Excited for 2017 PCT

[AllDownhillFromHere]

Depends if they've done the AT. I spent a week in the snow in the Smokies. Frozen boots and all. Not very technical though.

Is it fair to say that for around 25 percent of pct hikers JMT is their first real snowy mountain experience?

[Kookork]

Depends if they've done the AT. I spent a week in the snow in the Smokies. Frozen boots and all. Not very technical though.

I don't know how many PCTers are AT experienced. Do you think AT snow experience is enough for PCT 2017?

[Malto]

AT and PCT snow are apples and oranges. Most of the snow normal AT hikers experience is a few inches of snow with maybe a foot deep drift. In contrast here is a photo of what you should expect in the low areas. Imagine going up and down these for miles, this is an example of what slows you down. This is actually much harder than the continuous snowfields that you will have in areas such as Bighorn Plateau or either side of Muir Pass. None of this in isolation will be overly difficult. It is the duration that will challenge the 2017 hikers just as it did others in previous high snow years. But in all of those years hikers made it through, both experience and inexperienced. I spent a lot of time trying to understand the characteristics of those that made it through in 2011. It wasn't experience as much as was grit and the overwhelmed desire to hit their goal.

Here is an example of a very inexperienced who almost made it in 2011, they got stopped at Harts Pass. I would have lost money bet against her but she must have had grit. http://www.postholer.com/journal/Pac...t-Begins/19383

330.JPG

[AllDownhillFromHere]

I don't know how many PCTers are AT experienced. Do you think AT snow experience is enough for PCT 2017?

Technically? No - no chance of an avalanche, no need for axes, no weird traverses, MAYBE 1 or 2 places where spikes would be handy. Mentally? Yes.

A typical morning in the Smokies (in March):
Wake up before dawn, cramped, because the 20F rating on your bag is a lie, so you slept curled in a ball. Your tent would have been warmer, but, no tenting.
Yawn, because 3 people next to you snored all night.
Take a drink - ****, your bottle is frozen. Curse. Fumble around in your bag hoping you have a backup.
Fiddle with the bandages on your feet, making sure that the tape and moleskin are still there, and not in the bottom of your bag.
Feel around in the dark, find your least wet socks and put them on.
Find your boots. Using the laces for leverage, pry and bend the frozen leather around your feet into a mostly foot shape.
Cook breakfast, fight off other hikers who want to warm their hands over your whisperlite while it's still priming. Eat something, you can't quite see what. Ramen? Oatmeal? Maybe it was sweet-tasting?
Pack up, saddle up, walk out of the shelter into the snow. Slip on the packed snow/ice in front of the shelter, crushed down by 100 other people into a fine glaze. Curse.
Walk. Half an hour later the heat from your feet melts your boots out, and now your mostly dry socks are mostly wet.
Enjoy another hour of dry trail, walking in the postholes.
By noon the trail is slush, or a stream. Your mostly dry wet socks are now totally wet. Curse.
Around 3pm, roll into the next shelter, at which you MUST camp by law. You can't make the next one, so you stop, cook your first dinner and wait until dark.
Repeat for a week.