Demystifying the Pacific Crest Trail
One of my “Reasons Why” for doing the PCT is to learn new things. I’ve learned a lot about thru-hiking & built a glossary of terms to help demystify the PCT.
Greetings from Wrightwood, CA, elevation 6,000 feet.
May 4, 2023
We’re now fifty miles northeast from where I wrote my last essay. At the end of this week, Bettina, our family Trail Angel, gave us a ride into Wrightwood. She joined Achilles, Hawkeye, and I for a 60th birthday celebration for KarMMa at a local Mexican restaurant.
Many thanks to Scott Barton, Jeni Webber, The Lyons Family, Karen Blodgett, Lesley/Bill, and Julie/David for their 60-themed donations to Kristen’s fundraiser. It’s never too late to support young women in science:
Kristen's Women in Science Fundraiser
We’re now on day two of a Double Zero day, due to three inches of FRESH SNOW and stormy conditions! We plan to restart tomorrow, post-storm, and hike 85 miles to Agua Dulce by Tuesday, May 9th.
An outsider’s perspective of the PCT: Crazy!
As we left Joshua Inn we passed a pack of fourteen-year-old Boy Scouts and their two scout leaders. The kids were loaded with lopsided, over-sized packs, and pulled to the side of the trail as we passed.
We stopped for a moment to say “hello.”
Scout leader: “Hey guys, remember I told you about PCT hikers? That’s what they’re doing!”
Kids: “Where did you start?
KarMMa: “Mexico.”
Kids: “Where are you going?"
Me: “Canada!”
Kids: “How long have you been on the trail?”
Us: “Five weeks.”
Then we introduced ourselves, “We’re Pudding, KarMMa, Achilles, and Hawkeye. Do any of you have Trail names?”
One thirteen year-old scout pointed to his friend at the front of the line: “Yeah, his name is Turbo.”
Turbo: “My parents FORCED ME TO GO ON THIS TRIP!” (Gives tortured look that suggests he has been kidnapped.)
The scouts had six miles to go that day and their total trip was twenty miles over three days. As we continued our twenty-mile day, we could hear Turbo ask the scout leader,
“They’re walking to CANADA? Are they CRAZY?”
As we cover more miles— now 550 miles over six weeks— it’s simply an exercise in taking things one day, and one step, at a time. Nothing crazy, magical, or mystical about it.
A Glossary of PCT Terms
Like most areas of expertise, the Pacific Crest Trail has its own language. The lexicon gives thru-hikers a code that demonstrates their expertise and distances them from the rest of the world. It also makes the journey less accessible, and more mysterious. I’ll try my best to demystify the PCT.
Here are some of the most-used terms:
Hike Your Own Hike. It seems straightforward to determine if someone has completed the PCT. But what if there’s a closure due to fires, or a bridge is out? What if you take the highway bridge over the river instead of the trail below that takes you through waist-deep water? Some purists work to link their steps, and never skip or flip-flop. Others are comfortable hiking the 2,650 miles, even if some of the miles are work-arounds. For them, skipping and flip-flopping is fine. There’s no right answer. During the first week of the trip, I asked Marbles, “What constitutes a complete PCT?” His response: “Why do you care what I think? Hike Your Own Hike.” “HYOH” gives all of us the license to do the trail on our own terms.
NoBo and SoBo. About 90% of PCT hikers hike south to north. This year things are confusing as many northbound folks skip ahead— to avoid snow— then hike south through the sections they skipped (e.g. “flip-flop”). I call these hikers “NoBo SoBos.” In contrast, Kristen and I “leapfrog” snowy sections but once we return to a skipped section, we always hike north. This way we always have Canada in our sites, and we keep the sun out of our eyes.
YO-YO. To complete the trail northbound, then head south and hike all the way back to Mexico to complete the trail again, within the same calendar year. Less than a half-dozen hikers have accomplished this.
Triple Crowners. Hikers who complete the PCT, AT (Appalachian Trail) and CDT (Continental Divide Trail) over multiple years. About five hundred hikers have accomplished this. (A handful have done it in one year.)
Zero day. This is a rest day— you hike zero miles. Variations:
a “Nearo day” is near zero miles
a “Double Zero” is two consecutive rest days
a common scenario this season: “Serial Zeros” are hikers who fail to make forward progress, typically overwhelmed by this year’s storms, fires, desert heat, and snow. They eventually quit the trail.
