Pacific Crest Trail Hiker Horror Stories (2024 Survey)

While completing the Pacific Crest Trail Hiker Survey, hikers share the moment(s), if ever, 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 have the luxury of dictating every aspect of their hikes. Nature’s indifference, unexpected weather, or a poorly timed road crossing can all result in hikers quickly becoming in over their heads (or dead).

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).

Notes on the Data

• This year, there were 764 completed surveys. Hiking next year? Sign up to take the survey here.
• The Pacific Crest Trail and thru-hiking generally use acronyms and jargon. If anything is unclear, the thru-hiker glossary may help. 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).
• More detailed posts focused on PCT Gear (including breakdowns of women-specific and couples’ gear), PCT Resupply, PCT Demographics, and PCT Advice are in the works (or already published). If you would like to be notified of new surveys, click here.

The Horror of Weather

• Ten miles (16 km) from Canada, I was camping in a thunderstorm. My tent site flash-flooded, all of my gear got soaked, and it was so cold.

• I hid from a lightning/hail storm just past Chicken Spring Lake, just below the tree line. The lightning was so close that we saw it strike a tree.

• During a two-day rain period in Washington, I was completely soaked and freezing cold. Almost all my gear was wet (I could only keep my sleeping bag and fleece dry); my fingers could barely move, and my phone’s touchscreen wouldn’t respond anymore. At night, I laid half-naked in my sleeping bag while freezing cold.

• During a thunderstorm in the Sierra. There was lightning all around and large hail coming down. I ended up getting stage one hypothermia. I got warm by setting up my tent and taking out my emergency blanket.

• Northern Washington right before the Canadian border. One of the first big rain storms of the shoulder season hit, with freezing temperatures and snow overnight. Many of us were caught unprepared, and much of our gear was soaked. It was the only time I was seriously concerned about hypothermia.

• During 36 hours of freezing rain in Washington, I lost movement of my hands and was showing signs of hypothermia. If I had been solo hiking, I don’t know what I would have done as I was getting to the point of being unable to continue hiking.

The Horror of Terrain

• I took a huge slide on the backside of Forester Pass (NOBO) which was terrifying.

• Snow chutes near Tahquitz Peak were absolute no-fall zones, and I was without an ice axe and sharing a pair of microspikes with my friend. Being wet and cold as night approached on San Jacinto Peak was unsettling.

• There were some scary river crossings where you couldn’t see the bottom, and the rocks were slippery. I would walk up and down the banks, looking for a way around, but in the end, I would have to take a deep breath and ford on. At an unnamed creek right before camp, I crossed alone, lost my footing at the end, and lunged for the plants along the banks to catch myself.

• I slipped down a steep slope and caught myself on a branch, but I lost a pole that I watched keep sliding till I couldn’t see it. Many trees I would have hit some body part on.

• I tend to get a bit clumsy with my steps when I’m tired, and this prompted genuine concern at a couple of spots on the trail where blowdowns or unruly bushes required maneuvering over the edge of very steep drop-offs to get around those obstacles. Had I stumbled, there was no margin of error to recover.

• Goat Rocks Trail was super sketchy and sloping with loose rocks. Scary.

The Horror of Snow

• Bear Creek Crossing (in the Sierra), the first week of June, was dangerous and felt unsafe. My feet froze after the crossing, and I had to jog to reheat them as I felt like I would get frostbite otherwise.

• Ironically, the day after Forester, when I thought I was going to be fine on the high passes. Coming down Glen Pass was one of the scariest hours of my life due to the steep, snowy slope, which I couldn’t see the bottom of because of how convex the slope was. My hiking partner stayed with me the whole time and talked me down the boot track laid by a 7-foot giant. I do not have a fear of heights, but the knowledge that one wrong step could cause me to fall a very long way made me inhale and exhale through every moment until I was off that slope. The worst part was no one had been talking about Glen Pass in these terms, and other hikers around us were similarly shaken up.

