Pacific Crest Trail Horror Stories (2023 Survey)
While completing the Pacific Crest Trail Hiker Survey, hikers share the moment(s), if ever, they were in a situation where they felt they were in legitimate danger or when they were legitimately afraid.
The Pacific Crest Trail tests mental, physical, and emotional endurance. Hikers don’t get the luxury of dictating every aspect of their hikes. Nature’s indifference, unexpected weather, or a badly timed road crossing can all result in hikers becoming quickly in over their heads.
It’s not unrealistic to say that a Pacific Crest Trail 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, drowned in a river, 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.
WARNING! If you are worried about a loved one hiking the Pacific Crest Trail or have doubts about whether you want to undertake this journey yourself, you should probably stop reading now (or maybe you should definitely read this).
Table of Contents
Notes on the Data
- This year, there were 751 completed surveys. Hiking next year? Sign up to take the survey here.
- The Pacific Crest Trail and thru-hiking generally use acronyms and jargon. The thru-hiker glossary may help clarify anything that needs to be clarified. Please comment if you still can’t find what you’re looking for.
- I refer to survey respondents collectively as this year’s “class.” Remember, this is a sample (albeit a large one) and not a comprehensive survey of every person on the PCT.
- Lastly, remember that each bullet point below comes from a single hiker.
- To be notified of new survey posts, click here.
The Horror of Weather
- With a wet sleeping bag, I was trying to stay warm in northern Washington during a storm. I was on the cusp of hypothermia, laying in my tent for hours, pumping my arms and legs to generate body heat.
- Camped under a bunch of dead trees during a rainy, windy night. I didn’t sleep because I was convinced one of them was going to fall and kill me.
- Once, we made a bad call to keep hiking during a break in a hail/thunderstorm window after setting up our tents for shelter. We had to stop a final time but in a less ideal place, on the widest and flattest part possible of a narrow, steep mountain traverse covered in snow.
- Massive snowstorm on the ascent of Forrester Pass. No snow was predicted, and we camped halfway up the climb and woke to a blizzard, and we were forced to hike to Lone Pine. The trail was already hard to navigate, under about 20 ft / 6 m of snow. All boot track was lost, and avalanches started falling; we had zero visibility, and the wind was so strong with the snow we couldn’t see more than 10 ft / 3 m ahead of us. It took me and another guy I was hiking with 20 hours to bail and about 40 mi / 64 km of snow hiking in the blizzard. FYI, we did multiple weather forecasts before going out and talking with locals. No storm was predicted when we left.
- There were thunderstorms in Northern California and the Sierra. Those were scary and felt very out of my control – all we could do was continue hiking and pray that the lightning wouldn’t find us.
- Most of the night, I couldn’t feel my feet when I had to camp on snow the night after Mount Laguna. I checked my thermometer just before sunrise the next day: 10 degrees F.
The Horror of Terrain
- After Big Bear Lake, heading south, about 15 mi / 24 km of the trail had been completely washed away. There was no warning on the PCTA website or trail closure. This was the hardest and most dangerous part of the PCT for me. I followed Mission Creek and had to climb down next to a waterfall.
- After Etna, I was by myself and found I was on an old section of PCT thought it would join back up, but I had to cross some sketchy snow sections before realizing I still had to backtrack (less than 2 mi / 3.2 km, I think). I didn’t have a Garmin and realized if something had happened to me, I may not have been discovered for quite a long time.
- When I took a scramble alternate around the bridge outage in the Sierra, I ended up on a rock shelf where the only way forward was to slide down a steep rock sheet with nothing to hold on to.
- We decided to swim across the creek in Stubblefield Canyon after feeling like we exhausted our other options. While we didn’t swim through whitewater, the current was incredibly strong, and I could not touch the bottom. I was at the mercy of the creek and quickly realized I could not swim back to the shore with my hiking partners, so I had to fully commit to getting to the other side. It was the only creek crossing that truly felt sketchy.
- After summiting Baden-Powell, I took the wrong alternate down and regretted it about an hour later. Before then, I couldn’t see the point of an SOS device, but I ordered a Garmin shortly after because it felt unsafe.
- Oh god, so many times, every time there was snow, every time there was a RUSHING FUCKING RIVER UP TO MY NECK, I guess that’s it, but that was a whole lot of times!
- I stopped some 100 ft / 30 m short of the Mount Whitney summit because the high winds scrambling over snow/rocks did not feel safe.
The Horror of Snow
- Alone in the snow for 4 mi / 6.4 km without seeing anyone, on the side of a cliff, and without boot tracks.
- Ascending Mather Pass when there was no boot pack felt like I relied on more trust in my crampons than I had experience with.
- Baden Powell – not comfortable with the snow, so the steep drops on the descents were scary; I witnessed a man slip and fall a few meters and hit a tree stump, so I had to go back up the steep slope to help him.
