Tuesday, December 5, 2017 9:21 pm

With my Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike less than four months away, I spent a fair amount of Thanksgiving weekend researching new gear. Over the weekend, the first piece of new gear arrived: a dozen tent stakes.

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Sunday, November 26, 2017 7:54 pm

Picking a start date for the Pacific Crest Trail is not a simple matter.

In contrast to my Appalachian Trail thru-hike, where I arbitrarily picked a start date of six weeks after I decided to hike the trail, picking a start date for the Pacific Crest Trail actually required a fair bit of deliberation.

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Sunday, October 29, 2017 9:14 pm

“The Mountains Are Calling, And I Must Go.”

John Muir may have first said those words, but they ring no less true to me. And next year, I’ll see up-close the mountains that spawned that famous quote, as I embark on my second epic-length hike: a thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail.

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Tuesday, October 24, 2017 9:39 pm

Every long-distance hike requires stopping for resupply. I thought it might be helpful for future hikers if I wrote-up the resupply logistics from my northbound Long Trail thru-hike earlier this year. I stopped five times for resupply. Read on for all the details.

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Saturday, September 9, 2017 7:11 pm

The Long Trail is the hardest trail I’ve hiked.

I expected the Long Trail’s southern portion — the 105 miles concurrent with the Appalachian Trail, which I hiked last year — to be hard, only because I was out of trail shape. By the time I got to the north (which I heard was “more rugged”), I’d be back in hiking shape, and the trail would be fine. After all, I’d survived the Whites, so how hard could it possibly be?

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