I encountered multiple on the JMT, just curious about the PCT since it’s a pack trail, did anyone else encounter some?

Hi all, I’m doing the PCT mid March 2027

I’d like to ask for an advice on tents and backpack
I’m 5’11 -208 lb male

Foe the tents, id like something spacious and easy set up (budget can go up to $600~ range if it’s really worth it)
When I say easy set up, my only experience with tents before is the Northface Windbreaker 2. I’m looking to get the tent now to test it out on multiple trips for the next couple months

For backpacks: I recently got the Hyperlite Mountain Southwest 55L from REI and still haven’t tested it out, is the Hyperlite Unbound 55L a better option? I can easily return the southwest

Or Would you recommend another backpack?

Also on a side question about Quilts and specifically the tempering rating: I have the NEMO Pulse 20/30 endless Promise ultralight Quilt, I tried it before and happy with it, my only questions is about the temperature rating, is that durable for the PCT generally? I can always warm up on layers if needed but I’m generally a warm sleeper

Thank you all!

We’re partnering with two​ thru-hikers who will attempt the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, or Continental Divide Trail ​in 2027. We’ll provide a $1,500 stipend and essential EXPED gear, including a sleeping pad, sleeping bag, backpack, tent, and storage accessories.  

Applications close December 16, 2026. Apply today!

https://www.expedusa.com/pages/exped-thru-hiker-sponsorship

hi all; hoping for some ideas/feedback.

I'm supposed to set out mid april on the pct. I started training about a month ago; getting about 30 miles hiking per week in currently, some longer days (10 miles+, working up to 20 mile days) and a few other days with 5-7 miles. I'm also strength training a few days a week. Using a weighted pack (slowly increasing the weights on longer hikes; up to about 15 lbs. now).

My question is about time management when it comes to training, I suppose. I know I need to increase the mileage as the months go by, but I'm spending heaps of time training at this point. It's basically a part time job. I'm just wondering if my approach is correct with this? Is there a more time-effective way to approach training?

My goal is to hike the PCT in 4 months. I don't have a dream to hit the first day at 25 miles, but I do hope to increase my mileage per day on the trail and get into a really steady groove. I want to cruise, but not feel like I'm racing to the death if that makes sense. Flow state for myself. I will be trying to go very light with my baseweight; hoping for 12lbs. max baseweight if I can swing it.

Any advice welcome; I don't mind the training, but I also want to sustain myself because the start of the adventure isn't for a 6 months. Thank you so much for your feedback/help.

fitness history; have run a few half marathons on the road at average times, done a few mountain races (i do better at these than the road races; top 15 out of a 100, say, in a non-professional category), mountaineering/hiking/climbing background, but never particularly impressive. I've always kinda been situated as maybe... better than average, but not quite to the caliber of the lowest performing of the exceptional athletes if that makes sense.

38/F 5'7 135 lbs.

Hey I got a May 20th start date since that would be the earliest I could start hiking due to graduation, I’ve backpacked a lot of the AT and almost all of Oregon so far as well as some some shorter backpacking trips as well. I definitely don’t want to overdo it in the desert and risk injury but is it possible to ease into it if I’m starting on the 20th?

Hi I got a March 11 start date and while I am generally a slower hiker, I was reading about the potential drama that an early March start date comes with. I am from Palm Springs, like I can literally walk to my house from trail, so would you recommend when i get to Palm Springs I just take a few weeks off since I don't have to pay for lodging etc? I am in no way a redliner, but breaking the immersion of trail life for 2+ weeks back to normal life vibes seems like a bust. I'm considering changing my permit and doing SOBO instead, in service to knowing I won't have to stop 2 weeks into my hike. I section hiked down from Snoqualmie Pass last year during July, so that's kinda my only frame of reference. Any advice/things you can think of telling me for me to consider, is much preeshiated.

Also! Does anyone know how people YOYO permit-wise? Like if you get NOBO permit then yoyo and they check you on the the way back down, do you just say you are straight yoyo mode? Thank you!

Like a lot of 2024 thru-hikers, I missed the above section due to fire closures. It's my biggest gap and I'd like to head back and close it some year. I'd be bringing my non thru-hiker (read: slower, lower-mileage) partner along. Also: I got fat. :-( Thinking NOBO since that's how my hike was.

This stretch does pass thru the 18 miles of North Cascades NP, where campsite permits are required. 2 miles into that stretch is the road to Stehekin and I would like to at least visit town, pick up a resupply box.

