THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU START

 

 

12 MONTHS BEFORE THE TRAIL

 

You have somehow hear of the trail and you got hooked with the idea of walking those 4279 km / 2659 miles.  One year before you hit the trail you should be starting to plan your budget. Do you have enough funds to take of 6 months and spending about 6’000€ without having a regular income.

You have? great!

You dont? Dont worry, there are a lot of ways saving money and spending less than the average tru-hiker.

If you dont have all the gear you need you can start looking for used stuff or hope to find a good deal online or at your local outdoor-shop.

 

I started to tell my family and friends what I plan to do about 1 year prior to my starting date. But most of them didnt believed my right away that I really would do it.

 

 

 

6 MONTHS BEFORE THE TRAIL

 

 

If you want to hike the Pacific Crest Trail you need a permit, the permits a given away by the Pacific Crest Trail Association  www.pcta.org Those permits are released in two waves, the first starts the 1. of November and 35 permits per day are available. The second wave was the 17th of January for another 15 permits per day if you havent got your wish-date on the first try. You have to be very fast be online the minute after the registration opens because a lot of people are looking for the best dates. I wanted a late start date so it was not that bad, but within 1 hour late march and april  where gone and their system was at the edge of colapsing. I had to re-enter 4 times to finally get trough the process.

 

Apart from getting your permits you should have a lot of your gear or at least be reading about it in blogs or elsewhere on the internet or in printed media.

 

 

3 MONTHS BEFORE THE TRAIL

 

After many hours of reading blogs and looking at reviews and vlogs I started buying the materials I needed for the trail. In fact I had everyting I needed for the trail, but most of the stuff was old, worn and not the lightest. So I decided that I’ll need better and lighter things. Because here in Luxemburg there are no outdoor-shops with an ultra-lightweight section I bought 90% of what I needed online.

 

You need around 4-6 months for the trail, so if you don’t have enough vacation days from work you can either ask for an unpaid leave or just quit.  Because I wont stop travelling after the PCT I did quit me job ( 4 months before my start date ) . I had a two months notice because I worked there for almost 7 years. I worked 3 weeks longer than I needed to give my employer enough time to look after someone new to do my job. And finally I wanted 3 weeks prior my start date to have time to check my setup and replace things if needed.

 

I booked my flight, the first one-way flight I ever booked, and it feels kind of strange but good 🙂

After I got the confirmation of the flight I took care of the 3 nights I am in San-Diego and asked Scout & Frodo who’ll pick me up from the airport, let me sleep in their backjard and drive me to the southern terminus the morning of my start. You’ll read more about them soon.

 

 

 

1 MONTH BEFORE THE TRAIL

 

Things are getting serious now. I am happy that I started early with the organisation and I have already everything I need. I would recommand this strategy to everyone looking to do the PCT because everything I have to worry about now is not getting too nervous.