(Over)planning for the PCT: resupplies and water

Joal Hos
Mar 4, 2018
3 min read

Updated: Mar 25, 2018

With our Pacific Crest Trail adventure only 50 days away Jenny and I have been in a bit of panic mode! To quash some of those fears, we've been planning out our resupplies, places we're going to stop in town and one of our biggest fears: water.

Luckily for us, online resources are getting better and better which means that we're able to learn from others and make sure we're as prepared as we need to be for the hike. There are a couple of resources and we've used a lot of tools to plan out our hike, but I'll focus on the 3 main ones we have used so far.

Halfway Anywhere's resupply guide: What better way to learn than to listen to people who've succeeded in hiking the trail?! This guide is awesome because it covers such a broad range of subjects. At first we were quite worried about resupplying as we are coming from the UK, meaning if we needed to send loads of boxes in advance that was going to be a problem. We had gotten scared as we followed some people's social media profiles which made out they were operating a delivery business from home in order to stay fed on trail (like the picture above from myhikinglife). Luckily most people recommend mailing boxes from the trail itself as your appetite and taste will change. This alleviated our first fear!

From our research it looks like we'll be sending about 5-10 boxes to ourselves in the known painful areas of the trail. These tend to be as you head further north (which makes sense as the number of people thins as you head north meaning less demand for goods stores on trail). The other good news is that from research it looks like we'll need a maximum of 3 for the first half of the trail which again means less worrying ahead of time.

PCT water: The second element we were fearful of was water. With Jenny being quite fair skinned, and Joal being quite a tall guy we always knew the heat of the desert would be a struggle. From reading blogs, water and overheating were some hikers issues over the last few years. Luckily PCT water is a great resource which monitors water sources along the trail and recommends where to get your water from. Water sources are also rated on their reliableness and are updated daily by people along the trail.

We've taken the learnings from the hiker survey and combined them with the water report through our third and probably most useful resource: Craig's PCT planner.

Craig's PCT planner has been a fantastic tool in helping us plan when we'll be stopping in a town to resupply but also to add notes for the best places to eat, stay and find water. Craig's planner not only helps track distance but will also factor in elevation, meaning we're able to get a more accurate view of how long it will take to go from place to place. By combining the 3 resources we now have a master list of where we'll be and when, provided we stick to a pace of about 16 miles a day. We're expecting to be a bit slower at the start but that once we're out of the Sierras this will pick up.

So what does our walk look like?

We'll be starting on the 24th of April and finishing on the 8th of October
We'll be on trail for 165 days or 5.5 months.
Our base distance is 2,665 miles (without any detours to towns). This is the equivalent of walking from London to the North Pole, or Land's End to John o' Groats 3 times.
We're averaging 16 miles a day
We'll make a total of 36 stops to resupply.
Our longest water carry should be about 40 miles (2-3 days so about 8kg of water)
Our longest time without city contact is 8.7 days (Sierra City to Chester)
Our overall elevation gain is 315,000 feet (96,000 meters) the equivalent of summiting Mt. Everest 10 times.