Category: PCT

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PCT Day 2 – Fantastic, Fantastic, Fantastic.

** Hey Folks! A little delayed on this one. I wrote this post on trail, but then somehow forgot to publish it.

Hauser Creek (mile 15) to Cibbets Flat CG (mile 32 + 1mi off trail road walk)

It’s 3pm when we start the climb out of Boulder Oaks Campground; we’re 10 miles into our second day on the trail and already we’ve had a leisurely brunch at Lake Morena and then whiled away a few hours more at Boulder Oaks Campground stretching and chatting with our fellow hikers. The afternoon is cooling and we decide to press on a few more miles.

The climb is gradual and tidy in the special way of the PCT, shepherding us higher along the red sand path, fenced in by the chaparral and below a tumbling stream appears from nowhere, cascading down the valley in slides and pools, rushing channels that plunge into gem colored tubs and then out of sight to who knows where. My legs feel strong and capable, making efficient work of the ascent. There is a light breeze that offsets the blazing sun shining down from the perfect blue sky and everything is fantastic. Every last detail is perfectly rendered in brilliant Technicolor.

I look. I gape at my surroundings. I try and take it all in. How good I feel, Keith cruising up the hill ahead of me, the sun, the rocks, this wonderful trail that so many people worked to make a reality just so a bunch of weirdos could try and walk from Mexico to Canada each year. What could we have possibly done to deserve all this?

I try to make the moment part of me. I want to consume this experience, let it fill me up until there is nothing left but lightness and a breeze on my arms. I want to hold onto this feeling forever even though I know I never could. But I try, I try so hard.

These perfect Instagram moments are the ones that draw people to thru hiking initially, and keep them coming back. But they are not the only moments or even the majority of the experience. There will be hours of difficulty ahead of us, cold nights and blisters and painful joints and arguments and boredom and frustration so profound as to make you scream your lungs out into the silent hills.

So as I climb I try my best to hold onto this moment, this fantastic gift of a day, and I endeavor to tuck this joy deep down inside me like a little stone that I can hold onto when the hard times come. I will rub my little stone from this wonderful day and remember why I’m out here.

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PCT Day 0 – The Kindness of Strangers

We step off the train in San Diego and everything is the same as when we left southern California one week ago, and yet it’s totally different feeling too. But perhaps it’s just that we feel different now, like stepping into a new life. Slowly, by degrees and leaps the reality of what we’re doing sinks in. A dawning that’s lasted days and weeks.

Before long we’re picked up by none other than Frodo herself – one half of the famous trail angel couple Scout and Frodo. She is a petite stoic woman. By the time we swing by the airport there are five soon to be PCT hikers riding along in a minivan trying to make small talk as we wind into the hills above San Diego.

At the house people are milling about, there is a grocery store run for snacks, and people drift from room to room, uncertainty abounds. Everything is starting but not quite yet.

Over dinner Scout gently rambles to and fro, covering topics such as house rules, trail angle etiquette, LNT, and the history of the PCT itself while 25 thru hiking hopefuls eat tacos in rapt silence. 66 years old with an exuberant ease, childlike and joyful Scout is a delight to listen to, while Frodo plays the straight man, chiming in with small corrections and easing the topic back on track whenever her husband drifts too far afield. What people, what kindness, who could possibly ask for more than these remarkable folks are giving us. I could listen to them talk forever and a day, but soon dinner, along with the announcements, are over and a short time later people drift off to bed.

Tomorrow it all starts for real. Though what that will truly mean in the minutes and details of a thru hike remain a mystery, at least one last night.

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Anticipation

In April of 2016 I decided I was going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Canada to Mexico. The first person I told about this plan was my boyfriend, Keith. We were in our apartment, the two rooms with the yellow walls and the apple tree in the lawn. I let him know that in 2018 I’d be leaving Los Angeles, my job, and our home together. That I’d be chasing this dream that had reached up and grabbed me; a dream I couldn’t shake loose. I didn’t ask him for permission, nor did I exactly invite him to come along with me, I simply stated my intentions and hoped for the best. It was a risk. It continues to be a risk. And I was comfortable in the idea that I could very likely be tackling this adventure alone. Later, to my surprise and delight, Keith told me he wanted to come along on my wild dream, that this was something he wanted us to do together. From that moment on it was our dream.  We had an audacious goal that felt deeply special, like the whole PCT was just for us. Our lives in Los Angeles now operated against a ticking clock – one that would take nearly two years to wind down.

