The Worst Moments of the Pacific Crest Trail (2023 Survey)
During the Pacific Crest Trail Hiker Survey, in addition to sharing the scariest moments of their PCT thru-hikes, PCT hikers also share the lowest moment(s) of the trail.
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, to put it plainly, suck. And sometimes, it sucks a lot.
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.
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 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.
- I was trying to catch up with friends after getting off trail to visit with family, and I had a moment when I realized I wouldn’t be able to catch up. I was so lonely and somewhat heartbroken, knowing I likely wouldn’t see some of them ever again.
- Fighting with my partner and almost breaking up before, during, and after the trail.
- Every time I flipped, I had to say goodbye to a bunch of people, which interrupted the experience of a long, continuous hike.
- Feeling very defeated at not being able to keep up with anyone. While I enjoyed my alone time, I felt quite lonely when I didn’t belong to a group, even loosely.
- I became very lonely after Trail Days (I took a few zeroes after that as well) when I returned to the trail in Ashland. Very few people were still hiking, and I’d go days without seeing anybody going northbound. Maybe I’d see one or two in town but not always. Combining the smokiness, occasional bad weather, and the lack of people made me pretty miserable until I reached Washington and caught up with people.
Weather Woes
- Two different times, both weather-related. First was horrible snow near Belden; I slid 30 ft / 10 m on the side of a mountain. It was very scary, and I thought I was going to die. then I got drenched in the rain in Washington, and my tent flooded, and I thought I was going to get hypothermia.
- Going over Donahue Pass in a horrible hail/snow storm and having to cross icy, swollen rivers before I could find a spot to pitch my tent and try to warm up – I called it a day at 9:30 am.
- I had to call SOS and get rescued out of a lightning storm right outside Lassen National Park. I was around another person I didn’t know, and it was the worst storm I had ever seen. There was lightning striking within a couple hundred feet of me, and I thought I was going to die. Halfway through the storm, my tent also collapsed on me and completely flooded, soaking all of my insulating gear and making me hypothermic. I called SOS, and a ranger came to pick me up soon after, bringing me to town. I almost quit the trail that night.
- The indecision facing all hikers reaching Idyllwild about whether to attempt the snow or skip around. It was a tense and somewhat sad environment.
Unforeseen Sadness
- I found out that several family members had died, and I was days away from a road. I knew I could not make their funerals.
- I had a panic attack on the climb leaving Tehachapi. I was homesick, anxious, and overwhelmed and nearly quit my hike.
- In Etna, California, I had a call with my wife and determined that she was not doing well on her own, and I would have to leave the trail when I got to Ashland. I was sad and angry. But, the next day, I ran into a man who was back on trail for the first day since leaving the trail last year for almost identical reasons. Talking to this man was serendipitous. He talked me off the ledge and gave me hope that I’ll be back next year.
- A puppy was on the trail just before a road crossing in the Yakama Nation in Southern Washington. So much mange I thought it had been attacked, constantly scratching, it walked up to my partner and cowered and whined. We tried to flag a truck down, and it drove away. I spotted two other parties, tribal members picking huckleberries, and realized where we were. The pup was in bad shape, but here I was suddenly, a white Anglo savior, asking if anyone could take the puppy, which they declined. We started hiking, and at another dirt road in 50 yards, it turned left like it knew where it was going. I followed, but it picked up the pace and seemed to know where it was going. Then I saw “Beware Dogs” signs and knew better than to continue. I had to leave. I don’t think it will make it without a lot of care, and it wrecked me, absolutely to my core.
- It could be one of the fifteen times my shoulder dislocated, could be any of the five+ times I almost died by myself in the Sierra, the time I got my heart shattered into five billion pieces, climbing Whitney alone in a blizzard and having to self arrest five times on the descent, smashing my face open on San Jacinto also while alone, I could keep going.
- Taking the Greyhound bus from Bakersfield, California to Mount Vernon, Washington…DO NOT RECOMMEND.
- At VVR (Sierra), I found some homemade cookies (which were super exciting after eight nights on the trail in the snow)—I had four of them. Thirty minutes later, I started feeling strange; they were weed cookies. I was super stoned and got a massive headache. Label the food you leave in hiker boxes!
Sick and Injured
- After staying with a trail family in town for eleven days, recovering from an injury, I had to get back out there. That first day was so tough on my body; it was like starting at the southern terminus again, but this time without a friend and the excitement of starting the trail. I had grown so close to the family I was staying with, so the first couple of hours, I just cried often while hiking, wondering if I wanted to go out there hiking again. I barely saw any people that day and could not find a campsite, making it the day with the most miles I hiked on any day on the PCT! I felt so incredibly alone, and I was hurting mentally and physically that day.