• I had to self-arrest on the descending switchbacks on the mountain after Baden Powell. My microspikes didn’t hold in the snow, and I almost fell about 500 ft / 150 m to hit the pines below. It would have broken every bone I have or killed me. Luckily, I got my ice axe in and stopped the slide. It was the scariest moment on trail ever.

• The only time I felt particularly unsafe was when I started sliding downhill at the beginning of the snowy section of Fuller Ridge. I didn’t have a handle on how slick the snow actually was, and it caught me by surprise. After digging my fingers into the snow and letting out a long string of curses, I managed to stop my slide. I was much more careful about my footing after that.

• I lost control during a glissade and fell uncontrollably. It was my fault for glissading on too-hard snow. Thankfully, I did not break any bones, but I did get pretty scraped up.

• The entire Sierra, I wish I’d gone to a snow skills session before the trail.

The Horror of Hitchhiking

• I had a sketchy hitch trying to get from North Bend to Seattle. They were speeding while my friend and I were sitting crammed on one seat in the back, not engaging much in conversation and behaving very oddly. I was getting bad vibes the whole ride, and I thought there was a good chance something awful might happen to us.

• I got a ride in the back of a pickup from a trail angel that was drinking on a windy road.

• I had the worst hitchhike of my life from Yreka to Etna with a truly terrible man who wanted me to feel unsafe and said the world’s most misogynistic things about female hikers.

• Drivers of hitches using their phones while driving.

• I hitchhiked down from Kearsarge Pass (Onion Valley), and the guy driving drove crazy, approaching all the curves at the highest possible speed and slamming his brakes at the very last moment.

• Hitch into South Lake Tahoe. The driver was on something mind-altering, and I didn’t feel safe in the car. I hopped out as soon as I reasonably could, but it was more time in the car than I’d like.

The Horror of Humans

• Another hiker who had been harassing women kept camping with us.

• I had just begun hiking in the Sierras and hadn’t seen anyone since 1 PM. I crossed a major stream alone and was already feeling sketched out. That night, I camped alone and heard a loud grunting sound. I was sure it was a bear and was shaking from fear. All of a sudden, a man began screaming in the valley. Every few minutes, he would start screaming as if he were in immense pain. There was nothing I could do as it was dark. I was a solo woman hiker and heard the grunting in the woods. I put my earbuds in and tried my best to fall asleep. I later discovered the grunting noise was a grouse call, but I do not know about the screaming man.

• When solo camping, a guy came and cowboyed next to me despite there being ample space elsewhere. He muttered and sang in his sleep and pooped one meter from my tent. Gave me a general sense of unease.

• I was hiking alone, and a man who was hiking really slowly started gaining on me really fast. He asked questions I didn’t like and then seemed to hide behind a tree.

• Night hiking on the Aquaduct. It may be because I’m pretty afraid of the dark, but a truck kept driving by, slowing down a bit, then speeding off. It did that for a few hours.

• I took the Baden-Powell road walk at about the same time as a sketchy, well-known hiker who had been arrested for threatening violence and entering a female hiker’s tent. I witnessed some mentally unwell behavior of his that kept me on edge until town.

The Horror of Town

• A homeless man threatened me with a manchette while camping in the Chester, California, town park.

• Towns and communities were heavy on ‘Do Not Trespass’ signs, which made me uneasy, also, whenever people decided to start firing guns for target practice on or near the trail.

• An unknown man was screaming for help at Walker Pass at midnight.

• One ride where we were threatened by a “trail angel” by the Acton KOA.

• I tried to do eggs in a microwave in Idyllwild, which caused the microwave to explode, which ejected a plate that took a chunk out of my foot, requiring stitches. The taxi driver who picked me up to go to the hospital in the middle of the night was (I believe) both high and exhausted. He ended up pulling into the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere to go to sleep at 2 am. I then ended up driving the taxi back to Idyllwild. I wish I were kidding. Being in that field at 2 am was hands down when I felt most unsafe.

