Becoming used to “trail indignities”

There are a whole host of experiences and encounters on the trail that I call “trail indignities.” All-at-once through-hikers presumably can get accustomed to these in the first parts of their hike and then just accept, tolerate, or not even notice such things thereafter. For me, it took several years to be able to shrug off, expect, and accept such indignities. Some remain very unpleasant but having experienced them before and/or expecting them reduces the impact. And each year, the choice of section to hike, as well as the time of year to hike it, can be made with respect to avoiding or encountering certain types of indignities.

On the other hand, while on the trail facing some of the worst of these indignities, I’ve often had the thought, “I’m never hiking this section again!” And while a single-year through hiker may have the peace of mind of once-and-done, I know in the back of my mind that I will be hiking this section again in the future! (Because I plan to keep hiking the whole trail multiple times.) However, returning to a section after many years have passed has one forget the specific worst parts, and thus become willing to do it again!

Here is my list. Others surely have their own lists. Some of these items don’t occur too often, perhaps 1% or 5% of the time, while others are more common, perhaps 50% or 90% of the time. Again, it greatly depends on the trail section and time of year.

Mosquitos. In some sections in the early season just as snow is melting or just after, the swarms of mosquitos that follow you down the trail can be almost emotionally debilitating. (Some days I would have to wait to find a rocky outcrop with a strong wind in my face in order to take off my head-net to eat or drink — and even then they all clung to the back of my shoulders hiding from the wind and waiting for their next chance!). I now prefer not to carry repellent, instead using full-cover clothing with gloves and and head-nets if needed. But in the early years I did carry repellent — either the DEET variety or the scented variety (which I always worried would attract bears). I learned to hike some mosquito-prone sections late in the season instead, although then you may have less water availability.

Bitting flies. Have driven me to tears on some sections! Again, time of year helps and also full-cover clothing. Repellent never seemed to work.

Circling flies. Not sure their exact name, but they circle around you at a distant 4-foot radius and annoy you as you hike. Sometimes dissuade them with my hiking poles!

Wasps. They are around and rare nests near the trail can be passed quickly without incident. During 27 years of hiking the trail, I only had one stinging incident. There was a wasp nest tens of yards off the trail that I inadvertently walked near while heading into the woods. First noticed it after my bare upper ankle was stung, then I ran, with a few dozen wasps following and several sitting on my fleece jacket sleeve tying to sting my arms through the fleece. I made the mistake of trying to brush them off and one circled up and stung my eyelid. Wasps will also congregate slowly one-by-one if you are eating lunch and they discover your food, water bottles, and other gear as good places to congregate. At a certain concentration of visitors, time to pack everything up gingerly without getting strung and move along!

Ants. Not a problem once in a tent or if moving around a campsite. But lying on the ground eating lunch or taking an afternoon siesta, ants will be around! Many are small, some are large, like an inch long. But any size, even just one or two crawling inside my pants legs or under my shirt gets annoying. If too many around, will have to tighten up and adjust my clothing to close off points of ingress! And if an ant gets trapped under my clothing and gets pressed upon while I’m trying to shake it out, it can bite, painfullyl! (Once had an ant get caught under my pants legs while I was actually walking, and got bit on the thigh while in motion. That led to one of my biggest ever cursings-out-loud!)

Overgrown trail segments. Some parts of the trail are seriously overgrown with vegetation, not having been maintained. You may have to forcibly push your way through thick foliage, maybe not even seeing the ground. Sometimes the foliage is prickly, usually just annoying. Gets tiring if necessary for miles and miles. If it just rained or its early morning with dew, you can become absolutely soaked from head to toe from all the water being shed onto you as you pass.

Eroded traversing trail segments. In places where the traversing trail is cut into a very steep hillside, as the trail is eroded and not maintained, you may have only a few inches of flat width on which to walk on an otherwise steep slope, or even just a few footholds to get across an erosion gap. A slide or misstep could mean a steep plunge downhill to one side. It can be downright harrowing or even scary. You get used to it and gain confidence to just proceed, but it took me a number of years.

Trees fallen across the trail. Some sections get large amounts of tree fall during winter storms, and if hiked before spring-summer trail maintenance crews get to them, or if trail crews have not been through in some years, mean you have to get across repeated fallen trees in the trail. Sometimes its just step-over. Sometimes it’s crawl under, with or without being able to keep your backpack on. Sometimes its tens of yards on an off-trail detour imprinted by many others who have gone before, maybe requiring a steep up-climb-around or down-climb-around followed by the opposite. Sometimes you have to climb over on hands and knees weaving between broken foliage and sharp pointy objects. It can really slow you down and become frustrating if required regularly every several minutes for hours or days at a time. The worst I encountered was northern Oregon in early season after some severe winter storms — I counted literally 800 trees across the trail over a 3-day period of hiking.

Fire-charred trail segments. Some trail segments have had a recent fire pass through. You can’t really camp in these segments, the danger of a weakened burned-out tree falling on you in the night is too great. So you have to keep going in the evening, you can’t stop to camp until you come to a clearing or green trees. The trail can be harder to follow with all manner of burned-out mess obscuring the trail — in the worst cases have had to resort to GPS tracking to follow the trail through several miles of burned-out mess. Plus there can be a lot of black soot on everything, eventually getting on your clothes and gear. One segment I had to crawl under or bodily climb over about twenty huge burned-out tree trunks along a very steep-hillside traversing segment of trail that prevented going off-trail around each tree. Over the course of a few hours of this, my clothing was completely soot-covered.

