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View Full Version : What made you decide to thru hike?



Mayanway
11-15-2014, 15:38
I would love to hear - what motivated people here to go for the thru hike as opposed to shorter backpacking trips/section hikes?

I've been tentatively planning a PCT thru hike in 2015 for the last year, and now find myself with slightly cold feet as I consider other options. I love backpacking, and the idea of seeing an entire trail start to finish, meeting the community of other thru hikers, and testing my limits on a long trail is really appealing. I currently have a reasonably high paying job that I don't love, and I'll be quitting anyways to start a PhD program in pursuit of the career I want, so this is as good a time as any to do it. I have more than enough saved to fund the thru hike and the transition into grad school, but of course would be able to save substantially more for the future if I kept my job for that extra 4 months. I'm mulling whether I'm going to commit to the thru or if I should work a bit longer, plan to do the JMT or another middle distance trail and still have the time and money to do something else on the bucket list like a couple week trip to southeast Asia. Obviously nobody can decide but me, but I'd appreciate hearing what made you decide to go for it (or not!).

mattjv89
11-15-2014, 22:30
I'm planning to thru-hike next year. One part of my motivation to do it all is the practical side, logistically speaking there may never be a time in my life this opportune. I'm working at a job that tends to be short term, so I would be leaving it anyway if not starting my thru. That job also provides me housing and food so I've been able to save a lot of money over the past year with basically no living expenses. I have no debt or financial obligations beyond paying my phone bill and car insurance, no apartment lease to bail out of, and most of my material possessions at this time fit in my car. I'm not involved in a relationship that will give me any heartache on the trail.

Aside from the practical reasons there's a lot motivating me to thru-hike. I recently heard the statement that people thru-hike because they're either running from something or looking for something, and I definitely fall into the looking category. I went to college for social work and have been in the field for about 2 and a half years now. The work has been very rewarding at times but very challenging at others, and regularly being exposed to some of the most grisly parts of the human condition is starting to weigh on my shoulders a bit. So there's that, I think a break is in order to figure out whether I just need to recharge for a while or if I should be looking into a different line of work. I absolutely love backpacking and I'm enamored with the idea of living on the trail for so long. I did a section hike in October and it was damn hard to get off the trail at the end of 8 days, I felt so gung ho to just keep on going despite my body protesting. I'm committed enough to this experience that I know I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what it would have been like if I don't go. There's a few areas I seek to improve about myself that I think the trail could help with. I'm not the most outgoing around strangers and wish I was more so, I really admire people who can walk into a room full of strangers and strike up a conversation with all of them. So it seems like 6 months of interacting with a constant stream of new faces could do me some good. The other is reducing the involvement of electronics in my life. I regularly desire to cut back the amount of time I spend on the internet. Now I know there will certainly be some access to internet along the trail but so much less than there is in my current life. My hope is that through cutting back the access and finding other ways to occupy my time I will realize a lasting reduction in my internet use following the trail.

That's most of it, always an interesting question for me to ponder because there are so many interrelated factors it's surprisingly hard to describe my motivation in a succinct way.

jdc5294
11-16-2014, 12:38
Leading up to my thru my jobs had been varied. Retail, food service, session musician (guitar), and construction. This is going to sound like I'm a salty old hermit but all those jobs required me to interact with people on a daily basis. I suddenly got really sick of human interaction (especially with crappy people) so I decided to actually pull the trigger and do something that would allow my introverted half to flourish for a while. I'd been planning it for a minute but I never had a concrete start date. I happened to leave early in the year (Feb 19) so I had plenty of alone time, especially in the beginning.

Coffee
11-16-2014, 13:00
I've been thinking about a long trail ever since I hiked the JMT in 2013. I wanted to thru hike the PCT in 2014 but let a number of factors that, in retrospect, were unimportant stand in my way. I did hike the Colorado Trail this summer instead and it was great so I have no real regrets especially since I will be hiking the PCT next year. Before hiking the JMT, the idea of being on a trail for 4-5 months would have seemed ridiculous but it would seem ridiculous to me now to NOT be doing exactly that next year!

4shot
11-16-2014, 22:29
as a kid, I always liked stories about Lewis & Clark and the settlers who set out to cross the country in covered wagons. Livingtson & Stanley in Africa. Wondered what that would have been like.I have always liked to camp even as a boy in the Boy Scouts. Heard about the AT as a young man. When i heard about the % of people who were able to complete one vs. those who started I always wanted to find out if I could do it. The challenge appealed to me. So off I went at the first available opportunity. which, for me, didn't present itself until I turned 50.

Did that answer your question?

* not to compare a thru hike to the journeys of Mssrs. Lewis and Clark and the early pioneers. I do not recall encounters with hostile indigenous people. Although I did encounter a few local business people here and there with rather surly attitudes towards hikers, none of them attempted to shoot me as I recall. Nor did I encounter grizzly bears and the like. Plus I had access to maps and a trail guide. plus better gear than what they probably carried.Although mine wasn't as good as what the really cool UL guys with the really expensive stuff carry. But i'm pretty sure either Lewis (or Clark or both) would have been satisfied with my stuff. Although they probably would have had a difficult time with resupply in regards to my stove fuel which was of the cannister type rather than the alcohol type which seems to be en vogue these days. I'm pretty sure the outfitters that they saw on their trip didn't carry it (fuel cannisters) nor the really big snickers bars which are really good or the premixed PB & J in the plastic jar which also rocks but can be really hard to find. Usually Dollar General carries it but I don't think Dollar General had expanded that far west during their trip. I have read their journals (you have to read the book format as they apparently did not post to trail journals). Or if they did I can't find it. (Maybe it's archived somewhere?)

CarlZ993
11-18-2014, 13:10
I've done a series of longish hikes - 220, 185 (twice), 150, etc - while I was still working. All of those were in the Sierras. I toyed w/ the idea of doing a long trail when I retired. I didn't consider quitting my job to do a hike. That would have been a big mistake financially (ruining pension options). I knew that I would be retiring at a relatively young age. As long as my health was good (& my wife's health was good as well), I knew the option to do a long hike would be viable.

From my perspective, it would be easier to do a thru-hike when you're younger than when you're older. You'll be stronger & more resilient. Most of the hikers will be around your age. If you have a period of time between jobs and/or schooling, it would be an ideal time to do a hike. Just make sure that you have adequate funds for the hike. You'd hate to run out of money before you run out of trail.

As you stated, it is your decision to make. JMT & an Asian trip vs. PCT thru-hike. No bad choices there. You do have a time in your life where you can block out a substantial period of time to 'play.' Those don't happen too often. Good luck on whatever you decide.

RED-DOG
11-18-2014, 13:53
Early in my child hood I had a lot of difficulties, friends, loved ones passed away, so my dad suggested a section hike along the AT, so in 96 I started at springer going to Delaware Water Gap with the intentions of stopping at my sisters house in Stroudsburg PA but by the time I got to VA I was hooked so I decided to do a Flip-Flop and now I have completed the AT thee times and planning to do the PCT next year and the CDT sometime, but if I had the money and it sounds like you do I would go and do the Camino De Santiago or go to Asia for a month.