c) Andrew Carter, 2021
In 1977 when I was 20 years old, I hiked the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail (AT). In 2020, at the age of 64, I hiked 1800 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). The PCT is 2650 miles long. I plan to hike the remaining 850 miles in 2022.
There are differences between the AT and the PCT. There are differences between hiking a long-distance trail when you are 20 vs. 64. There are differences between hiking in 1977 vs. 2020. I’ll explore these differences in this blog post.
Two Trails – the PCT vs. the AT
The PCT and the AT were the first two designated “national scenic trails” in the United States. They achieved that designation in 1968 with the passing of the National Trails System Act. Today, there are 11 national scenic trails.
The AT was completed earlier than the PCT. The AT was completed in 1937. The PCT wasn’t formally completed until 1993, although most of the trail was in place by the early 1950’s with several long road-walks joining completed sections. The first thru hike of the AT took place in 1948. The first thru hike of the PCT took place in 1952.
The PCT is longer than the AT. The PCT is 2653 miles long. The AT is 2193 miles long. The length of each trail has changed over time due to “re-routes.” That’s when a new section of trail replaces an old section. The AT is about 100 miles longer today than when I hiked it in 1977.
The AT stretches from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Mount Katahdin, Maine. The PCT stretches from the Mexican border near Campo, California to the Canadian border near Manning Provincial Park, British Columbia.
The highest point on the AT is 6,653 feet at Clingman’s Dome on the Tennessee/North Carolina line in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The highest point on the PCT is 13,153 feet at Forester Pass on the border between Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park in California. The lowest point on the AT is 124 feet when it crosses the Hudson River 35 miles north of New York City. The lowest point on the PCT is 140 feet at Cascade Locks on the Columbia River near Portland.
Here are the principal differences between the two trails as I see them.
As noted above, the PCT is significantly longer than the AT. That extra 460 miles means another three to four weeks of hiking.
The PCT is significantly higher, and it passes through more rugged territory. That’s a function of geological age and erosion over time. The Appalachian Mountains are geologically younger than every mountain chain in the West. They’ve had a longer time to erode. Even the most rugged part of the AT, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, pales in comparison to the Sierra, the most rugged part of the PCT.
There is a greater diversity of landscape on the PCT. You pass through no deserts on the AT. If you hike northbound on the PCT, the first 650 miles is desert interspersed with mountainous “sky islands.”
The PCT is nonetheless easier to hike than the AT. That’s because the PCT is graded for equestrian use. The AT is not. The PCT tends to follow geographic contours near a ridge instead of tracking the ridge itself. The AT tends to stay on the ridge, going up and down and climbing to the top of every mountain it meets. The PCT rarely summits any mountain.
The PCT is more remote. That’s particularly the case in the Sierra and in northern Washington. There are fewer roads to cross and fewer trail towns along the way. PCT trail towns are more likely to be further away from the trail, and they are often less “substantial” than AT trail towns – meaning less likely to have even a small grocery. That means resupply is more of a challenge on the PCT than the AT. On the AT, I never once mailed myself a package with food in it. On the PCT, I often did. On the AT, you can usually look off the ridge you are hiking to see civilization down below. I remember hiking on a ridge in Virginia in the early morning and watching a school bus making it way down a country road, stopping to pick up farm children.
The climate on the PCT is much different than the climate on the AT. This has mainly to do with precipitation or lack thereof. On the PCT, it rarely rains or snows during the hiking season, except in Washington. On the AT, it rains all the time everywhere. When I hiked the AT, there was an 8-day stretch when it rained at least part of each day. In five months on the PCT this year, it rained on me once and snowed on me once.
Thanks to the rain, most of the AT passes through dense deciduous forests. That’s why the AT is often called “the long green tunnel.” There are only a few places on the AT where you are above treeline. So, except in winter when the trees have lost their leaves, there are fewer views. On the PCT, you are out in the open most of the time. There are fewer trees or none at all, and you’re more likely to be above treeline. When there are trees, they are almost always evergreen.
The greater amount of rain on the AT means finding water to drink is rarely an issue. On the PCT, there are long stretches in Southern California and Oregon without any water at all. When I hiked the AT, I called myself the “Phantom Dipper.” That’s because I’d stop throughout the day to dip my cup into every spring or stream I passed. I rarely had to get out my “canteen.” On the PCT, you may need to carry two, four, even six liters of water to make sure you have enough to get to the next water source. Also, you often rely on water caches maintained by trail volunteers.
It’s hotter and colder on the PCT than on the AT. The heat is a function of the desert, lack of shade, and brutal sun. The cold is a function of higher altitudes. On the PCT, heat stroke and heat exhaustion are a threat. Not so on the AT. Hyperthermia is also a greater risk. On the AT, except in the far north, you can hike in the winter without snowshoes and the nighttime low temperature might be in the 20’s. On the PCT, other than Southern California, winter use of snowshoes is required. The lows are more likely to be in the teens, single digits, or below zero. This more intense winter means the PCT has a shorter hiking season than the AT. Snow in the Sierra can remain on the trail into July, and snow in upper Washington often starts in September.
The AT has shelters to sleep in every 8 to 10 miles. These shelters are usually three-sided sheds with an open front. There are at most a half dozen shelters on the PCT, generally four-sided ski huts. The existence of shelters greatly changes the dynamics of a hike. Shelters tend to concentrate night-time use, making a thru hike of the AT more of a social experience than a thru hike of the PCT. Almost every night you have the chance to talk to other hikers. As many as a dozen of you may be staying in the same structure, using the same picnic table and privy. On the PCT, even if you are camping in the same place with others – near a creek, near a lake – you are more spread out and sleeping in your own tent. There’s rarely a picnic table or privy to use. I didn’t think I would miss the social interactions of the AT when I hiked the PCT, but I did.
