So, we have a bit of an announcement to make… after a long weekend of winter skills seminars and talking to locals in the Sierra mountains we’ve decided that the trail we’ve been planning all this time just doesn’t exist this year, because it’ll be buried under ten feet of snow when we get there.
2016/2017 has been a record setting winter, and this is going to be a unique and extreme season on the PCT. It isn’t that it’s impossible, lots of people will attempt the PCT this year and many of them will finish. But they’ll do a lot of it in really awful, bleak, snow-covered conditions.
The part of the hike that I personally find most appealing – swimming in high mountain lakes at our campsites and crossing breathtaking passes above the clouds will be converted into a winter mountaineering expedition. Camping and navigating on snow, calculating emergency bail-out trails every day, crossing treacherous torrents of snow-melt and facing a constant risk of having to skip or road-walk large sections of the journey.
For some, satisfaction grows in proportion to the challenge, and those people will have an amazing time on the PCT. But our natural high comes from communing with the mountains, not from conquering them. We have been forced to accept the bitter truth that 2017 is not going to offer the PCT we’ve been looking for.
So, plan B! Late in the season and at the desperately last minute we’ve been busily changing flights and making new plans, to hike the Appalachian Trail instead. It takes longer, it’s much harder going and more likely to destroy my knees, and we’ll have to race because we’re really starting a bit too late to finish (most have been at it since early March). However, it climbs its 200,000 extra vertical feet at lower altitude and sits on the east coast which hasn’t had California’s mega winter.
Georgia to Maine instead of Mexico to Canada. Details to follow…