Humans, it would seem, are obsessed with big improbable dreams, the Olympics are certainly proof of that. But what I never reconciled about big dreams, is that they operate on long timelines, years where things could go wrong, months and days where plans can change and fantasies can fall apart. These long timelines are ripe with potential pitfalls, but also quiet moments where one’s mind drifts off to what could be. What it would feel like to stand at the start of an epic adventure, what the daily miscellanea will feel like, and the imagined euphoria of completion. It’s like being a kid before Christmas. Yet, with the perspective of age I’ve come to realize that the anticipation might just be the best part, and it also might be the most damaging part too. Because life attempts to teach us that what we want and what we get are often different, what we hope will be true can mar the experience of what is. Anticipation can loom so large and magnificent that the real experience could never live up to the effortlessly beautiful film reel that plays in our minds. Even the knowledge of inevitable pain and challenge is muted until it is nothing more than a dull ache echoing from a far away place.

The time for us to depart on our hike is rapidly approaching. The little apartment with the yellow walls has been stripped of everything that once made it ours and the anticipation of what is to come fills my waking mind. I’ve stopped living in the present and started living in a distant fictional reality where the world is at once more wonderful and extreme and dangerous. A world, where unbidden to reality, my rapidly spiraling imagination can picture a thousand outcomes replete with detailed fictional characters. Day dreams where I can swap out details and scenarios, replay them until they’re right or wrong or poignant enough to feel almost real. In some, I’m witty and kind, the best version of myself, and thru hiking is an effortless dream scape. In some I’m argumentative and petty or worse, I balk and retreat where I would rather I stand up for what I believe, and I’m ashamed and mad at this future fictional self. In the present however, I know that I am all of these things, which is what makes these anticipatory day dreams so captivating, they’re all based on some granule of truth. Just because something feels real, doesn’t make it real, or even possible, and I fear that my daydreams will cloud my reality to the point where the only outcome is disappointment.

The PCT is one thing – a finite trail,  defined by milage and markers, but it is also a million things – daily struggles and pain and joy and apathy and who knows what else. I’m worried that I’ll meet people on the trail who are as toxic and problematic as they appear on the PCT Facebook page, where casual derision and sexism are par for the course. I’m afraid that when I meet these people I’ll let their behavior wash past me, and I will disengage, using my privilege to retreat to a safe space. At the same time I’m worried that I will stand by my convictions and as a result I will be friendless all the way to Canada, ostracized and mocked and threatened.

I’m also afraid, so afraid, that some unforeseen accident will keep me from finishing the trail. That two years of planning and dreaming and hoping will all be for nothing. I’m afraid that my very body which has carried me through 29 years of not terribly kind treatment will simply fail to tote my brain all the way to Canada. Or perhaps that my tendons will all swell and freeze into place and I will have to admit that hiking, this thing that feels like part of me, is not meant for me. That I won’t be strong or adaptable enough to persevere and that I’ll have to live with the knowledge of that. I’m worried that Keith will hate the trail and I’ll have to carry on alone, or worse, that we’ll fall away from each other and the four years we’ve spent building a life together will cease to matter. That I’ll finish the trail alone, in a new city without a job or an apartment or friends.  

In writing this, I’m attempting to concur another fear – around the very real possibility of public failure. Of stating my plans for this grand adventure, writing about my hike on this blog and then falling short, the embarrassment of having to explain that I failed. There are perfectionist tendencies which roil inside me, and the few things in my life that I’m very proud of are those which were nearly impossible upon the outset. With a finishing rate of around 30%, the PCT certainly falls into the category of things I’m statistically likely to fail at, and while that is scary, it is also what draws me to this challenge.