- I was hiking down a steep snow traverse when I got off trail in the Desolation Wilderness (still covered in 15 ft / 3 m of snow). The snow was at a 70-degree angle and flowed into a freezing lake – FEAR!
- Going over Grizzly Peak in Northern California. There was still a lot of snow, and someone had recommended an alternative route along a forestry road to avoid the worst of it – we must have somehow gotten on the wrong road, as we had to traverse an insanely steep snowfield. If we’d slipped, we would have hurt ourselves extremely badly (best-case scenario).
The Horror of Hitchhiking
- After eating at Paradise Valley Cafe (PVC), we decided to hitch into Idyllwild. While on the side of the road, a member of the 12 Tribes Cult picked us up. We had previously refused a ride from one of the members standing in front of PVC, but we didn’t recognize the person driving, so we assumed it was just a normal hitch. At this point, the owner of a local store used his car to block in our hitch and then proceeded to berate the driver, as he recognized them from the day before (He had tried to buy multiple knives and other supplies, but the owner had refused as he recognized him as a member of the 12 Tribes). The store owner told us we should probably get out of the vehicle, which we did at record speed. Needless to say, we spent much time at the Idyllwild Brewery that afternoon to get over our traumatic morning.
- I hitchhiked with a mentally ill/drunk guy. Fortunately, it was only a mile out of Sierra City.
- When hitching with drivers going faster than I would have preferred or trying to pass trucks on a double-yellow line.
- Some of the hitches we got into town were crazy drivers that made you feel unsafe on the usually windy roads!
- I felt unsafe when we hitchhiked with a man out of Julian who turned out to be a Nazi, was swerving all over the road, and wouldn’t let us out when we asked him to pull over. We hitchhiked with a woman to Etna, who was a really beautiful person but an awful driver. She drove on the wrong side of the road most of the way through blind corners and speeding. She caught the front wheel on a gravel turn at one point, and the car slid sideways.
- I was hitching into Mount Shasta. I had a drunk driver making sexual comments.
The Horror of Humans
- I was walking out of Cajon Pass alone as it was getting dark. I thought a meth zombie was going to jump out of those tunnels at any moment.
- My credit card was stolen somewhere around Kennedy Meadows South and a creepy package arrived at my home address shortly after it was paid for by the credit card. It made me suspicious that someone was stalking me.
- A male section hiker in the desert rubbed me the wrong way at a break spot, and after that, I felt he was following me for a few miles (yes, following me specifically, not just hiking). I felt unsafe until I caught up to my friend ahead of me.
- I camped alone in Oregon on a campsite near a dirt road – a guy in an ATV drove by on the road and gave off some interesting vibes. I think he was just trying to be friendly, but when he drove by again around 11 PM, I thought he was going to murder me.
- I was a solo female hiker and had just summited San Jacinto. I hiked off the mountain and was camping at the drive-up campground you pass through on the descent, which is quite large and has probably 13+ spots to pick from. I was the only person there, set up my tent, and went to sleep. Around 1 in the morning, this big jeep rolled up at the campground, chose the spot right next to me, and a group of 4 guys, maybe in their mid-30s, hopped out and started waiving their flashlights around, setting up camp, and bro-ing it up for probably an hour. Nothing happened; they did not interact with me, but it was such an odd thing to do and made me super uncomfortable. I just laid there with my pepper gel in my hand and slept with it throughout the night.
- The closest I felt to being unsafe was when a few people said some antisemitic things. But I knew I could take them if I couldn’t de-escalate. I’m tired of not pushing back against bigotry.
- I didn’t meet any other genderqueer people, and I was nervous about sharing my they/them pronouns because I had heard transphobic talk from hikers/trail angels on the trail, and people come from all different backgrounds. I was concerned about sharing my pronouns with the wrong person.
- I was hiking between White Pass and Snoqualmie during bear hunting season, and while the hunters themselves were nice and interesting to talk to, my awareness was on high alert, with gunshots going off occasionally. It was a situation where I knew logically I was safe, but my body didn’t feel it. Eventually, I got used to it. Also, I reached the Mike Ulrich cabin in the same vicinity when many 4-wheel riders were there. I was a solo woman, and it was clear they “had” the cabin, and I didn’t even think about going in.
The Horror of Town
- As a queer hiker, there were a handful of extremely religious and extremely right-wing trail angels who I felt unsafe being around.
- When my friends and I were trying to hitchhike from a gas station to Bend, a man with a gun threatened to shoot us if we continued to try to hitchhike there.
- When I was sexually assaulted by a man who offered me dinner and a place to crash, he seemed nice and inviting, but I felt trapped when his intentions were clear. I had nowhere to go, and he didn’t listen when I said no.
