

Below is what you could expect to spend on your set up for the PCT (around $2,000). Some people drop serious cash to get the lightest gear, other people prioritize savings instead of pack weight, it’s up to you. But I prioritized pack weight and comfort over money, and then looked for deals to cut costs.

Backpack: $250-$350
Tent: $200-$600
Sleeping Pad: $150-$200 (but you could go as low as $40)
Sleeping Bag/Quilt: $300-$800
Hiking Outfit (daily wear): $150
Shoes: $80-$120/pair*
Trekking Poles: $100
Thermals top and bottom: $100
Misc. Other Clothes: $60-$100
Rain Jacket: $150-$200
Down Jacket: $120-$360
Water Filter: $40
Hat: $10-$40
Sunglasses: $20-$150
Pack Cover, Gaiters, stuff sacks, sleeping pillow, other random crap: $200

NOTE: Shoes, socks, and sometimes clothes will have to be replaced during your hike, so take those costs and multiply them by 4 or 5.

Pre-Trail Costs – Food:
Part of hiking the PCT is mailing yourself resupply boxes – these are boxes of food and gear, which one typically sends themselves in areas that are more remote and don’t have a proper grocery store. These boxes probably cost $400 per person for food, buying the boxes, and the shipping costs of mailing them first to my parents and then buying postage for my parents to mail them back to us. Backpackers are a weird lot, and resupply boxes epitomize that.

While $400 is a lot to spend on food that I won’t even eat for five or more months it works out to just about $7/day. We cut costs here by making our own freeze-dried and dehydrated meals instead of buying a brand name like Mountain House or Backpaker Pantry which can run $9 for one meal. Also, instead of buying snacks at the store, we purchased things like candy bars in bulk online where you get a discount for buying 48 candy bars at once.

As someone who cannot eat gluten without *ahem* unpleasant side effects, my food costs will likely total more than Keith’s since gluten free food is much more expensive than standard food. Furthermore, I’ll be supplementing my boxes on-trail with potato chips (aka backpacker super food) which are easy to find almost anywhere, but were too bulky to mail ahead.

Costs I’m Avoiding:
I’m doing my best to strip away any costs that I don’t need to pay for on the trail. We’re giving up our apartment, which also means no utilities or wifi bills. I’ll be parking my car off the street in a private lot, which will cost me $100 each month, but will save me the need to register my car or pay for car insurance, in addition to cutting down on gas money, oil changes and maintenance. My mom is generously paying for my phone bill (she’s the best!). And we’ve also elected to sell the majority of our furniture and possessions (aka return them to the great Craigslist circle of life) instead of storing them while we’re on the trail. The $100/mo I’m paying to store my car will also cover storing the trailer with all our stuff inside.

Health Insurance:
This is a big, scary topic, and one that I wasn’t fully prepared for. With the start of the Trump administration, and the removal of the personal mandate from the ACA, everything around health insurance shifted in 2018. And while I’m pretty sure the elimination of the personal mandate will ultimately lead to the destruction of the ACA as we know it – a system that relies on the payments of young, healthy folks, to subsidize the higher costs of older folks and those with chronic illnesses – it was a massive relief for me personally. I feel really conflicted about even saying that, but the truth is, I could not afford any of the options available to me under the ACA when I checked back in 2017. I was looking at around $380 a month in premiums through The Marketplace. Most of the plans would have failed to cover me if I was more than 100 miles from home, or needed to seek healthcare outside of my primary provider. In short, they were nearly useless given my situation, and would have meant incurring massive payments for coverage if I needed healthcare on the trail, in addition to the already sky high premiums.

Ultimately, I am electing to purchase health insurance through the ACA/Covered California when the plans shifted in 2018. What I have purchased would be considered ‘major medical’ or ‘catastrophic medical coverage’ which means that while my monthly premium is low, my deductibles are very high. This is the type of insurance that only serves to safe guard you should you become seriously injured or ill and need elaborate medical care. Up until 2018 I’m pretty sure these type of plans didn’t even qualify as fully insured under the ACA individual mandate. Furthermore, I only qualify for this plan because I am under 30, rarely use medical services of any kind, and am willing to pay out of pocket for any small to medium medical costs. In short, I will pay $155/mo for a PPO plan that gives me the right to not be bankrupted should I need significant medical care. My deductible will be $6500 in network, and $25,000 out of network, and the coverage I will receive is basically all out of pocket until I hit those deductibles. Like I said, this isn’t a great insurance plan, but because I am young, healthy, and very rarely go to the doctor it’s an option that is open to me. It’s frankly a bit of a  risk, but much less so than forgoing insurance entirely.

On top of major medical insurance, I’d suggest every person traveling in the outdoors buy the American Alpine Club membership. Spend $80 for a full year of insurance and you’ll get coverage for things like trailhead rescue coverage, and domestic rescue coverage in the backcountry for any land-based activity. It’s the sort of coverage that no standard insurance company offers, but one that backcountry travelers can really benefit from should you need an evacuation – helicopter rides are really expensive.

One of the other options I explored was to get travelers insurance through a company such as World Nomads. Companies like this one offer insurance for those who are traveling internationally or domestically, and participating in activities that typical insurance companies will not cover. They will also do things that no standard insurance company will cover, such as emergency medical evacuation from a remote area. These plans are only intended to be ‘secondary insurance’ and not stand in for being insured in another way. The main problem with such insurance plans is that they work on a reimbursement system, which can take six months to a year to fully resolve. This means that you need to pay all of your medical bills up front, and then submit a claim for the insurance company to pay you back. While this arrangement certainly isn’t idea, I figured that I could always get an 12 month 0 APR credit card to put the balance on until the company could pay me back. I recognize upon writing that how bananas our health care system is.

The other insurance option for a thru hiker is to buy insurance individually through a standard company. However, unless you can shell out big money, then you’re basically left with a pretty garbage plan and praying you don’t get injured.

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The above more or less details where my money will be going on the trail, and what I did to accumulate it before the trail. Leave a comment below if you have any questions on gear, money, or the trail, and I’ll do my best to answer them before I leave.