- I spent a night constantly barfing into my vestibule during a windstorm that made my tent collapse multiple times. Not only did I need to restake my tent multiple times in the dark, in a windstorm, with terrible nausea and stomach pain, but I also had to catch the tent walls when they collapsed to keep them from falling into my vomit. I barely slept, but when I did fall asleep, it was with my arm outside the tent, holding my tent pole vertically to keep one half of the tent from collapsing onto me again. The next morning I learned that my fellow campers had heard me yaking all night (embarrassing!), but they left before I could recover and pack up. I was dehydrated and had zero energy left, but I had to haul myself to the next water source, 9 mi / 14 km down the trail. With less than a liter of water left after my terrible night, I hiked through the stomach pain and 90°F / 32°C heat until I got to the next cache, where I promptly took a long, crazy nap and rehydrated.
- In Crater Lake, Oregon, I got very sick and had to take several days off. My trail family got ahead of me, and then, after getting back on the trail for a couple of days, I was still too sick and had to EVAC myself. Then, I ended up off the trail for about two weeks.
- I randomly got ill one day and needed to stop with diarrhea constantly. This slowed me down, and I got to camp late and hungry. I ate and didn’t store my food properly, which caused a mouse to chew into my tent as I slept. The panic from waking to a mouse next to my face was upsetting.
- Getting giardia 18 mi / 29 km before Crater Lake. I have never felt so weak.
- Getting too thin and weak and almost passing out several times. I was throwing up because my body hated what I was feeding it.
- Going through the Three Sisters Wilderness (Oregon), my feet were growing, and as a result, my shoes bore a hole through my Achilles. It was getting so bad I was worried it would get to the tendon…I took my days slow and cut into my shoes to relieve pressure.
- I ate some goat cheese on the trail that I bought in Stehekin. I had terrible food poisoning for the next two days. I had stomach pain and diarrhea. This was while hiking through a difficult section alone in the Glacier Peak Wilderness. There were tons of blowdowns and still snow on sections of the trail. I slipped and fell while pushing through thick, wet brush early in the morning. I lay there on the ground, wet and cold, with stomach cramps and diarrhea. That was the only time I questioned why I was doing this trail.
- When I fell on the snow in Desolation Wildnerss and fractured a rib, I had to go home for 30 days to heal. I thought the hike was over, but it was not, and I returned. Then, my father-in-law died when I was on trail. Then, I got off the trail to be with my wife and family.
Desert Despair
- Emotionally, being so homesick in Julian, I thought I would quit already and leave my partner for the next six months. Physically, having heat exhaustion at the I-10 Oasis.
- I had to get off the trail early on (Big Bear) for nine days due to a foot injury. I had a pain in my second toe that had kept getting slowly worse over the last five days, and I thought it might be a stress fracture. I ended up having an inflamed tendon in my toe. Facing the uncertainty and possible disappointment of getting off the trail early was brutal—no one in my trail family had gotten off, so I felt completely alone with no one to relate to.
- Feeling physically exhausted in the desert heat with 4-500 miles (600-800 km) left and everyone saying I’m almost done.
- My dog had been chronically ill before my departure. I left the trail from Big Bear Lake to be with him for his last few weeks. I was four weeks behind when I returned to the trail, even with the last people leaving Campo. By then, it was way too hot in the desert. When my Altra Lone Peaks blew out near Green Valley, my sleeping pad was leaking, my phone wasn’t taking a charge, and the bugs were trying to eat me, the plants were trying to poke holes in me, the heat was trying to mummify me, and I couldn’t get anyone to stop when I tried to hitch into Palmdale, I just about quit.
- On the trail up Baden-Powell, despite leaving town that day, I spent the entire climb bawling my eyes out. Exhaustion, homesickness, and anxiety hit me all at once. I wasn’t emotionally in a good place to enjoy our ascent.
Sierra Sadness
- When my body wouldn’t keep up with the miles I felt I needed to do I just broke down 13 mi / 21 km before Donner Pass. I sat in the dirt, ate all my food, and cried for half a day. Just the thought of taking one more step made me want to scream.
- The day before Forester, we reached the last river crossing quite late. It was getting dark, and we hiked over a mile upstream in the snow until we found a spot. I could not feel my feet for an hour after crossing. We camped on the other side on a stoney patch. It was super windy, and my tent stakes didn’t hold. I got out to fix them three times; on the fourth time, the tent blew over me so aggressively that I was burritoed in the mesh and just tried to sleep that way. The next morning, my gear was frozen.