Fear, however, is not my only companion on my approach to the PCT, though at times it is certainly the loudest. There is an ache that resonates inside me, that calls me towards the mountains, and I yearn for the opportunity to explore that, to deepen my connection to old places I love and new places I’ve yet to be acquainted with. I’m looking forward to the muscle pain of effort, the euphoria of endorphins rushing between my ears. I want to meet wonderful people and share this experience with them. I want to take on the world with this man who feels like home, and I want us to grow together and become better both individually and apart. The anticipation of cold mornings, boring snacks, suffocating laughter, and  tear inducing frustration, I’ve anticipated it all, I want it all. But I also know, that what I can imagine is not all there is.

How can you possibly anticipate a future about which you know almost nothing? So much of the map, both literal and emotional, is blank. There are vast stretches of this trail which are totally foreign to me, there are people I have never imagined meeting, and yet I will. Experiences I won’t expect to have, and yet I will. There is fear in the unknown, but also the opportunity for discovery, and when I try and think of all the eventualities that lay beyond the horizon I’m awed at the immensity of it. I cannot help but laugh at my audacity, for thinking I could plan out this trip, anticipate everything that could be. The honest truth is that I have about as much knowledge of the next nine months of my life as I do of 1920’s refrigerator maintenance.

Amongst all the things I have tried to anticipate, there is the one thing I’ve tried to push completely from my mind: what would my future look like if everything stayed the same. There is fear in the unknown, yes, but for me there is a much greater fear of stagnation and dull uniformity. What if in my quest for challenge and newness I find nothing so much as the same person I am now? What if nothing changes and I’m spat out on the far side of the Canadian border as lost and wondering and confused as I am now? What if the PCT isn’t a life changing experience, but just another experience in a life? Is it possible to step off the map, only to find yourself on another map, walking down another road and wondering how you got there?

In planning to depart for the PCT I’ve tried, almost certainly in vain, to anticipate what is to come. As though by sheer volume of thought I could safeguard myself against future pain and disappointment. But the time has come to let go of all those thoughts and accept that I cannot know what is coming, and that I’m allowed to be scared. I’m allowed to be scared of change, and newness, and doing hard things, but I’m not allowed to not try. In electing to leave behind comfort and stability for something grand and unknowable, I’m accepting that fear is part of the process. But I want to believe that I’m the type of person who can do hard things, and the only way to prove that to myself is to do the hard things, and hopefully, to grow.

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The Whitest Thing I’ve Ever Done: Privilege and PCT Prep

For the last three months my life has been consumed with getting myself ready to hike the PCT. When I think about this adventure this constant nagging exhilaration floods the back of my brain. Lately that nag has crescendoed into a crashing wave that breaks throughout the day sending me reeling into daydreams of mountain trails and aching muscles. This hike combined with our intended move comport the majority of the conversations between Keith and myself. It’s ridiculous, it’s unflattering, it’s the exact kind of obsession that affluent white people get when they become bored and disenfranchised with their urban lives. I know it’s true. And I know it’s true for more than just us.

Expensive gear is expensive.

Scroll through the PCT Class of 2018 Facebook page and you’ll see 4,500 predominantly white, male, middle class folks talking about their increasing anxieties around this very privileged thing we’re all about to do. People buying and rebuying gear in an effort to shave pack weight – which is the thread that binds all talk about gear. Folks asking complete strangers with no credentials about highly personal decisions. There is aggressive fear mongering about everything from bears to snow to snakes to bug spray, it is endless and overwhelmingly uninformed. All of this is doused in the highly competitive culture of thru hiking. The problem that arises when you surround yourself in this very small bubble of outdoors culture, is that this bizarre behavior and subject matter takes on a patina of normalcy.

What is missing from these conversations is the recognition that hiking the PCT requires substantial financial, social, and lifestyle privileges that not everyone in our culture is afforded. More worryingly, is the thru hiking community’s rabid denial that privilege or access to resources has anything to do with attempting a successful thru hike.

An example.