Heavy water carries and dehydration. Some sections are notorious for lack of water and long distances between water sources. This can add several pounds to your pack for awhile! It’s not fun to carry lots of water when the “norm” on the trail is perhaps just a quart or two depending on section and time of year. On many sections you don’t need to carry water at all because water sources are so frequent and plentiful along the trail. (See my choice of section page for detailed section-by-section notes on water issues from a PCT guidebook, plus there are many information sources that can provide one with needed water info.) The most I’ve carried is 5 quarts to cover 20 miles in desert heat. Also the case that I like to “dry camp” away from water sources so will often carry the extra water for dinner and overnight for some miles after a water source before camping. Lots of other water-related advice is available, like “camel-up” at a water source by drinking your fill, not eating so much, and hiking at night to reduce water needs. Dehydration and heat stroke are not fun! For the most part I was able to avoid them but there were a few incidents due to misunderstanding or not thinking ahead.

Drinking stagnant water. Most places on the trail have reasonably plentiful sources of running water in the form of streams and springs, although there are many segments where one must carry enough water between sources for 10-15 miles, a few up to 20 miles. It’s always a good idea to get water from a flowing source. Or water from lakes is also a common and acceptable source — especially the flowing outlet creek of a lake. (Of course, all sources everywhere on the trail should be treated with either a water filter and/or iodine tablets.) However, there are moments when one has run out and needs water quickly, or the normal available sources on that segment are not flowing but stagnant. A small pond is typical, or perhaps a cement or metal water tank, tower, or well. Or a stagnant runoff area below a meadow. Or even dirty snow on the side of the trail. Good planning and extra water-carrying capacity can help to avoid this, but still, I’ve had to drink from stagnant sources many times. Sometimes I will treat such sources with both filer and tablets. But regardless, it always makes me nervous. In the end, I cannot attribute any illness to drinking stagnant water, only an emotional dis-ease.

Stream and river fords. Most streams and rivers on the trail do not have bridges and some are deep enough to require wet fords rather than just stepping across on exposed rocks. Wet fords are a normal part of hiking the tail. I started in the early years by carrying “water shoes” to put on when making fords, so that my hiking boots would not get wet. When I transitioned to using trail running shoes, I found that fording in my shoes without socks was acceptable, the shoes don’t retain much water and dry quickly, the socks can be put back on and don’t absorb too much water from the wet shoes. Also, depending on time of year, some streams can be dangerous to ford, swollen with snowmelt run-off, particularly in the High Sierra and also when the trail circumnavigates around some prominent mountains in Oregon and Washington. Aside from those, most fords I’ve encountered on the trail have been calf-high or knee-high, with a few waist-high in modest-speed water. The water is always cold! Stream crossings in the High Sierra in early season are a whole different story which you can read about elsewhere — I have always hiked the High Sierra in late summer. Being safe crossing streams is an acquired skill which I slowly developed over the years. Have been very cautious in general, particularly as a solo hiker without companions to help. That means I generally go into the water even if a nearby log across the steam is used by many others — falling off a log at some height above the water is not something I want to risk. And for some particularly challenging fords with fast water, I might spend up to a half-hour scouting up and down river for the safest place to ford.

Bridges washed away. Some bridges over streams or rivers are mere conveniences and when washed away by a recent flooding event, the stream or river can still be forded relatively easily. But in other cases with deep river gorges it becomes quite a project to safely climb down steep banks, ford, and climb back up the other side.

Rain. Of course, rain is an indignity common to most backpacking. On the PCT, sometimes I’ve had rain for several days in a row. It gets old and you just get used to everything being wet all the time! Some times of year allow you to have better chance of avoiding rain, but in Washington and Oregon it can be multiple days of rain any time of year. If you really want to avoid rain and have the luxury of choosing when to start a section based upon near-term weather forecasts or post-rainy-season timing in parts of California, that can help. A few times I’ve had brief rain on the most unlikely high-desert sections after the California rainy season is supposed to be over — with knowing glances to a passing hiker signaling “pinch me, is it really raining?” If the rainfly were left at home that trip to save weight, my sleeping bag would be modestly wet by the morning.

“Rigamarole” segments of trail. By this I mean circuitous rambling segments of trail that seem to take huge amounts of extra distance and up-and-down to get where they are going. If one is tired or impatient or out of water in the heat, such rigamarole can be frustrating. I’ve several times cursed the trail builders out loud in such segments! Often such rigamarole segments are the result of private property owners having being unwilling to grant an easement as the trail was being built, or other routing constraints that prevented the trail from taking the the most logical direct route. My “PCT ultimate rigamarole award” goes to six miles of California Section E just before the trail reaches Highway 138 and the “Hikertown” trail angel hostel. This segment passes through private land and presumably a deal was struck to route the trail a certain way in exchange for the easement. So instead of heading directly downhill and down-valley from Pine Canyon Road to the highway, the trail spends six miles going up, down, around, up again, around again, north, south, east, west, until it finally reaches the highway. Meanwhile I expected a straightforward downward-only jaunt to the highway and didn’t carry enough water in the desert heat for such an extended rigamarole. Runner-up to this award is the descending trail just before reaching Snow Creek in California Section B, as the trail comes down from Fuller Ridge in the San Jacinto mountains. The tiny settlement of Snow Creek is visible just below, yet the trail takes miles of back-and-forth across the mountainside, not gaining anything and even going up in elevation before reaching a road. Hard to imagine why the trail was routed that way! A third example of rigamarole is the 20 miles in a wide arc before and after the Highway 78 “scissors” crossing in California Section A, including lots of back-and-forth in the San Filipe hills instead of a direct northward crest-top route that would go through private property. A few other segments in southern California would also make my rigamarole list. Still, one can be grateful that it was possible to route a continuous trail at all in some of these places, with so much constraining private property around — and ultimately thankful for private property owners to have allowed what they have.