Slack-packing. This is doing a section of the PCT with no backpack which is possible near Trail towns. Trail Angels drop a hiker off for a one-way, one-day hike, pick them up at the end of the day, then drive them back to town. Hikers occasionally “slack-pack” on a near zero day to do a section that didn’t quite fit into their schedule that day or the next.
Hiker Hunger. This is something I haven’t experienced although KarMMa has woken up in the middle of the night, starving. Generally, after about 2-4 weeks on the trail, hikers become ravenous. I manage to avoid this through daily 400-calorie pudding fixes.
Hiker Trash. This is a term of endearment, similar to “dirtbag” from the climbing community. A hiker might describe themselves as “hiker trash” if they embrace a lifestyle where they spend many months of the year on the trail, and live frugally (likely with beat-up gear, reclaimed from Hiker Boxes).
Hiker Box. Many stores, hotels and hostels on the trail have a box where hikers discard unwanted items, and pick up odds and ends they need. The most common items in a hiker box: half-empty fuel canisters and packaged, instant oatmeal. (Kristen recovered a lightweight pair of flip-flops from a Hiker Box.)
Dry camp. To camp for the night in a place where there’s no water. KarMMa and I need about five liters of water to cook dinner, breakfast, and then have enough water to hike to the next water source in the morning.
Camel Up. To load up on water to prep for a dry camp. Water weighs 2.2 pounds per liter, so for some dry stretches we carry as much as 13.2 pounds of water. To “camel up” also refers to “pre-watering”— drinking lots of water at a stream in advance of a hot, dry stretch.
Cold soak. Our kitchen kit weighs about 2.5 pounds (stove, fuel, pot, insulated coffee mugs, utensils) so one way to reduce weight is to eliminate the stove and associated gear. “Cold-soaking” is adding cold water to freeze-dried food and whole grain cereal to make the food (barely) edible.
Cowboy camp. To camp at night with no tent. Cowboy campers put their inflatable mattress and sleeping pad on top of a ground tarp or set up a tarp to protect themselves from rain or snow. Some ultralight thru-hikers use this tactic to lose a pound or two of gear weight. There’s no bug or snake protection, however.
Trail angel. Each Trail town has dozens of individuals who are happy to pick up hikers at the trail and drive them to town for free. Angels also stock water caches in dry, isolated areas, or surprise hikers with “Trail Magic” along the trail. At a halfway point on a recent hike, a trail angel, Beekeeper, handed out beer, soda, and hot dogs to passing hikers.
Trail towns. Small towns, usually two to seven days apart, where hikers can resupply, eat at a restaurant, stay at an Airbnb/hostel/hotel, shower, and do laundry.
Far Out (formerly GutHook). This is the go-to navigation app for PCT hikers. To navigate, you simply locate your “white arrow” on the red PCT trail line. The app is also community-based, so there are lots of notes about where to camp, where to find water, how to contact Trail Angels, or where to stay or eat in each Trail town.
Section Hiker. A person who hikes one section of the PCT. FarOut lists five sections while the PCT lists 29, so it’s debatable what constitutes a section, but many hikers do about 100-250 miles.
LASH or LASHers. An acronym for a Long Ass Section Hike (or hikers) who do as many as 1,000 miles. (A “section” is a debatable term; the PCT association lists 29 sections, while FarOut lists five.) Luc and Lucie have done many parts of Campo to Walkers Pass with us — nearly 650 miles. That’s a LASH.
Bounce box. A cardboard shipping box that loosely shadows a hiker, delivered via USPS from one Trail town post office to another. You typically reconnect with your bounce box every two weeks. The intent is to have occasional access to things you’ll need (computer, toe clippers) but the reality is your bounce box becomes purgatory for things you’ll never need, but are afraid to give up (chair, extra clothes, umbrella, extra water filters).
General delivery. You can deliver a food supply box to yourself at any post office along the trail. Simply present your ID at the post office and they’ll find your box out back. We will have about 40 food resupply boxes sent to us by Duncan, our “resupply Captain” (he prefers “chief of staff”) who lives in our house in Bend.