A few weeks ago Keith and I had an argument, the kind which stems from attempting to plan a months long adventure. It was nearing 9pm and I had just finished sorting 60 days worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners into our 11 resupply boxes. The boxes were labeled, neatly organized, and waiting by the door to be shipped out. Just as I finished the last box Keith came home, noticed the boxes, and then we had an argument about how the boxes themselves were too big. He felt that I’d bought the wrong boxes. I told him they were the exact size he told me to buy, and would the phrase “thank you for working on this for four hours” possibly come out of his mouth? Of course, the obvious solution was to simply buy smaller boxes for our food and use the big boxes for moving. We ultimately came to this solution, but not before a good 20 minutes of huffy silence and apologies – it would seem that while thru hike planning is exciting, it can also turn both you and your partner into jerks.

Because PCT prep has become our normal, it took me some time to realize how much privilege this little spat reveals. This is exemplified by the fact that I have access to money to not only buy months worth of food ahead of time, but also to mail it to myself. Something I could never have done if I was living paycheck to paycheck. I have a family and friends who are willing, even eager, to spend their time to mail these boxes to me, because they have access to things like flex hours, PTO, and cars to tote boxes around in.

This brings us to the question: why do I need resupply boxes anyway? Because I was raised, and have always lived in suburban areas with easy access to nice grocery stores filled with fruits and veggies. Because I don’t even consider it an option to shop for my food the way that so many people in this country shop – out of mini marts and gas stations. Because even while backpacking I’m accustomed to a certain level of comfort, of privilege.

Of course, food is not the only cost associated with undertaking a thru hike. Drop into any backpacking forum, and the most prevalent discussion will be gear. Not cheap gear, mind you. No, to be a thru hiker you need the lightest, often most expensive gear. Because if you don’t have the lightest gear, then you won’t have a low enough base weight, and that of course means you’ll fail at your hike. As though there is some uniform for thru hiking that will ensure success.

And while there may not be a literal uniform you need to buy before you can hike the PCT, there is a shocking uniformity among those who undertake it.

Do me a favor and picture an outdoorsy person in your minds eye. Is that person a white able bodied man with a beard and a thin body? Does that person look a little or a lot like the Brawny paper towel cartoon with a backpack? There is a reason for this, and it’s directly related to who has been held up as the standard of the outdoors adventurer.

The history of white men exploring  the world exploded in popularity around the turn of the 20th century when men like Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen captured the world’s imagination by plundering into the furthest reaches of the globe. That standard dates back even further to when white Europeans claimed discovery of the Americas, as though there weren’t already people living here. We have told this story so many times that even in our minds the stereotype persists. Men are told that they are the purveyors of adventure, the owners of wild spaces. That is their privilege. The privilege to not only go where you want, and do what you want, but to be told by society at large that you are welcome and wanted there.

That is what privilege is: it is the inadvertent things in your life, things you did nothing to gain, that benefit you in a way that others are not benefited.

Privilege directly impacts not only the experience one will have when attempting a thru hike, but also the likelihood that you will even consider thru hiking as something that you can participate in.

Perhaps, another example. And because I know several of the men folk in my life will be reading this article with their defensive hackles raised, I want to address the privileges that are helping me get to the start of the PCT.

First, I was born to a middle class family living near abundant open spaces, as a result, my parents had the resources and free time to introduce me to the outdoors at a young age. Proximity to open spaces meant I had easy access all my life, and being outdoors was something that was normalized in the culture I grew up in. Because I come from a middle class family, I attended good schools all my life, I went to college, and ultimately I landed in a well paying job that affords me the ability to save enough money for a trip like this. As a white middle class woman, it is socially acceptable for me to up and quit my job for an extended walking vacation – nobody is going to think I’m a homeless vagrant. Additionally, falling within the parameters of conventional attractiveness means that people are kind to me while hitchhiking, I am not perceived as a threat, and they let my dirtiness and smelliness slide in a way that we do not offer other folks. I could go on, but I’ll hope that this abbreviated list serves to prove my point.