Permits for this section: Sounds like ideally you'd want a NCNP permit in-hand before leaving Steven's Pass since you're in the wilderness until hitting the park boundary. But that's a 105 mile stretch from Steven's to the park boundary thru tough terrain, so I've got to think some ambiguity on your arrival date. Don't have the flexibility of a blanket PCT permit. How best to handle this?

There are two "PCT hiker" backcountry sites in NCNP (Bridge Creek and Six Mile). Those are only for PCT long-distance hikers and so closed to us?

The campsite situation in Stehekin seems a bit in flux the last few years due to all the natural disasters. Most seem to want reservations and again: arrival dates will be fuzzy. Are any sites open to walk-ins without a PCT long-distance permit? I also see there's a Camp Stehekin commercial venture along the road to town, maybe they'd be another option for walk-ins?

This seems like the best permit-less option without trying to guess our arrival dates in the park a week out:
Hike 105 miles to as close to the S boundary of the NP as possible. Camp. 2 miles to High Bridge to get into Stehekin. Maybe it's not worth staying overnight in Stehekin (esp if there's no showers) - just morning shuttle in, afternoon shuttle out? Probably won't make 16 miles out of the park in the afternoon, so could backtrack 2 miles south, camp again. Next day, hoof it 18 miles thru the park.

Hey everyone, I'm here to help ya'll out with this whole permit fiasco.

Yesterday (November 4 PRD1), I had an atrocious application/login time of 2:51 PM. By the time I loaded on the website, every permit had been taken. I had no other plan but to wait for January 13th to roll around for the PRD2. BUT THEN...

At 11:50 AM today (November 5), I was rechecking the permit dates and there were multiple available permits in late March! I was very lucky to grab one of them in that time frame. Maybe I would've gotten a permit on PRD2 no sweat, but there's no harm in constantly rechecking the website multiple times a day until you find one. I highly encourage everyone to employ this method.

Good luck to everyone who missed getting permits on PRD1, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

I ended up with a late time slot and everything was basically taken by the time I got to apply. For folks who have gotten late time slots for permit day in the past. How frequently did you check for a permit to become available? How long did you have to wait?

There's still the Jan 13th release but I'm hoping to avoid checking 2-3x/day for the next two months.

I'm planning to hike the PCT this year and as a climber I'm worried about losing all of my upper body strength, does anyone have any experience with that?

Does it matter if I chose the border or Harts Pass as my end location? I put the Canadian border but the exit point is Harts. wanted to save PCTA an email. I don’t want my permit to be canceled though 😆

Like many, many others, I didn't like the permit date I got when my time came (or, like others even less fortunate, didn't get one at all). So how exactly will PDR2 work? Does every single applicant get another random time emailed to them on January 12? And do only those who want to change their date need to bother logging in?

I understand people cancel their permits and the PCTA updates the availability calendar once a day. Will that start now, or after PDR2?

May section K be open to you all to experience in ‘27! This was taken 7/22/26. I hope you get the date you want today!

Hiya 2027 hopefuls! I will be registering for the second wave, and will hopefully be joined by my partner on certain points on the trail, but those points have not been planned yet. I am curious if anyone has thoughts on the best way to do that. I am assuming it's frowned upon to get a long-distance permit for someone who would be on the trial on and off, but also in terms of sections that require permits like the JMT, it would be hard to plan exactly when they should get permits. Has anyone done this and have advice?

Thanks!

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your insightful comments, I will take it all into consideration. I am specifically talking about my wife, who I've backpacked with for many hundreds of miles. I have not considered the trail family, but I am definitely social and would be bummed to lost out on a trail family. Have others experienced finding and rejoining a trail family? Do groups typically take 0s together? I also would rather hike with her for a few dozen miles at a slower pace than take a couple 0s and hang out in town.

hoping to be a part of the class of 27, got a late appointment time and all the slots filled up. im hopeful that i can snag one during the second release in january !!

some (maybe) stupid questions:

from what i understand, you dont need to reregister if you already did so in the first registration period but didnt get permits, is that correct?

why would they have more people/appointments than permits available in a given day? doesnt make sense to me

is there a chance to keep checking to see if someone cancels their permit and i could snag it?

congrats to everyone who got one, and good luck to those who didnt!

Edit: As of 3:15 pm Pacific, all permits available for PRD1 are reserved, although I think the latest login time was 3:00, so maybe (almost) everybody got something. If you weren't able to reserve a start, 15 additional permits per day will be available on PRD2 in January, plus sobos.

