Pacific Crest Trail Horror Stories (Class of 2021)

In the yearly Pacific Crest Trail Hiker Survey, hikers share both their lowest moments on the trail (physically, mentally, emotionally – the literal lowest point of the trail is Cascade Locks, Oregon), as well as when, if ever, they found themselves in a situation where they felt they were in danger or where they were legitimately afraid.

Hiking the PCT means more than blindly wandering down a path filled with trail angels eager to help hikers on their journey across the Western United States. A lot of the trail can suck (and sometimes it sucks a lot).

It’s not unrealistic to say that a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike could be someone’s final adventure – you could end up caught in an avalanche, with heatstroke in the desert, surrounded by a forest fire, or in a hitch with a drunk driver (if you have a bad feeling about a hitch, don’t get in; wait for the next one). Hopefully, none of this happens during your (or your loved one’s) hike, but it’s possible.

Low Points on the Trail

As a part of the thru-hiker survey, I also ask hikers, “What (if anything) was your lowest moment on the trail?” Yes, social media is filled with photos of sunrises, sunsets, and mountain vistas, but not of hikers pooping their pants, crying alone in their tents, or being swarmed by mosquitoes.

I wrote a post documenting my 11 Worst Moments On The Pacific Crest Trail to help hikers realize that going into a PCT thru-hike believing that every step will be a fabulous journey to discovering your life’s meaning, you are (likely) in for a rude awakening.

Read the following knowing that any one of these things could (and very well may) happen to you, should you find yourself on the PCT.

Terrible Moments on the PCT

• Once, I packed out what I thought was icing for cinnamon rolls from a hiker box. I was having a really rough couple of days, so I thought I’d treat myself to some sweet oatmeal and icing. I rarely cooked my oatmeal (usually just added cold water), so this morning I cooked plain oatmeal, and just before I added my icing, I thought, “I should taste this.” IT WAS MAYONNAISE. By far my worst trail meal. Plain oatmeal followed by a massive packet of mayo. One of the worst days on trail.
  
• I went through several days when it seemed a different part of my body hurt every day. At the same time, I was dealing with shoe issues. Then a rodent destroyed my pack – chewed the Osprey back webbing to get at the salt/sweat. It’s very difficult to deal with gear issues when you’re on the trail. How/where to replace it? I was hiking too many miles each day. I was too focused on meeting a schedule. I got to wondering what the hell I was doing out on the trail. It just wasn’t fun.
  
• My daughter came out to visit on a town stop. Walking out of town away from her was incredibly hard. Then the following three days had extreme wind and made me question why I was even doing this thing.
  
• Getting rained on while cowboy camping even though it was blue skies when I fell asleep. All of my stuff stayed wet for days. Also, I pooped my pants three times.
  
• I had a family member pass away while I was on trail and due to family circumstances, I couldn’t do much to mourn other than keep hiking.
  
• Got bronchitis between Seiad Valley and Ashland and had to hike for three days in the smoke. The smoke made the air quality so bad and there was nothing I wanted more than to not be hiking. I was excited to get to Oregon but was struggling with what felt like every step.

Why Northern California was terrible

• Mentally, the beginning of NorCal was difficult to transition from the daily pace I started trail with to the pace I needed to maintain to finish before snow/cold/rain started in Washington.
  
• Around the halfway point when we started doing big miles and my body wasn’t used to it. It was also demoralizing to realize how many miles we had to average per day in order to finish the trail by mid-September.
  
• The climb out of Seiad Valley in the rain and humidity with the overgrowth, downed trees, and poison oak.
  
• I had hiked 27 mi / 43 km to get to the top of the Belden climb only to find a forest fire starting over the nearest ridge. Had to call 911 and they told me to hike 14 mi / 23 km back to Belden for safety. After I convinced them it looked safer to hike to Chester, I began a brutal night hike away from the fire, where I was dehydrated, had horrible chafe, and got stalked by a mountain lion. I found a flat spot to pitch my tent at 1 am. I woke up at 5 am and found that all my water had leaked out of a hole in my water bottle. During the heatwave, I didn’t think I’d make it the 6 mi / 10 km to water but I did. I found out it was a severe, 1 mi / 1.6 km, downhill side trail to the water. Once I got there I sat down to drink in a cool depression near the water and just stared into the woods for 2 hours.
  
• Bushwhacking around steep snow/Ice and burnt blowdowns in Northern California.
  
• Having my partner’s food taken by a bear at Aloha Lake after walking out of South Lake Tahoe that evening, only to have to return to that town to buy more food and another overpriced food bag.
  
• In Northern Cali, I felt like I had to push high miles to outrun the fires which was exhausting. Additionally, it was the hottest part of the trail for me, and I frequently felt like I couldn’t take a comfortable break because bees would swarm me when I stopped a lot of the time. I got stung three times. Sometimes there were deer that would stand in the middle of the trail and not move, or approach uncomfortably close when taking a break so I had to plan carefully where I was going to pee so as not to attract them. There was a lot of poison oak so I had to be careful to avoid that. All these things wore on me mentally, and I would say NorCal was the only part of the trail where I found myself just looking forward to the next town and not enjoying the trail as much as I wish I could have.

Why Oregon was terrible

• Southern Oregon was so boring.
  