Planning to hike the PCT requires substantial capital in the forms of gear purchases, food, and free time. It requires access to nature and trails for training. It requires the social status to leave the working world behind for a time and literally escape social norms by fleeing into the woods. While I believe nature is for everyone, we currently do not live in a society that truly operates that way. Sadly, this is going to be one of those frustrating articles that ends in a gaping question mark, not a neatly concluded list of actionable steps. Tackling the issues of inclusivity and diversity in the outdoors is one of those wicked problems that will take time to solve, and will require those of us with access and privilege to change our behavior in a way that affords those same privileges to everyone.

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When Your Career is on Life Support, Sometimes it’s Best to Pull the Plug

“What about your career?” They said.

They have been my bosses, my friends, my relatives, and some complete strangers who just feel the need to voice their opinions. They have been confused that a young woman who just jumped from a big advertising agency, to an even bigger marketing company could simply be pulling the plug on what outwardly appears to be a smooth career trajectory from elite college graduate to a career headed towards more money, fancy job titles, and the cushy world or corporate credit cards and personal assistants.

But the truth is far less glamorous, and perhaps, a little more relatable. The truth is that my career has been a walking corpse for the last year and a half. The truth is that I have lied to the faces of many a person, told them my decision to leave my ad job – a job that I actually loved and was good at – was my own choice. I told them that my decision to take a job at a massive corporate marketing company was for the money, and the relaxed hours. And I’ve told  those same people that I was moving my career in a new direction, that it was done intentionally. But that is not the truth. Here is what really happened:

In early 2016 I was given the opportunity to start working as an art director at the advertising agency where I had worked as a video editor for three years. I was told that this would be a trial assignment, and that if I did well I’d be given a job as an art director. I worked so hard. I remember waking up at 4am to put in a few hours work before going into the office where I’d sometimes work until 10 at night. I held down my new duties and retained my old job, holding the edges of my career together with sheer force of will. For close to six months I worked two jobs within the same company. But it worked! The clients loved the work, they wanted to buy and produce some of our best ideas. I was thrilled! I bought champagne, I told my boyfriend that I’d done it, and that just like everybody told me, I saw that working hard gets you ahead.

But then before we could move into production, our client had a massive internal shake up. People lost their jobs, the project folded, and I was back at square one. I was disappointed, but grateful to still have a job, no complaining from me. So I started again, and my agency was all too eager to allow me to work myself into the ground. After all, it’s not like they were paying me more money. And while it would be easy to paint myself as the victim here, the reality is that I knew I should have left in the summer of 2016. But I loved the people I worked with, I liked the work I was doing, and I was being told that if I just hung in there I’d get the career I was so desperate to have. I was young, and hungry, and blind.

For the next 10 months I worked hours and hours of overtime, what would amount to two full months of OT hours in the span of a year. Two jobs, one company. I tried to launch new initiatives within the company, I tried and succeeded in impressing the most senior members of my agency. And then I got in my car and cried on the drive home a lot of nights. I took on freelance work to boost my flagging salary, I was passed over for promotions and raises because I wasn’t fully in anyone’s department and nobody took responsibility for me. I was a young woman in man’s world and I didn’t know how to speak up for myself, yet.

And finally, finally, after nearly a year and a half I saw the writing on the wall and I told them they either needed to offer me an art director position, or else I’d be stepping back into my editor role. Our talent manager tried to feed me a line about budget and getting the money for my salary but I wasn’t having it. It took me nearly two years to stand up for myself, but I finally did and it felt awesome! I went back to working under my old boss, I tried to launch a new production arm, I tried for the zillionth time to prove my worth, I continued to impress the leadership of my company, and I received the best review of my career. All of which I’m still very proud of. I was planning on leaving for the PCT in 2018, and I resolved to grit it out until then, be helpful, be the best worker bee I could be.

And then they laid me off.

I thought I was going into a meeting to negotiate a raise and instead they canned me and told me they hired my job out from under me to a 20-something dude from Dallas – talk about reading the room wrong!