- Bailing out of the Sierra in a snowstorm and walking the road 14 mi / 22.5 km down into Lone Pine, knowing that a “conventional” thru-hike without flip-flopping would not happen for me this year.
- Controversial and ironic, but the Sierra was probably my mental low on the trail. My girlfriend and I skipped this section in June because of the snow. When we got to Snoqualmie Pass, we received news about a few fires further north that had closed parts of the PCT. So we decided to flip back to Truckee and finish the Sierra a little earlier. While she took some time off for trail burnout, I hiked the section between Mammoth Lakes and Kearsarge Pass on my own. I decided to do some big days because I just wanted to get it over with. Not a good idea. By the time I got to Glen Pass, I was almost out of food and felt mentally drained by the brutal pace I had set in the days prior. Underfed, I had to take six breaks in the final 1.5 mi / 2.4 km to the pass, which I normally never had to do. Every step was a battle. I felt like crying and questioned what the fuck I was doing there.
- We were the second group to enter the Sierra, with one person half a day ahead and a group half a day behind. There was only one set of footprints on the ground. All the rivers had 10 ft / 3 m of snow on top of them, so we ran out of water and then ran out of fuel trying to melt snow three days into the seven-day resupply. It never got above 35°F / 2°C, and I felt so alone. I think I bonked every single day of that resupply. My mind was in survival mode, trying to regulate my body temperature and food so we could get back to Cottonwood if we had to turn around, and Forester Pass was not doable. We saw evidence of recent avalanches everywhere. When we got to the Onion Valley Trailhead, I cried with relief and exhaustion, releasing a week of crushing fear. I couldn’t go back in.
- My lowest moment was three days heading into South Lake Tahoe. My tent flooded in a bad rainstorm on night 1; on night two, I camped with really nice trail angels at Richardson Lake, but they accidentally burned my quilt in their fire while trying to dry it out. On day three, I had to hike 27 mi / 44 km in the freezing rain – the trail was essentially a stream – because of no quilt and no bear can for Desolation Wilderness.
- Getting caught in an unexpected hail storm while I was already soaking wet going over Donohue Pass and then watching my hiking buddy almost get swept away in the water crossing.
NorCal Blues
- We broke trail from Burney Falls to Mount Shasta. It was snow-covered, we got lost, ran out of propane, took forever, fell into multiple tree wells, used our ice axes a couple of times, and then fell into a “creek.” Just glad we survived.
- I felt super burned out during a heatwave in NorCal, with temperatures over 100°F / 38°C for five days.
- I encountered 2 mi / 3.2 km of steep snow traverse north of Burney without preparation. Did not have spikes and was not mentally ready. That resulted in falling, being sore, bending a pole, and tearing a shirt sleeve – generally a miserable time.
- Getting heat exhaustion climbing out of Seiad Valley, then having a grief attack while contemplating SOS. So much ugly crying.
- I hiked in full rain gear and head net on a sunny 104°F / 40 °C day to avoid the mosquitoes I had been dealing with for two weeks. They were so incredibly bad that it was like psychological terror.
- I had just flipped from Wrightwood, California, because I was coming back from an injury and didn’t want to be in the desert so late in the season- and with the high snow year, I wanted to skip to NorCal to be in the bubble. Little did I know, it was so hot, 110°F / 43°C every day for a week or two, and taking siestas was not working for me. My heart was always beating irregularly, and I was losing the bubble once again because I wasn’t feeling well. My injury started coming back, and it was a long section; I turned around and took five zeros in Burney before going home because the heat exhaustion wouldn’t leave my body.
Oregon Melancholy
- After Fish Lake, there were three days of really bad mosquitos. On the first day, I was tired, electrolyte deficient, and was being eaten alive. I didn’t reach my planned camping spot and ended up camping on the side of the trail and crying in my tent.
- I broke down crying due to mosquitos in Oregon.
- During a stretch in Southern Oregon, I ran out of water due to poor planning. It was a 5-mi / 8-km walk through a burn area on top of a ridge to get to a 1-mi / 1.6-km spur to a small lake to get more. I was thirsty, upset, and already in a bad mindset from not even being halfway yet. I got to the lake, and if I sat in the shade, the mosquitos would attack me, but if I stayed in the sun, I felt in danger of getting some sun illness. Decided on the shade and sat and cried for a while. I didn’t feel like quitting, but I felt like I would never finish the hike. How could I have been hiking for so long and not even be halfway? How was I supposed to make it to the end when I was so beat up after 1,200 miles? It was miserable. I cried it out, and it was the first time I admitted to myself that I was getting tired of hiking.
