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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“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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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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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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I had an alarm set for 6 am, which would give me enough time to get up, get packed, and continue just under a mile down the Journey’s End Trail to get picked up by a shuttle service and taken to Burlington. However, shortly before my alarm went off, I was awoken by the sound of rain. Fortunately, the rain didn’t last very long, and it had long since stopped by 6:45, when I began the last bit of hiking of my Long Trail thru-hike.
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