Weath­er:

The Pacif­ic Crest Trail is arguably the most diverse trail of the Triple Crown long dis­tance trails in the U.S. It tra­vers­es vol­canic lava fields to deserts, from moist, moss filled forests to bar­ren, alpine gran­ite pass­es – in fact from Muir Pass not even a bush or a tree is vis­i­ble (the only place on the PCT). Dur­ing our win­ter tra­verse of the trail the weath­er con­di­tions were just as vari­able. We expect­ed the worst since an El Nino was fore­cast­ed for this year. How­ev­er, NOAA kept push­ing back its arrival dur­ing the trip and iron­i­cal­ly I just read today that it has final­ly arrived.

We decid­ed to start on Octo­ber 21, 2014, know­ing that this hike could eas­i­ly take six months. The Pacif­ic North­west had a dry ear­ly Octo­ber, but we were head­ed right into an atmos­pher­ic riv­er. The last 10 days of Octo­ber we saw con­stant rain and snow. In fact many areas of the PNW set dai­ly rain­fall records. Things start­ed wet and slop­py, and for the most part remained that way for the first two months. We can count on one hand the num­ber of sun­ny days (not rain­ing or snow­ing) that we had in the first two months. Novem­ber con­tin­ued to be wet, with spo­radic cold snaps. In fact, cir­cling Mt. Hood in mid-Novem­ber the highs hov­ered in the sin­gle dig­its with a steady 50 mph wind. A few days lat­er it snowed two feet and the tem­per­a­tures remained just as cold. Port­land received snow and ice and set some records. We had bumped our snow­shoes ahead and strug­gled to make progress. We both suf­fered from frost­bite on our feet dur­ing this cold snap and had to deal with the pain until the end of the trip 3.5 months later.

A week lat­er the tem­per­a­tures warmed con­sid­er­ably. We were around San­ti­am Pass, OR when the next storm start­ed as rain and turned the snow into a slop­py, slushy mess. Our new and improved footwear sys­tem worked well to keep our feet dry and warm and we pushed on as the tem­per­a­tures dropped and the rain changed to snow. The winds also began to howl for a few days as we nav­i­gat­ed our way through the con­vo­lut­ed ter­rain of the lava fields around McKen­zie Pass. The Three Sis­ters Wilder­ness was blan­ket­ed in feet of fresh snow. The winds were howl­ing and the trav­el was slow, albeit incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful. We had a windy, sun­ny day as we passed through this area. The winds died down in the after­noon and the Wick­i­up Plains felt like a snowy, desert. The next storm approached in the evening and the rain start­ed about a half hour before we stopped for the day. More slop­py con­di­tions ensued. There’s not much that can be more mis­er­able than posthol­ing through feet of snow in a cold rain.

The rain and snow con­tin­ued through Ore­gon and into north­ern Cal­i­for­nia. As we left Ash­land the hyped “Storm of the Cen­tu­ry” was approach­ing. We timed it well. The winds picked up and the rain start­ed in the after­noon. We were close to drop­ping off the ridge into Seiad Val­ley, one of the low points of the trail. It rained hard and the winds were gusty, but we were low and off the ridge­line. We lat­er heard that gusts were clocked well over 120mph on the ridge and 10 inch­es of rain had fall­en in Shas­ta City. This all led to our unfor­tu­nate swim the next morn­ing before sun­rise while try­ing to cross Grid­er Creek. As we ascend­ed into the Mar­ble Moun­tains a foot of fresh snow blan­ket­ed every­thing. It was gor­geous and we final­ly had anoth­er sun­ny day.

We left Etna know­ing that anoth­er storm was com­ing in. It was only fore­cast­ed to drop 2–4 inch­es of snow each day and night for the next three to four days. Three to four feet lat­er, we were wal­low­ing through the Trin­i­ty Alps. Heavy snow was stick­ing to our snow­shoes. We often had to lift our legs with our hands to help get them high enough to take the next step. We alter­nat­ed break­ing trail and switched every 30 min­utes. If the per­son in the rear wait­ed 25 min­utes they could catch the per­son break­ing trail in the remain­ing 5 min­utes of their shift. It took us 10 hours to descend 9–10 miles. It was a frus­trat­ing day. Pep­per snapped his trekking poles 3 times in a mat­ter of hours. We final­ly dropped below the snow­line with Castel­la in our sights. We cov­ered the same dis­tance in the next 2.5 hours.

We left Castel­la with anoth­er impend­ing storm. By the next morn­ing, it was rain­ing and we woke up in a poor­ly drain­ing camp­site that had pud­dled below us. It rained hard all the way to Bur­ney Falls State Park. We head­ed into a few days off for Christ­mas with 8 miles in the sun to High­way 299.

