Planning

Planning a PCT attempt is challenging. I will be a north bound thru-hiker, and the starting window is small, from about mid April to mid May. Any earlier and there will be significant snow in the San Jacinto mountains and the snow pack in the Sierra Nevada will not have melted, any later and the deserts of southern California will be to hot with the water sources dried up, and I do not like the sound of running out of water. So I'm planning on starting at the beginning of the hiking window, the rational being that I'll be taking it easy at the beginning, and won't have to push myself as hard in order to get through the deserts. I'll also be ahead of the pack. Between 300-500 people attempt the PCT every year (although in 2012 I heard it was more like 500-750) and all these people are going to be passing through the same trail towns as I am, so resupplying in town might get more difficult are the pack moves through.

Route Planning and Resupply

Route planning is pretty straight forward,  I've printed a set of the Half Mile maps, which are an incredible resource for PCT planning, and have a copy of the data book and the Yogi guidebooks. Together these give me a good idea of the route I'll be following, what is more tricky though is resupply. Generally hikers cover about 15-20 miles per day in the first weeks rising to around 25-30 miles per day during the last few weeks, and usually go 5-7 days between resupply. I will aim to do the same. There are two ways of resupplying, posting resupply boxes to post offices in trail towns along the route, or buying as you go along. Most people do a combination of the two. Some people rely solely on mail drops, and there are advantages to this, the main ones being that you have largely paid for the whole hike before even leaving your front door, and that you have a dependable source of food and don't have to hitch hike out to towns off the trail. The disadvantages though of this method of resupply are considerable, and in my case it doesn't make sense financial sense to send food parcels half way around the world. Also, what happens if after 4 weeks I can't stand peanut butter or porridge or whatever? The other main disadvantage is that the resupply parcels will start to dictate to my hike. What if I am walking faster or slower than anticipated? Or what if I decide to take a week out to see places off the trail as I reach them, or what if I get injured and am forced to spend a week licking my wounds? Hike Your Own Hike, this is a mantra I see repeated throughout the blogs and fora about the PCT, so resupply boxes as my principal source of resupply are out. That being said, I don't think I'll be able to totally do away with resupply boxes, but I'll restrict them to places where the logistics of getting of the trail are too difficult, like in the High Sierra for example.

The Itinerary

Below is my resupply itinerary covering all the major trail towns that the PCT crosses, with my initial estimates for when I will be passing through them.

Month	Mileage	Resupply Location
September	2,401.7	Snoqualmie Pass
	2,302.8	White Pass
August	2,155.0	Cascade Locks
	2,006.9	Sisters
	1,912.2	Shelter Cove Resort
	1,830.4	Crater Lake
	1,726.6	Ashland
July	1,662.1	Seiad Valley
	1,606.3	Etna
	1,506.5	Castella
	1,415.9	Burney
	1,377.7	Old Station
	1,289.3	Belden
	1,197.6	Sierra City
June	1,094.5	South Lake Tahoe
	942.7	Tuolumne Meadows
	790.2	Bishop
	702.8	Kennedy Meadows
	566.6	Mojave
May	454.4	Agua Dulce
	369.5	Wrightwood
	274.1	Big Bear City
	178.6	Idyllwild
	109.6	Warner Springs
April	43.0	Mt. Laguna
	0.0	Campo