Resupply station. We have a main resupply station in Bend. But occasionally we turn a friend’s house into a resupply station, too. It’s a local address where we can send gear upgrades via Amazon and REI. Greg Long in La Quinta (Palm Springs) referred to our guest room as “the mailroom.” Jaime Pearson and Karen Hege run our resupply station in northern California. Initially they updated us each time a package arrived, but stopped once the deliveries became a torrent. They’ll bring our gear to the airport when they pick us up at SFO on May 10th, and then take us to Chester, CA to restart our hike.
Thru-hiker. This is a person who embarks on a long hike, from point A to B. It’s different from a backpacker who does a 2-8 day trip, hikes to specific campsites, and carries more gear. There's a bit of a continuum, based on distance and weight:
Distance. As I pointed out earlier, there are many “section hikers” who do just one section of the trail— not the entire trail in one year (as we plan to do).
Weight. Ultra-light hikers often forgo a stove and tent and carry very few extra clothes. Their pack can be as small as 20 liters (ours are 55) and weigh as little as twenty pounds— including both food and water. A “Luxury Light” thru-hiker carries a stove, real food (prosciutto!) but tries to minimize the weight of all non-essential gear.
Our goal is to become “Luxury Light” thru hikers; we aspire to have pack weights in the mid-twenties, with a base weight that’s less than 15.
Road walk. From time to time, we hike a nearby road, that parallels the trail, due to fire closures, protection of endangered species, or deep snow.
Yellow Blazing. This refers to hikers who skip sections via car rides. (Think of the yellow center line on the highway blazing by.)
Trail name. Most folks shed their real name in favor of a made-up name based on an odd moment or story from the trail.
“Danger Zone” fell and, using his ice axe, self-arrested in a no-fall zone while traversing a snowy ridge on San Jacinto.
“Yeehaw!” who’s French, wears a big black cowboy hat and bandana.
“Marbles” said something daft and a friend asked, “Have you lost your marbles?”
The advantage of trail names: the names are much more memorable than real names and there’s an obvious on-ramp to begin a conversation. Fun: a few of our real life friends have adopted trail names, too. Jen Barron is Jello and Dave Wells is CreamPuff.
Tramily. This is a combination of “trail” and “family.” Tramilies form on the trail to provide companionship, safety in numbers, and occasionally share/exchange food. They don’t always walk together. But they do start and end each day in the same campsites.
Hiker midnight. Generally 8 pm. Most hikers begin the day at 5 am, so it’s natural to fall asleep at 8 pm, especially after a twenty-plus mile day. On some days we have fallen asleep as early as 7 pm.
Posthole. Snow introduces the danger of sliding off a slope and makes navigation tricky. But the most common problem is post-holing: stepping onto a frozen layer of snow, then accidentally breaking through the ice layer until your hip stops your fall. You see lots of scrapes on hikers’ shins from this.
Full carry. Trail towns are anywhere between two and seven days apart. One of the hardest days is when you leave a trail town with six or seven days of food— a “full carry.” This can be worse if there’s no water for the first day. When we left Tehachapi we had a full water carry (13.2 pounds) plus six days of food (about twelve pounds). Yuck.
I’m sure I will be building out this list as I learn more but I hope it has helped demystify some of the jargon from the PCT for you.
What’s next?
We’re off tomorrow to finish the southern California section by filling in the gap between Wrightwood and Agua Dulce. (We’ve already hiked from Agua Dulce to Walkers Pass).
We’ll hike about 85 miles over five days, then we’ll hop on a plane from Burbank to SFO on May 10th, then restart the PCT north of the snow — from Chester, CA to the Bridge of the Gods at the Oregon/Washington border.
Happy trails!
Pudding and KarMMa
(Gib and Kristen)
PS. For more photos, you can also follow us here:
PPS. If you want a best guess of where we will be when, or see the crazy spreadsheet that predicts our resupply needs, click here.
Past essays:
March 25, 2023: “Day One: Introducing our PCT hike”
March 26, 2023: “The Fears We Carry”
April 1, 2023: “Our First 100 Miles!”
April 7, 2023: “A Day In the Life”
April 15, 2023: “Deserts & Bears & Wind (Oh My!)”
April 22, 2023: “Luxury Light Thru Hiking”