And I never told anybody but my closest of close friends and family because all I could see was my personal failings. I was so humiliated. Laid off at 29. Who get’s laid off at 29? Probably lots of people, but nobody talks about it – I didn’t want to talk about it – because we’re so career oriented that I couldn’t bring myself to tell everybody how I’d failed.

When this new job offered me a decent salary, a close location, and a good title, I jumped at it, even though I knew that it wasn’t a good fit. My highest priority was getting to the start of the PCT in 2018 and getting out of LA. What I told everybody was a career leap was really more like grabbing a tree branch to keep yourself from falling off a cliff. I know that I’m lucky to have landed on my feet, that many people who lose their jobs have a far more precarious financial situation than I, and I am grateful that things turned out so well for me. Truly.

So, what about my career? Won’t hiking the PCT leave a big gap in my resume? What will employers think about a woman who gets a new job, works there for six months and then up and quits to romp through the woods for half a year?

Frankly, I don’t care.

I spent the last three years chasing the approval of those who told me my career should be my everything, and I have nothing to show for it.

Beyond giving corporate life the big middle finger in 2018, I’m also resolving to be more open and honest about it. Because if everybody was just a little more honest about work and life and the lie that work/life balance is a thing, then maybe we wouldn’t feel so hurt and scared when our careers fall apart. At least we’d know we’re not alone. Maybe you’re 23 and getting a degree you hate to appease your parents, maybe you’re 40 and you’ve just been canned from your dream job – the job you built your identity around- maybe you’re 60 and you’ve just been let go and woken up to the rude reality that your company never cared about you as a person. Whatever your reality, I bet you’re not alone.

Perhaps hiking the PCT will be the single worst thing I could do for my career, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case. Maybe placing our worth and identity at the center of what we do 9 to 5 is the worst thing we can do for ourselves. So I’m electing to try something new. I’m done believing that if I just put enough hard work tokens into the career machine that a shiny badge a validation and corporate success will pop out. I want to get out of a city where the first and most important question is: where do you work? And I’m ready to give this irreverent dirtbag life a try.

What’s the worst that can happen, they fire me?

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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.

 

 

 

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Kara and Keith Hike the PCT – One Month Out

On March 27, 2018 Keith and I will start hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, commonly known as the PCT. Getting to the trailhead is the culmination of a dream nearly two years in the making, a dream that has involved substantial frugality, planning, organization, packing all our possessions away, and leaving our lives in Los Angeles. Upon completion of the trail Keith and I plan to relocate to Seattle.

There, now that the basics are out of the way, we can delve a little further into the plan. As I mentioned, the PCT is a really complex undertaking, and something that I’m guessing most folks aren’t super familiar with. I’ve constructed this post as an imagined conversation between myself and y’all and I’ll try and answer the most common questions people have. Note: I totally co-opted this idea from Vanessa’s blog, which you should 100% be reading because she is great.

What is the PCT anyway?
The PCT is a hiking trail that runs 2,650 miles along the height of the country from the Mexican to Canadian border, and can be hiked either northbound (NoBo) or southbound (SoBo). Keith and I are heading north, which is by far the most common direction. The trail follows the pacific crest, which is a natural feature, something like a spine made of mountains and ridges that run north to south through California, Oregon, and Washington.

If you’d like to know even more about the trail, I’ll direct you to PCTA.org, which is the nonprofit organization that maintains the trail, issues permits, and is the repository of knowledge about planning for the trail.

Rad, how long will that take?
A successful thru hike, defined as hiking from one end of the trail to the other with minimal skipped mileage, takes most folks 5-6 months to complete. This is somewhat of a inaccurate description, since the majority of people setting out to hike the PCT do not, in fact, finish the trail in one season (or at all). Most estimates put the finishing rate at around 30%.

Most NoBo hikers start between late March and early May, and look to complete the trail before late September – for SoBo hikers the timeline is closer to mid June to early November.