Adding to the social nature of the AT is the existence of many more hiker hostels, not only in trail towns but near many road crossings in between towns. Some PCT trail towns have a hostel, but not all. There are fewer road crossings and much less of a chance there might be a hostel near that crossing.
An interesting sidelight to the AT shelters and hostels is that each one has a trail register. Hikers enter not only their names and hometowns, but also whatever thoughts are on their mind. When you get to a hostel, you grab the register to write down your thoughts and then read what other hikers have written before you. When I hiked the AT and came to a shelter with a register during the day, I would nonetheless stop to go through this ritual of writing and reading. On the PCT, there are very few trail registers and hikers tend to write only their names and hometowns with no commentary at all. I sorely missed the AT register experience when I was hiking the PCT.
Two Ages
Oh, to be 20 again. You have greater stamina and recover much quicker when you are tired. At 64, you don’t have the same energy. If you get tired, you tend to stay that way. Your body tends to hurt more. If you don’t “listen to your body,” hike fewer miles, and take more rests, your body tends to wear down and you may experience an injury which forces you off the trail. I went through a stretch in Northern California when something new seemed to ache every day – my back, my shoulders, my knees, my feet, my butt. That was my body telling me to slow down. My back and butt aches made me realize I needed to stretch in the morning and the evening and at every major rest stop during the day. I wore knee braces on both knees all the time. I had custom orthotics in my hiking shoes.
At 64, I found myself less hopeful than I was at 20. Perhaps that was because my life is largely behind me instead of ahead of me. At 20, when I did worry, I worried about myself, my safety, and about being able to finish my hike. At 64, I tended to worry about others, those I love, particularly my children. I also found myself worrying about the fate of the world and this nation.
At 64, I found myself missing my wife and kids all the time. At 20, I didn’t miss anyone. Some of that had to do with the fact that I was usually alone on the PCT, particularly at night, but was usually with someone in a shelter on the AT. I missed the comradery of other hikers.
The reason why I was hiking was different. Hiking the AT at 20 was more of an adventure. It was something new. I was trying to prove myself. I was also glad to not be in college. I took a semester off from college to hike the AT because I desperately needed a mental health break.
At 64, my hike wasn’t new because I have thru hiked before. It was much less of an adventure. I had nothing to prove. I wasn’t needing the same sort of mental break.
A thru hike was more “special” in 1977 than today because there were far fewer people who had done one. On my 1977 AT hike, I met only four other thru hikers. This year on the PCT, I met hundreds.
As a consequence of all of this, hiking the PCT at 64 was not as fun as hiking the AT at 20. It was more work. There was more drudgery. I often found myself wondering why I was doing it. I even thought about quitting. I never thought about quitting when I was hiking the AT.
Two Eras
Even accounting for age, hiking was different in 1977 vs. 2021. There were fewer hikers, and most thru hikers were young white males plus a few white male retirees. There were very few women hiking at all, let alone thru hiking. There were even fewer people of color. Today, there are many more hikers and a wider diversity of hikers – more women; more people of color, although there still aren’t many; a wider range of ages; even foreigners.
Hiking gear was very different in 1977. Mainly it was heavier. Hikers bragged about how much weight they were carrying, not how little. The external frame backpack was king, not the internal frame backpack. There were no water bladders and thin plastic water bottles. Most people carried canteens – usually thick plastic, but you would still see metal ones. There were no water filters. Only a few hikers used a wooden hiking staff. Today, most hikers use aluminum or carbon hiking “sticks” (poles). “Lightweight” hiking camp stoves were brand new, and “white” gasoline (Coleman fuel) was used to power them. Today, most hikers use a truly lightweight stove, consisting of a small burner head powered by a small disposable isobutane/propane fuel cannister. Some hikers use no stove at all, choosing instead to “cold soak” their food. Back then, hikers wore heavy leather boots. Today, they wear lightweight low-cut “trail runners” made of synthetic materials. Gore-tex didn’t exist. Rain gear was a rubberized poncho. People hiked in blue jeans or chinos with some sort of cotton shirt. Today, most hikers wear synthetic shorts and moisture-wicking shirts.
Another big change on the trail is technology. In 1977, there were no cellphones, no computers, no internet, no GPS, no satellite communicators, no Kindles, no iPods. People carried point-and-shoot cameras, paper maps, and a compass. Technology was a landline phone call home when you reached a trail town. My calls were always “collect.” Remember pay phones? Remember having to pay for “long distance”?
There were very few “trail angels” in 1977. The term didn’t exist. These are people who, in an organized manner, help hikers out – who feed them at trailheads, who give them rides into town, who list their phone number in trail apps so hikers can call them for assistance, who sometimes put hikers up for the night or let them camp on their property. That doesn’t mean there weren’t friendly people in the small towns you passed through, but they didn’t go out of their way in an organized manner to help you.
My only experience with a trail angel in 1977 was in Hanover, New Hampshire, home of Dartmouth University. The AT passes through the center of town. I had expected to spend the night with a friend of my father, but I couldn’t reach him on the pay phone. I was sitting on the sidewalk outside a grocery store, looking dejected and forlorn. A female Dartmouth student, not much older than me, stopped and asked me how she could help. Her apartment was across the street. She let me come inside and take a shower. Before I was done, she left for class and told me to lock the door behind me when I finished. I never saw her again.
I’m sure there are other things I have missed, but I think you can see the difference between the two trails, between hiking at two different ages, and in two different eras.
Carter Hikes 