• Trying to get a hitch near Cascade Locks for over an hour, had trash throw at me on the side of the road, then returned to my hotel and found that they had re-booked the room for someone else and had to run around for a while looking for management in the dark to get it straightened out. Did not get all my belongings back, could not hitch to Hood River for medicine I needed until the next day, very unrestful zero.
  
• Getting my feet annihilated by volcanic dust in Oregon.
  
• I had such a rough day one day in Oregon. This particular day, I ran out of water on an exposed day which happened to be a heatwave day. That day broke me but what helped was a SOBO hiker who shared a liter of his water with me as he passed me on the trail. He helped me have a much better day.
  
• Getting to Cascade Locks, looking ahead, and realizing there were two 30-mile (48 km) water carries immediately ahead of us.
  
• Southern Oregon was awful. The terrain was uninspiring, dry, and smokey for about 100 mi / 160 km. More so, because so many hikers skipped part of or the entirety of NorCal due to fires/smoke, there were easily 3x more hikers in Southern Oregon than I saw on any other part of the trail (including the desert). This made for significant overcrowding of the trail and campsites and wasn’t the hiking experience I had hoped for due to the personally overwhelming amount of people.
  
• Day in Oregon when my hiking partner proposed taking off on his own for a couple of days, implying I wasn’t hiking fast enough. I was already thinking I didn’t want to be hiking anymore so I had a meltdown about not feeling “good” enough.
  
• Oregon was just mentally draining. The combination of smoke, heat, and nonexistent views made it hard to remember why we hike.

Why Washington was terrible

• In Northern Oregon/Southern Washington, the tramily I was hiking with started to get too big. We all wanted to hike differently but we all also wanted to stay together to finish together. I was really struggling to choose between enjoying time with my friends and hiking my own hike.
  
• A three-day storm started as I got to Stevens Pass around mid-September. Most hikers around me hunkered down in town. I was on a tight schedule as my flight home was already booked, so I only stopped for resupply. It rained that evening, all day the next day (and even snowed for about an hour while in the area of Grizzly Peak), and all day the day after that. The trail was flooded in some places and inclines turned into small waterfalls so it was difficult to make miles. By the evening of the third day, every piece of gear was wet, including my quilt due to sleeping in wet clothes the nights before. Even my trusty rain jacket couldn’t handle days of continuous rain and wetted out. I have never felt colder than I did that night. Temperatures were in the upper 30s (low single-digit Celcius), and my down quilt had lost a lot of insulation. I could only sleep sporadically, kept dreaming of a nonexistent hot spring a few miles down the trail, and woke up shivering every time. I was also completely alone.
  
• 75% of the way through Washington it had been raining/mist and cold, all my gear was damp and I was sick. That was the one day on trail that I was over the PCT and wanted so badly to be in a warm bed with a good movie and some body heat.
  
• I had a tough time dealing with loneliness and processing the end of the hike in Washington. I lost track of my long-time trail family who had different end-of-trail priorities and found myself hiking on my own and ruminating a lot on goodbyes. I suddenly found myself more depressed and anxious than I had been since before starting the trail! I think it’s common for people to deal with some tough emotions near the end as people begin breaking off from trail families to focus on their own hikes and get ready to finish the trail. Remember to HYOH, and that the friends you’ve made along the way will still be out there after you part ways and go back to “normal” life!
  
• Waking up in the middle of the night to a rainstorm while cowboy camping just north of Cascade Locks. My quilt and all my clothes were soaked. I ended up putting my tent up but it was pointless. I was so cold and wet. I just laid in my tent and tried to sleep in wet clothes. In the morning it continued to rain and was very cold and windy. There were many blowdowns on the trail. It sucked.
  
• I was hiking with people who were too fast for me in Washington. They’d get to camp at like 4 pm and I’d finally get in around 9 pm. This was mostly between Skykomish and Steven’s Pass. One night it was 5 pm, I still had 6 miles to go and I knew it would be another late night. I was EXHAUSTED from doing two passes a day. I sat on a rock and gave myself 10 minutes to cry and then I had to get my ass to camp. So I ate my fruit snacks and cried. Then I wiped my tears away and went on my way. My buddy had waited for me. He said this was a “sketchy snow ridge”. After I got up and over it he asked if I was thinking about quitting. I told him no fucking way. I am making it to Mexico, that was just really hard. And then we walked into camp together.

On quitting the trail

• Feeling like the mental game was winning and I was ready to get off trail.
  
• The day I had to call a halt to my trek because of fires and smoke. Devastating!
  
• My lowest moment was when I realized it was my best move to quit. Due to my flip, I had basically done the Sierra and North Cascades in a row, and I did so almost entirely without trekking poles. I found this to be straining on my feet and ankles. I was taking some trail zeros to recover at lodge lake outside of Snoqualmie Pass and when I was doing so, my solar panels were stolen. It was at this time I chose to end my hike.
  
• Having to quit at Shelter Cove because of severe foot pain. Plantar fasciitis!
  
• My lowest point on trail was realizing that I was going to have to get off trail. My foot was actually injured and not just in pain. If I had continued on I could have made it much worse.
  
• Hiking partner/significant other and I had a dramatic falling out in Big Bear. Felt difficult to find other people to hike with. Eventually, lead to loneliness and then eventually getting off trail.
  
• When I was looking forward to reuniting with my friend to hike the NorCal section, and they decided to get off trail.

Have your own tale of woe from a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike? Leave a comment below and warn future PCT classes of the awfulness that awaits them on their thru-hikes.