• There was a time when a man was screaming that he had a gun and was going to kill everyone. Rangers were separately looking for a man with a knife who had flashed and followed two female hikers and tried to get into their tent.

The Horror of Animals

• A bear terrorized our camp at Chimney Creek Campground while other hikers practiced unsafe food storage.

• I had a black bear encounter at night near Lake Tahoe, just after entering the Granite Chief Wilderness. I had my bear can down the hill, away from camp. I woke to some rustling noises, and for the next couple of hours, I lay awake, frozen in my quilt, listening to the bear wander around camp, making a ruckus. I saw it at one point from my tent in the moonlight, pretty close. I’m glad other hikers were camping near me. I would have been losing my mind if I had been alone like I usually am. Let’s just say that I bought bear spray in Truckee (California), and I felt a lot safer.

• I scared a group of six bears eating berries just outside Seiad Valley, about half a mile from where I was camping (alone). They took off down the ridge, but I was terrified they would come back for my food later that night.

• I was in my tent, alone, and a bear would not stop circling my campsite. It took hours to get it to leave, and it came back in the middle of the night, forcing me to pack up and hike out at 1:00 am.

• I was solo night-hiking with my headphones in. Just after I got to camp and set up my cowboy, I heard a mountain lion that sounded like it was right outside our camp and another not far away on the other side. I frantically set up my tent, but the two called back and forth on both sides of our camp for a few hours. I can’t believe I hiked right past them all by myself with my headphones in during the dead of night. I didn’t night hike with music after that encounter.

• When a very aggressive bee swarm attacked us and another hiker was severely stung.

The Horror of Fire

• During some Northern California fires, I was anxious, especially when we wouldn’t have service for an extended period and couldn’t check if the fires were getting closer to us.

• Road walking as part of fire reroutes. Having ash falling from a nearby fire.

• Running into the Dunomore Fire at the California/Oregon border. We were 5 mi / 8 km away from the fire and could see the flames.

• There were some windy nights where it was tough to find safe campsites due to dead trees in endless burn zones of NorCal and Oregon.

• Throughout burn zones, I had to walk through many areas with widowmakers while high wind gusts blew. I also had to sleep directly under widowmakers a couple of times, which made for anxious nights. My scariest night was in town in Trout Lake, where I got stranded during a stage two evacuation. There were no emergency services to evacuate hikers, and the sky was a dark red, with the fire less than four miles away.

• I woke up to ash on my tent and did not know where the fire was.

Other Horrors

• Night hiking up to Crater Lake from the Mazama campground so I could catch the sunrise over the lake. I was completely alone, and camping wasn’t allowed on that trail, so I knew nobody would hear if I cried for help. The sunrise wasn’t even that spectacular. Not worth the effort.

• The wind in Tehachapi, California almost blew me off a mountain.

• I was hiking solo in the desert near a road. A guy arrived in a truck, left, and came back. He was walking around, and it just made me feel uneasy. However, he didn’t say anything to me—I just felt particularly aware that I was a solitary female hiking in a country that allows guns. I also encountered a mountain lion while solo hiking and had to scare it off—but I felt more scared of the man than of the mountain lion.

• Primarily due to heights, tripping on rocks next to a cliff (which constantly happens to me due to being clumsy), creepy guy in town coming up to me and asking me random questions until my trail family showed up and saved me, sketchy hitches with no seatbelts, rattlesnakes, waking up with a damp sleeping bag due to condensation (hypothermia fears), sketchy stream crossings, etc. Most are unfounded, but many are real fears, especially being a woman. But you will not go astray if you keep your head and make smart decisions.

• Lightning storm above Palisades Resort, 36°F/2°C and rainy at Chinook Pass with a potentially hypothermic hiking partner.

• It was early evening, and I passed a sign warning that habituated bears were active in the area. It was heavily wooded, so I saw “bears” behind every trunk. None of them were real, though.

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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