- I felt like I was going to die trying to run across the highway in Cajon Pass to get to the motel. We walked through the wash instead; IRL Frogger felt too sketchy.
- I stayed in a pretty seedy motel in Banning and didn’t feel entirely safe there.
- In a trail angel’s house in the middle of the desert. They were saying pretty brutal and racist shit, and I was in the middle of nowhere, completely dependent on them.
- Coming out of Seiad Valley, the lady who owned the store told us we could take a shortcut to the trail. We went that way, but there were many signs saying “no trespassing” and “we have guns on the premises.” That didn’t make us feel super safe.
The Horror of Animals
- I was night hiking alone, and I thought of bobcats, so I hiked faster. I was hiking from Stehekin at 3 am and heard a weird sound in the woods.
- A bear at midnight was 10 ft / 3 m from my tent shredding tree bark and rolling logs for about an hour. It was really loud, and I just waited for it to come and smell my tent. Unbelievably, it didn’t.
- I woke up to a mountain lion. I heard something odd and put my headlamp on. I reached out, unzipped my tent fly quickly, and hit the light…to see a golden kitty face about 6 ft / 2 m from my own.
- I felt unsafe once when a bear was close and growled at me when I tried to scare it off. That was in NorCal. I shut up and hiked away quickly.
- I didn’t feel unsafe per se, but I had terrible anxiety about encountering rattlesnakes (inevitable in the desert), which negatively affected my mental health.
- At Hyatt Lake Campground, I think a coyote or something stepped into a game trap late at night.
- I got stalked by a mountain lion a few days before hitting Chester. I was lucky to be in front of my tramily, because when I yelled and waved my arms, it didn’t budge. It ran away once my tramily caught up to me, but I spent ten minutes yelling at the lion while it stared at me.
- Early morning, alone in my tent, nobody else around. I heard footsteps approaching my tent very slowly. I was too afraid to call out since I am a woman and didn’t want to give the creeper any reason to feel bold. A shadow fell across the front of my tent…turned out it was a wild turkey. I had a good laugh at my own expense, but I was terrified.
- When completely alone in a closed forest full of snow, I found a huge bear just 50 ft / 15 m away.
The Horror of Fire
- We tried to avoid the Saied Valley trail closure and got on the trail 15 minutes before the PCTA shut it down. It was smokey and quite sketchy.
- I woke up to a thunderstorm with lightning all around me and didn’t know what to do, so I just crossed my fingers and went back to sleep. I saw a fire across the valley from me in the morning when I started on my way down to Seiad, which was especially discomforting.
- I had to turn around close to the Oregon/California border because of the fires and hiked until late at night to get closer to the roads. I slept a couple of hours with only the essentials in my backpack (passport, some water, phone, and PLB) in case I needed to abandon my tent and run away at night.
- FIRE / SMOKE THREAT. Breathing without a mask. I wish I had brought a mask, even though I didn’t expect to use it before starting on the trail.
- Walking near wildfires in Washington, which were close to the trail, was nerve-wracking.
Other Horrors
- My phone and battery pack had died surprisingly quickly, and I had no GPS for several days. I relied on trail signage, frequently missed important turns, and backtracked often.
- Downclimbing a sketchy class IV scramble on an alternate to avoid a bridge closure in the Sierra.
- I decided to make a side trip to the summit of Mount McLoughlin. I was alone, and it was close to sunset when I reached the top. I was terrified because I realized I had to get down in the dark, and there was no trail near the top, just loose rocks.
- Post-fire widowmakers in a windy/thunderstorm condition.
- A rockfall in Washington. It would have killed us if we were 30 ft / 10 m further back on the trail.
Have a 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.
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Had skin infections three separate times on trail, the third finally took me off trail. The first I was helped to an urgent care and received antibiotics for the skin infection and for Lyme disease, the second I was carrying antibiotics and the third put me in the hospital in Quincy where I finally was forced to throw in the towel (staph, MRSA and finally sepsis). It’s possible, if I had paid closer attention, that I could have avoided the third by taking antibiotics again. All I can say is I’m thankful to be alive, thankful for kind people on trail, and thankful that I decided to buy traveler’s insurance! (six months later and still dealing with the later)…lol
Lyme is no joke! Glad you got it all taken care of!
When hiking just north of I-10, there was a guy “just out for a hike” with
a 6 ft bent steel pipe on his back and a spider neck tattoo- a little scary, since he was asking questions like are you hiking alone, and do you have an emergency beacon,
along with the other standard pct questions. I didn’t ask what the pipe was
for, and I told him I was with a group that was behind me (I wasn’t) , and started hiking faster, keeping more than 6ft distance. That motivated me to hike to the next good site a
ways away, the windmill farm, where I pitched my tent in a slightly
sheltered spot.
Can’t a guy just enjoy a walk in the desert with his metal pipe?