When we returned from Christ­mas the pat­tern had changed. It was near­ly Jan­u­ary and we had researched the weath­er pat­terns. We knew that 6 of the last 8 Jan­u­arys had been dry in the Sier­ra. We hoped the pat­tern would con­tin­ue and it did. The Hat Creek Rim was cold and crisp, with highs in the 20s and lows in the sin­gle dig­its. As we passed through Old Sta­tion so did a rein­forc­ing cold front. It left a dust­ing to an inch of fresh snow, but dropped the tem­per­a­tures for a few days to the teens as highs and lows in the sin­gle dig­its or even below zero. Our water would freeze in our water bot­tles and we had trou­ble find­ing run­ning water. We stayed warm and the cold snap last­ed about a week. From there the tem­per­a­tures mod­er­at­ed and even­tu­al­ly became balmy. Our bod­ies were used to cold and wet and when the tem­per­a­tures hit the 50s we felt like we were in the sum­mer. We made good time snow­shoe­ing to Truc­k­ee in warm tem­per­a­tures. The snow got more rot­ten and more dif­fi­cult to trav­el each day as the night­time tem­per­a­tures stopped drop­ping below freez­ing even­tu­al­ly and the snow failed to refreeze.

In Truc­k­ee we switched to our ski gear. We spent hours at the boot­fit­ter and then went for a tri­al run to make sure the ski boots wouldn’t hurt our frost­bite. The weath­er stayed sun­ny and warm and we knew we had to make good progress to try to get through the Sier­ras dur­ing this weath­er win­dow. High avalanche dan­ger and wal­low­ing in fresh snow lurked at any moment if a storm came in. The extend­ed fore­cast kept pre­dict­ing storms in Week 2. Things looked omi­nous but kept being pushed back. We got some clouds, snow show­ers, and wind around Sono­ra Pass but noth­ing major. In the High Sier­ras we had three high wind days. One of which actu­al­ly picked Pep­per up like a kite and threw him against a rock. Two oth­er days, one going over Muir Pass and one over Forester Pass, we had snowy con­di­tions and low vis­i­bil­i­ty with 2–4 inch­es of fresh dust on crust/rock. It was just enough to hide the rocks and make the ski­ing even more dan­ger­ous. We made it over Forester, and the next morn­ing over the Bighorn Plateau was anoth­er fero­cious­ly windy day with blind­ing snow. It cleared by the after­noon but remained cold and windy. We had made it through the Sierras!

The weath­er in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia dwarfed in com­par­i­son to any­thing we had faced even though we had to deal with sev­er­al storms. Iron­i­cal­ly many of the storms hap­pened while we were in some of the dri­est places on the trail. We had rain between Walk­er Pass and Mojave, around I‑10/Banning Pass, and from Mt. Lagu­na to the bor­der. The day after we descend­ed from the San Bernardi­no Moun­tains they received fresh snow and the same with Mt. Lagu­na. We hit about six inch­es of fresh snow and low vis­i­bil­i­ty con­di­tions on Mt. San Jac­in­to. Some of the days in So Cal felt so warm, even though they were prob­a­bly only in the mid 50s or low 60s, that we doubt­ed how we had ever done the PCT in the sum­mer. Sud­den­ly we were car­ry­ing 30 miles worth of water – even 44 miles at one point.

It seems that we hit the worst of the win­ter in many places before it turned dri­er after we passed through. It’s been an inter­est­ing and record-break­ing win­ter in many loca­tions of the West, but when you are trav­el­ing from Point A to B, and not in one loca­tion, you are also pass­ing through the weath­er of many areas. The Sier­ras were dis­ap­point­ing­ly dry, even though a dry win­ter in the Sier­ras is still more annu­al snow­fall than a harsh, record-break­ing win­ter in Boston (as of March 2, 2015 — 104.1 inch­es in Boston and 179 inch­es at Sug­ar Bowl near Lake Tahoe). The rel­a­tive­ly dry con­di­tions in the Sier­ras were both a bless­ing and a curse. Avalanche dan­gers were low­er due to the low snow­pack and lack of addi­tion­al snow­fall. Any addi­tion­al snow­fall would have led to very dan­ger­ous avalanche con­di­tions since the snow­pack resem­bled a con­ti­nen­tal snow­pack. For­tu­nate­ly we did not expe­ri­ence that “next big storm” while we were in the Sier­ras. In fact a mul­ti-foot storm hap­pened just as we got to Walk­er Pass. On the oth­er hand, due to the low snow we had to nego­ti­ate rock bands, downed trees, and talus. We even had to walk some of the down­hills in our ski boots car­ry­ing our skis because there wasn’t enough snow to ski safe­ly. Hid­den land­mines lurked under the snow wait­ing to wrench our knees. Numer­ous times each day we hit hid­den rocks and downed trees below the snow utter­ing “wow that was close” or “that could have been real­ly bad” as we nego­ti­at­ed the heinous snow con­di­tions. Every con­di­tion that a ski­er dreads from unedge­able ice, to break­able crust, to wind slab, to sug­ary, bot­tom­less facets remained, some­times nego­ti­at­ing all in one turn. I had 6–8 good turns in 450 miles.

Plan­ning:

We kicked around the idea of this trip for about 5 years. Final­ly this year we felt ready to set out on it – after years of test­ing ski gear, Pep­per feel­ing com­fort­able with his ski­ing abil­i­ty, and logis­tics and planning.

Despite all of the plan­ning we still had a last minute change of direc­tion. We had even pur­chased our plane tick­ets to head down to San Diego to go north­bound. Ulti­mate­ly, with less than a week before we depart­ed, we changed to south­bound – and the rest is his­to­ry. Ini­tial­ly it made sense to break in slow­ly with eas­i­er desert miles and then get in a groove through the High Sierras.

The main rea­sons that we made the last minute switch:

• We are most famil­iar with the Sier­ras since that is both of our home areas and we have hiked through there count­less times. It made sense to hit that in the mid­dle of win­ter when con­di­tions would be the hard­est and worst.
• We researched weath­er pat­terns, as pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, and the Sier­ras had dry Jan­u­arys in 6 of the last 8 win­ters, now 7 of the last 9. We thought there would be a chance, if we made good time through Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon, that we could be in the Sier­ras in Jan­u­ary, and hope­ful­ly the pat­tern would con­tin­ue. We hoped for a decent weath­er win­dow in the High Sier­ras in order for the avalanche dan­ger to stabilize.
• We knew we would have bad weath­er in the Cas­cades, but we want­ed to deal with the bad weath­er and snow before there was a base of snow. The Cas­cades are very steep and can be avalanche prone. For avalanche con­di­tions snow on bare ground is safer than snow on top of snow because there are anchors.
• With the fore­cast for an El Nino year, we fig­ured that Cen­tral and South­ern Cal­i­for­nia would have above aver­age pre­cip­i­ta­tion. We hoped to head into good snow cov­er­age to ski on and have miles under our belt when the weath­er and con­di­tions got the hardest.

Iron­i­cal­ly with the weath­er this year we prob­a­bly could have done it in either direction.

My mantra came true once again “prop­er pri­or plan­ning pre­vents piss poor per­for­mance”. Naysay­ers called our trip a “death wish”, “death sen­tence”, and “I don’t want my tax mon­ey going for their res­cue”. It was a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous trip but it’s all cal­cu­lat­ed risks based on a lot of expe­ri­ence and prac­tice. Expe­ri­ence should tell you when the time is to pull the plug before you get in over your head. Iron­i­cal­ly with the weath­er and con­di­tions that we hit there were 4 or 5 search and res­cues (that we know about) that took place in near­by locales on the trail. Prop­er pri­or plan­ning pre­vents piss poor performance.

A Few Lessons Learned:

We grew as out­doors­men more so on this trip than any oth­er trip. It test­ed us in many chal­leng­ing con­di­tions. We had to hone our wet weath­er sys­tem, cold weath­er sys­tems, cold and wet weath­er sys­tem, and win­ter trav­el sys­tems. Here are a few things that we learned:

• Do every­thing you can in your sleep­ing bag before get­ting out to start your last minute burst to fin­ish pack­ing up.
• Lay­er, lay­er, lay­er, and keep addi­tion­al lay­ers handy at all times. Hat lay­er and hand lay­ers in the pock­et of the jack­et you are wear­ing and core lay­ers in the top or out­side of your pack depend­ing on weather.
• Lay­er hands and feet just like you would your core. Lay­er­ing your sleep­ing bag sys­tem can also be very use­ful. We used a 38 degree syn­thet­ic overbag quilt and around a 20 degree down sleep­ing bag under­neath. This helped to pre­vent con­den­sa­tion build up in the down bag.
• In the win­ter a good sleep­ing pad with a high R‑value is worth its weight in gold.
• A stur­dy knife is use­ful to car­ry when you are ski­ing on tech bind­ings. It is real­ly annoy­ing when your boot is frozen in the bind­ing and you can’t switch back to tour­ing mode. This hap­pens in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent snow con­di­tions, so be pre­pared for it. The holes in the out­side of the tech bind­ing allow you to chip out some of the built up ice and snow with a knife so you can release.
• It is a mis­con­cep­tion that a tarp and alco­hol stove won’t work well for win­ter camping.
• From a men­tal stand­point this trip was very chal­leng­ing. We’d be trav­el­ing 25–30 miles one day and then it would snow and we’d strug­gle to get 10 miles per day in. One day you are think­ing you’ll be in Ash­land in 7 days and then the next day it’s 21 days away. I real­ly had to men­tal­ly slow down and take it one resup­ply at a time. There were so many unknowns that could affect the trip on any day. We’d have to plan for the big pic­ture and the length of the trail but tak­ing it one resup­ply at a time was the only way to pre­vent dis­ap­point­ment and get­ting in a funk.