- I just really struggled with the mosquitoes in Oregon. I felt constantly attacked by them all day long for nearly two weeks. I couldn’t stop to sit down, pee, or talk to anyone for almost that whole time. I kept taking time off to take a break from them and ended up going over budget and separating from other hikers. Do not underestimate mosquitoes!
- In Oregon, a swarm of ants chewed through my tent at 2 am (I counted 25 holes the next day), and since there were no other campsites within 3 mi / 5 km, I went back to sleep with ants crawling over me, my gear, and my tent. This was after I met my sister and her fiancé in Ashland, which made me extremely homesick, so I was already in a bad place mentally.
Washington Woes
- A mouse chewed into my tent (via the bathtub floor) during a torrential rainstorm in Glacier Peak. I woke up with my pad floating on water. It was below freezing; it was supposed to rain for three more days, and I was two days from town in either direction.
- We decided to do one of the last big climbs northbound in Washington, past Mica Lake, at the end of the day and camp at the top of the climb. The climb was 4 mi / 6.4 km, and there was no camping. We did 32 mi / 51.5 km and 8,200 ft / 2,500 m of vertical gain that day. I was behind my team members, convinced they’d find somewhere to stop beforehand. But as I approached the climb, I didn’t see them, even though it was getting dark. By the time I started the climb, it was 8:30 pm. I climbed the 40-something switchbacks in the dark, afraid to put in earbuds in case of animals at dusk, talking to myself for 1.5 hours of the climb. I was so tired, and the climb felt so unnecessary. I yelled into the dark, “I’m so fucking tired!” and cried. But there was nothing else to do but to keep going.
- I was completely soaked after three days of hiking alone in the rain on an overgrown trail in Glacier Peak Wilderness.
- Got caught in a thunderstorm and poured on while setting up camp in Washington. A pool formed under my tent, and I had to dig trenches so the water wouldn’t go above my bathtub. Everything got soaked, and I was still two long days out from town. The next morning, the rain did not let up, it got colder, and the trail was steep af and had turned into a river. I sobbed and promised myself I’d go home from the next town.
- Goat Rocks Wilderness – the weather was terrible (as it had been for the past two days), we saw no views, and I ended up crying in the rain.
- The last two miles (3.2 km) before Snoqualmie Pass. We took the alternate after several wet and cold days in the mountains. Knew our friends had gotten a hitch and were already warm and cozy in town. Had gotten my period that morning and had horrible cramps. Two miles (3.2 km) before town, you hit a road walk, which on a normal day would be fine, but that day, I lost it. I just wanted to be safe and warm, not walking along the side of a busy road with people staring at us from their cars. I saw a sign that read ‘Seattle’ and just wanted to throw my pack and poles off the bridge I was walking on, go straight to Seatac, and get the first plane home. It was the closest I ever came to quitting – but never quit on a rainy day, never quit before a warm meal, and girls (+ people who menstruate) NEVER quit on your period.
Quitting the Trail
- Getting back on the trail after healing from an injury around Idyllwild, I was destroyed emotionally. I missed my partner at home and couldn’t see the beauty and color in the world anymore. I got off the trail, and the weight off my shoulders was immediate. Never cried so hard in my life.
- Due to flip-flopping, I got into the Sierra late in my hike. Until Forester Pass, it was incredible, but after that, I was just so physically and mentally exhausted I felt that I could not enjoy the trail. That’s when I got off. I didn’t want to “waste” the experience of the Sierra, feeling like I did not appreciate it.
- I spent the afternoon in tears following my return to the trail via Kearsarge Pass. It had snowed a few feet the days/evening before, and my hiking partner from day one (we met at the monument) decided to finish her hike that morning. A cloud had moved into the basin, and it began snowing despite no snow in the forecast. I lost the trail and had to bushwack for about half a mile in deep snow to get back to the trail. I was cold, and everything was wet. If it had been easier to bail, I would have quit.
- Feeling like I wanted to quit for the first (and only) real time on the trail – ironically, this happened in Cascade Locks. I’d had hard moments before that, felt homesick before, etc, but this was the only true moment where I felt like I wanted to quit.
- I got to Bend, Oregon, and realized I would have to go home to avoid the fires. I could not afford to wait it out in a hotel to watch and see if the fires got better, and they did. Had I stayed, I could have continued north, but I had no way of knowing that then and was unwilling to take the financial gamble.
- I had to leave after just a week on the trail due to the weather not holding (San Jacinto was still closed, and we got snowed on/blown off the trail) and having caught a stomach bug in Mount Laguna.
- Having less than 200 mi / 320 km to go and wanting to be done. My body was ready to tap out, and I had to force myself to finish those final miles through sheer will.
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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