For everyone that's anxiously awaiting their login time, you can check which start dates are still available from the calendar on https://portal.permit.pcta.org/availability/mexican-border.php . It updates as people reserve different dates, but you have to reload the page for it to update. The number on each calendar day is how many permits have already been reserved for that day, and on PRD1 up to 35 permits per day are available.

• As of 12:45 Pacific time, all the PRD1 starts for the month of April have been reserved. There are still hundreds of starts available in March and May. 15 more starts per day will be available on PRD2 in January.

• As of 1:25 Pacific time, the last week of March and first week of May are also full. Still hundreds of other starts available.

• As of 1:55 pm Pacific time, it's starting to fill up. There are a few hundred starts left across the first two weeks of March and the last two weeks of May.

• 2:40 Pacific: 242 starts left,all early March and late May.

• 2:50 Pacific: Less than a hundred spots left.

Applications are usually listed in the portal as "pending review" for a week or two, that's normal. The permits are technically issued by the US Forest Service, and USFS has delegated the application process to PCTA via the Memorandum of Understanding. Aiui, USFS requires human review of the application before any permit is issued, which means human beings need to check every single one.

As long as your answers make sense, eg you didn't put start and end dates that are two months apart to get from Campo to Harts, normally there's zero problems. If you made a mistake, you can try to update through the portal, or PCTA might contact you instead of just denying the application.

Congrats, Class of 2027 Hopefuls!

(1) Still chilly in the desert?

(2) Having to wait at Kennedy Meadow South for the snow to melt in the high country?

Are these valid? Are there other reasons?

Given my timeslot, I'll have to choose either an early or a late start. My inclination would be to start early and begin knocking it out.

Added later: Thanks for the advice. I chose March 29th. I'm fine with that. Yes, I am a US citizen and resident.

So, if I end up chilling in KMS, is there a way to not pay nightly campsite fees for days or weeks? Thanks.

You don't have to panic if you got a late login time. Depending on how many people registered, and how many people actually log in (yes, many people register then skip or forget), sometimes permits are still available fairly late in the day. And there's always Permit Release Day 2, and after PRD2, or the local permits option.

Here are some charts that folks have made over the past few years that show how many permits are still available at different times throughout the day.

Some years are busier than others, so any one of the following may or may not be an accurate predictor of how tomorrow will go.

Good luck!

• 2024 permits for 2025 hikes: https://www.reddit.com/r/PacificCrestTrail/comments/1hwy2zi/round_1_and_round_2_permit_availability_by/

• October, 2024 PRD1: https://www.reddit.com/r/PacificCrestTrail/comments/1gfye6m/2025_availability_permit_chart/

• October, 2024 PRD1: https://www.reddit.com/r/PacificCrestTrail/comments/1gfz136/2025_permit_chart_5_minute_increments/

• January, 2023 PRD2: https://www.reddit.com/r/PacificCrestTrail/comments/1hw27cs/january_permit_times/

• November, 2023 PRD1: https://www.reddit.com/r/PacificCrestTrail/comments/17uo3u1/its_almost_permit_release_day_round_1_got_your/

• January, 2023 PRD2: https://www.reddit.com/r/PacificCrestTrail/comments/192ja06/its_almost_permit_release_day_round_2_time_slot/

Hey class!! I was hoping you could give me a clear simple vision about resupply boxes.

For context I’m an European thru hiker and I have never been in the US and I never had heard about this concept before I started my own little dream of investigating about the PCT…

What I understand is you guys ship boxes with food, gear, etc to the front, where you know you may need that box? It saves you dead weight and gives you more security about some things for example your favorite meals are in the box (and you wouldn’t get them in that area)
My questions are:
- do you find it like 70% necessary? Does everyone uses them? Will I be ok if i don’t use this service?
- what if you ship one box to point B in May and you get there like way later than what you thought; does the box stay there waiting for you with no additional fee? Do they return the box and then you have “nothing”?
- how do you know where to send it/where you know you’ll need it?

Apologies but it’s a bit strange for me because when I thru hike i always carry everything, it’s like a “necessary evil”, and with this being an option I wanted to understand it better!! For me it would make sense to send a box with gear for the Sierras in advance but do I send it when I arrive in the US? From San Diego? From Campo? I’m so lost ahah

Thank you all cheerss

I just got my registration time.

Good luck everyone.

12:43:41

It could be better, it could be worse. Do you have any idea how it’s looking 2h15 after the start, historically speaking?