Pacific Crest Trail

The remarkable Pacific Crest Trail meanders for 2,663 miles from the Mexican border to the Canadian, following the first ranges inland from the Pacific – the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades – through California, Oregon and Washington states.

Enjoy scenery which varies – slowly – from severe Southern desert to the high, er… snowy Sierra Nevada, to the great volcanoes and Crater Lake of the Cascades.

Given its huge length, most people only tackle sections of the trail – most famously the high Sierra Nevada round Mount Whitney, King’s Canyon NP and Yosemite, or around those great volcanic remains, the high ridgeline of Sky Lakes Wilderness, Crater Lake, Mount Hood  and Mount Rainier.

Grippingly written up in Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild - A Journey from Lost to Found, and the 2014 movie of that name. Not the best literature ever, and somewhat artificially drawn together, but an at times moving read with hugely evocative descriptions of the Californian and Oregon landscape.

Churchill Clarke, proselytizer of the Trail, believed that time spent in the wilderness provided a “lasting curative and civilizing value”. Right on both counts, although some may be surprised by the second benefit…

This is a very tough walk if you are walking long distances in often high, and always remote mountains, on which you will have to be self-sufficient and where water can be very scarce. Come prepared.

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