The reason for this timeline is due to the numerous environments that the PCT runs through. Going north from Mexico hikers must traverse desert, high alpine forest, the Sierra Nevada range, the ridges of northern California, the arid semi-desert of southern Oregon, the lush rain forest of northern Oregon and Washington before finally ending in the North Cascades and the Canadian border. If you start too late you’ll bake in the California desert, and may not finish before the snow starts in Washington. If you start too early you won’t be able to safely enter the Sierras due to snow.

What do you need to go backpacking?
When backpacking one takes everything they need to survive with them in a pack on their back, hence – backpacking. Between us we’ll carry a tent, sleeping bags, stove and fuel for cooking, clothes for hiking in, sleeping in, and extra layers for when it’s cold, first aid kit and miscellaneous electronics like headlamps and battery packs for recharging items, and some other stuff like mosquito head nets that I’m probably forgetting to mention here. 

Mmmm, so do you stay in hotels along the way or….?
That’s a great question! The answer is typically, no, though on some trails like the Camino del Santiago one can stay in hotels or hostels the majority of the time. However, since the PCT is pretty remote most nights we’ll be sleeping in our tent near the trail. Hotel stays will be reserved for when we’re in town resupplying.

What am resupplying?
Gosh, so many good questions imaginary person that I’m having this conversation with! A resupply stop is when a hiker heads into town to get more food and to rest. Since it would be impossible (and way heavy) to carry all of the food you need for a full thru hike, most hikers will head into towns near the trail every four to 10 days to stock up.

There are two kinds of resupplies, one where you head into town and buy your food at a regular grocery store (just like regular people), and one where you mail yourself a box of food ahead of time and pick it up at a post office or general store that holds boxes for hikers. The second method is good for areas with either no store, or one with very limited options like a gas station. Pre-mailed boxes will only make up about 35% of our planned resupplies because frankly they’re kind of a pain to put together and then find someone who will mail them to you, and then who knows what you’re going to still like eating in one to five months time. Some people elect to do all their resuppling from boxes, but they are typically folks with dietary restrictions.

What does a typical day on the trail look like?
In short: walking up and down mountains while snacking.

In long: We’ll wake relatively early (6-7am), eat breakfast and break down camp before getting on the trail. The majority of the day will be spent walking down the trail, occasionally stopping to rest and eat snacks and refill our water bottles. Towards sunset we’ll begin looking for a campsite where upon we’ll set up our tent, make and eat dinner, fart repeatedly, and then pass out into our sleeping bags before 9pm because hiking is hard work and sleep is awesome.

What happens after the trail?
Ah, you’ve stumbled upon what it perhaps the scariest aspect of thru hiking, clever you. As I mentioned previously, Keith and I will be relocating to Seattle, WA for at least the next few years. Keith has been offered a position at SpaceX’s Seattle branch because he is smart and talented and they thought (correctly) that he was an employee worth holding on to.

I on the other hand will probably travel for a bit (Thailand, anyone?), because I have very little interest in jumping back into the corporate world and enough savings to allow me to dick around for some time. Honestly, I don’t have any concrete plans for after the PCT. No job lined up, no apartment, no real concept as to what I actually want to do with my career. I’m trying not to think about it too much because I’m an adult and that’s how adults handle looming life changes.

One month to go, what are you doing to prepare?
At this point we’re pretty well set with our preparation. Our gear has been purchased and assembled, Keith has a job lined up and next week I’ll be handing in my notice at my job, our resupply boxes are packed and ready to ship to my parents, and our landlord has been told that we’re leaving. There are dozens of small things that still need to be handled such as finding an insurance plan I can actually afford, registering my car as non-operational, and last minute dentist appointments just to name the few that I can remember at the moment.

The remainder of our prep will be to get our apartment packed into the trailer we’ve purchased to haul our junk to Seattle, and doing training hikes on weekends. I’ve also been trying to visit with friends more and do any of the last things I’d like to see/do in Los Angeles before we leave. In some ways it’s like any move, and in some ways it’s like running headlong into a tidal wave of apprehension and barely concealed glee at leaving my city life behind. Spending time in nature is something that is central to who I am as a person, and the plan to spend months simply walking and being outside is one that is inexpressibly appealing to me.