Lon “Halfmile” Cooper on Mt. Whitney after a JMT thru-hike.
Beloved map maker and volunteer Lon “Halfmile” Cooper is joining PCTA as our first volunteer blogger. Lon generously donated his ‘Pacific Crest Trail News’ website and will continue writing about the trail at PCTA.org/blog.
The need for PCTnews.com became obvious to me during a long section hike across northern California in 2008. Several wildfires closed large sections of the Pacific Crest Trail that year, but it was difficult for a hiker on the trail to find accurate, timely information. The information was out there, but often not accessible to hikers.
PCTnews.com was started a few years later in 2010 and became an important and popular information source for PCT hikers. PCTnews.com did have shortcomings – it’s impossible for a single blogger to know everything that is happening along the Pacific Crest Trail.
The Pacific Crest Trail Association significantly improved its role as an information source for hikers with the hiring of a Trail Information Specialist [Jack “Found” Haskel, Class of 2006] in 2011. The PCTA has been providing excellent, timely, and useful information for hikers since then.
It’s exciting for me to donate PCTnews.com to the PCTA and help create an even stronger information source for hikers at pcta.org.
– Lon “Halfmile” Cooper
Lon has been a friend and member of the PCTA for many years. As a volunteer driven organization, we’re thrilled to have such a quality writer and PCT expert on board. Lon has been making PCT detour maps and coordinating with us on various projects for a number of years. His other websites include: