Dear PCTA Community:
I’m proud to present our latest Strategic Plan. For the next four years, this plan will guide the Pacific Crest Trail Association in its mission to protect, preserve and promote the Pacific Crest Trail while strengthening our ability to meet ongoing and future challenges.
The plan, recently ... Read more
Safely and successfully hiking the Pacific Crest Trail requires some basic survival skills as well as a keen awareness of your surroundings. You can’t possibly plan for everything, but you can easily prepare yourself with quality gear and enough knowledge to identify dangerous situations. Keep reading to learn the five ... Read more
When backpacking, your pack weight is probably going to be the heaviest at the beginning of your trip. Why? All that food, of course! Lightening your pack and fueling your body go hand-in-hand, creating a win-win situation for your stomach and your shoulders.
While “eating weight” on a backpacking trip ... Read more
By Justin Brimer, PCTA trail crew technical advisor
As trail maintainers, we use many different tools to take care of the PCT. If you are a regular PCTA volunteer, you know how fun and rewarding it is to show up—rain or shine—to dig, lop, lift, sweat and get dirty for ... Read more
By Krystian “Snap” Repolona, 2017 P3 Hiker
“You can’t quit today. You can quit tomorrow, but at midnight, tomorrow becomes today, and you can’t quit today. You can quit tomorrow.”
I vividly remember seeing these words written on a shelter wall after a notably long day on my Appalachian ... Read more
... Read more“Nothing can be done well at a speed of forty miles a day …. Far more time should be taken. Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature’s
This is a guest post by John Dittli, a 34-year resident of the High Sierra who works part-time as a snow surveyor for the California Department of Water Resources. His day job is managing his photography business. His award winning book, Walk the Sky: Following the John Muir Trail is ... Read more
If you plan on hiking or horseback riding 500 or more continuous miles along the PCT, in a single trip, we can issue you a PCT Long Distance Permit. The application for 2014 went online today. Thanks to our partners at the federal agencies for allowing for this important ... Read more
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