Journey to the PCT: Ripping the Bandaid Off

In my last post, I talked a bit about my initial research into new gear. Well, I finally started making investments. Boy, has it been painful – great backpacking gear is pricey! There is a saying in the industry, “Buy once, Cry once” which I never fully appreciated until now. Here are a few of the items I am investing in:

1. After much analysis (and maybe some paralysis), I bought a new sleeping bag. It’s Western Mountaineering’s 20F AlpinLite Sleeping Bag. My wallet and I both shed a tear when I pushed the purchase button, but I’m hoping it’s the right move. While many people talk a big game about sleeping quilts, and they are right to do so because the weight to warmth ratio is high, I am often cold when I camp and felt I really needed a sleeping bag with a hood that was fully enclosed. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I went camping and didn’t wake up in the middle of the night cold. As such, I decided it was worth it to invest in something that was both cozy (mummy shape), warm (850 fill down!) and ultralight (1 lb 13 oz). Getting warmth and weight at a premium has it’s costs and now I understand. Hopefully I love it and use it for at least a decade (which is how long my current sleeping bag has lasted).
2. An Ursack (with an Opsak): The gold standard for keeping food safe and away from bears and other critters has been for a long time a bear box, most provided by the company Bear Vault. Unfortunately they are quite bulky and weigh 2.5lbs (at least the one I currently own). So, after many conversations and research rabbit holes, I decided to finally get an Ursack, which is a new solution that is allowed on the PCT pretty much everywhere but the High Sierra in California. Ursacks are rip-proof bags and in combination with an Opsak which is an odor protecting liner, is supposed to be as good (or maybe just good enough?) to protect against bear intrusion. Plus, they only weigh 13.8oz. Saving over 1.5lbs of weight is no small matter!
3. A new sleeping pad: I went with the NeoAir XTherm NXT Sleeping Pad which is supposed to be one of the lightest and warmest pads on the market. Since I run cold, this also felt like a good investment. I have a bigger Therm-a-rest pad already which I love, which I will continue using for frontcountry (car) camping. This model weights just 15.5 oz, compared to my current sleeping pad which is 1.8 lbs. More importantly, I’m looking to reduce bulk.

So from the 3 choices above, I should be able to shave about 3.7 lbs off of my base weight.

Backpackers get pretty obsessed with the idea of shaving off ounces and bragging about their base weights. I am definitely not at that level yet but I am starting to see how it all comes together. For example, let’s assume you are carrying 3L of water which weighs 6.6 lbs. Then you are carrying a week’s worth of food, assuming you eat 2lbs of food a day, that’s 14 lbs. So on your heaviest day of the hike (day 1), your consummables weigh 20.6lbs without anything else. Ultralight hikers try to get their base weight (everything else) under 10 lbs, so that on day 1 you are only carrying up to 30lbs. Lightweight backpackers aim for under 20lbs. At the rate I’m going with my gear, I will probably end up around 15lbs for base weight, bringing my heaviest day to about 35lbs. You aren’t supposed to carry more than 20% of your weight, which for me would be about 27lbs. So I do need to work on shaving off some more.

As such, I’m probably going to end up getting a Zpack lightweight pack which should shave another 2.18lbs at least off my current pack, and a Durston tent which should shave about 1.7lbs off of my current tent. Together, thats another 4 lbs of weight off, bringing me to 31lbs all in. I’m not sure how I can really go lighter than that, unless I carry less food or hike for less days at a time.

Anyway, it’s expensive but should hopefully lead to more enjoyable backpacking for many years to come.

I’m planning to test all of this gear on the West Coast Trail, which kicks off June 2. I finally made the ferry and shuttle reservations required for this logistically complex journey. See the details below:

The start and end points of the trail are quite remote, and I’m going to be doing this journey without a car so I am using the shuttle service which only runs once a day. Combining that with the ferry times between Vancouver the Vancouver Island and you have yourself a lot of logistics! I explored taking the sea plane or the passenger ferry Hullo, but ultimately decided to ferry in to Nanaimo, and then out through Victoria. I’m planning to do the hike in 5 nights / 6 days, which is probably 1 more day than is really necessary, but given the tide tables and that I want to both enjoy myself and stress-test nearly a week’s worth of food on the trail, that’s what I’m going with. I suppose if I am going very fast and want to be done with it I can try and take an earlier ferry back home.

Finally, when truly mapping out each week of the PCT, I realized that I probably need to start the hike a few days early to give myself appropriate buffer time in the end. I want to end by Labor Day, and since I might need to be on an airplane by September 10th. By bumping up my start date to July 26 from July 31 I can get some more wiggle room in. This is what the trip is starting to look like:

This timeline estimates it will take me about 42 days (6 weeks) to hike 530 miles, inclusive of approximately 3 zero days (no hiking). So that’s about 13.5 miles a day on average, which for most thru-hikers is probably slow but since I’m new to this and the Washington section is quite mountainous, I am being conservative to start.

So that’s the story for now. I’m picking up a bunch of my gear this week and then will be traveling abroad for 3 weeks. When I get back in mid-May, I’ll finish packing up for the West Coast Trail and getting ready for summer hiking mode! I haven’t even talked about dehydrating food and testing out trail meals, which is the next hurdle I’ll be working through. Stay tuned!