Stats:

• Around 2,660 miles +/- side trips for resup­plies and straight-lined areas that were snow covered
• Octo­ber 21, 2014 – March 1, 2015 (132 days, 16 zero days with 6 being over Christ­mas to vis­it family)
• Aver­age mileage 20.15 miles per day / Aver­age mileage not includ­ing zeros 22.93 miles per day
• Num­ber of resup­plies: 30

FAQs (Fre­quent­ly Asked Questions):

Q: Why did you do this trip?

A: We took on this trip to chal­lenge our­selves in a dif­fer­ent time of year and to test and build our skills. We also looked for­ward to see­ing famil­iar places in a dif­fer­ent time of year.

Q: What shel­ter did you use?

A: We used the Moun­tain Lau­rel Designs Cuben Duo­mid tarp. We had planned on switch­ing to the XL ver­sion in the mid­dle of win­ter for some extra room but nev­er made the switch since it was work­ing so well.

Q: How many miles per day were you able to travel?

A: Our dai­ly dis­tance was great­ly affect­ed by the snow con­di­tions. Some days we would push all day and only be able to make it 9–10 miles. Oth­er days on clear trail we could cov­er 38 miles or so. Our aver­age on snow was prob­a­bly around 20 miles per day.

Q: What was the high­light of the trip?

A: This is a tough ques­tion as there were a lot of high­lights. I think the biggest thing that stood out was how sup­port­ive and wel­com­ing the trail com­mu­ni­ty was when they heard about the trip. Total strangers con­tact­ed us out of the blue to offer a warm place to stay and a hot meal. It was great to have these social inter­ac­tions since we went over 1750 miles on the trail with­out see­ing any­body, except for dur­ing resup­plies. A few of the on trail high­lights were the High Sier­ras, Three Sis­ters Wilder­ness, and any place that we had fresh snow and then the sun came out. Every­thing is real­ly beau­ti­ful after a storm.

Q: What was the hard­est part of the trip?

A: As I men­tioned this trip was very demand­ing men­tal­ly as well as phys­i­cal­ly. I think the men­tal aspects were almost as chal­leng­ing as the phys­i­cal aspects. When you are posthol­ing and trav­el­ing less than a mile an hour for 10 hours you are exhaust­ed and frus­trat­ed, phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly, and then you have to keep the men­tal side from derail­ing and los­ing motivation.

Q: How did you resup­ply in the High Sier­ras and what was your longest stretch?

A: There are mul­ti­ple road clo­sures in the Sier­ras in the win­ter and all of the resorts like Red’s Mead­ow, VVR, and Muir Trail Ranch are closed. No roads are open from Car­son Pass, CA to Walk­er Pass, CA (with the excep­tion of the dead end Kennedy Mead­ows road, but the store is only open on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day from 11–2, so we had a slim chance of mak­ing those hours). This is a dis­tance of 387.6 miles (Mile 1031.3 to 643.7)!

We skied out to Pick­el Mead­ows on High­way 108, then went to Mam­moth, and then had a friend cache some food that we had mailed him on Kearsarge Pass. This strat­e­gy worked well. Our longest food car­ry through the Sier­ras was 6 days since we were able to cov­er about 18–22 miles per day.

Q: How heavy were your packs?

A: Our packs were the heav­i­est through the High Sier­ra since we had 6 days of food, full win­ter gear and avalanche safe­ty equip­ment. We esti­mate our packs were around 45 pounds a their heaviest.

Q: What pon­cho were you wear­ing at the Mex­i­can border?

A: We were wear­ing the Moun­tain Lau­rel Designs Cuben Pon­cho Tarp.

Link to pic­tures from the last 650 miles: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=462371767247666&set=a.462406190577557&type=3&theater

A Few Arti­cles About The Trip:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/opinion/nicholas-kristof-you-think-your-winter-was-rough.html?smid=fb-share&_r=4

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/the-current/events-expeditions/First-Ever-Winter-Thru-Hike-of-the-PCT.html

http://www.rgj.com/story/life/outdoors/recreation/2015/03/04/winter-hike-pacific-crest-trail/24375421/

http://www.redbulletin.com/us/us/sports/the-wild-men-behind-the-first-winter-thru-hike-of-the-pct