It's a unique vacation that begins in a Mexican desert at its hottest and ends smack-dab in the middle of a Canadian winter, but those who travel the Pacific Crest Trail take pride in their uniqueness. A thru-hiker on the Pacific Crest Trail learns a new reckoning for time, distance, and even hygiene while making the 2,650-mile journey through twenty-four national parks, thirty-three wildernesses, and six out of the seven climate zones in North America. The word "epic" gets thrown around a lot these days, but the Pacific Crest Trail earns the distinction.
The trail runs next to or crosses several of the America's Byways in California, Oregon and Washington. In California, take Tioga Road/Big Oak Flat Road Scenic Byway and get on the trail at Tuolumne Meadows. The trail makes its way through some of the wildest and remotest of Yosemite's terrain. Further north, the Trail crosses the Ebbetts Pass Scenic Byway just east of Ebbetts Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, in the midst of some of the most difficult and spectacular terrain along the entire Pacific Crest Trail. Finally, take the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway to reach the Trail at several spots in Lassen National Forest, Lassen Volcanic National Park, and the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in northernmost California.
Another chunk of the Pacific Crest, the 400-mile section from Crater Lake National Park to Mount Hood, crosses, parallels or resides just off most of the America's Byways in Oregon, including Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway, Rogue-Umpqua Scenic Byway, Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway, West Cascades Scenic Byway, McKenzie Pass-Santiam Pass Scenic Byway, and Mt. Hood Scenic Byway. The Trail descends into the glorious Columbia River Gorge near the town of Cascade Locks and crosses the Historic Columbia River Highway and the Columbia River before entering Washington.
Reach the Pacific Crest Trail from several of Washington's America's Byways as well. The Chinook Scenic Byway crosses the Trail at Chinook Pass on the eastern border of Mt. Rainier National Park. Join the Trail at Snoqualmie Pass on the Mountains to Sound Greenway (I-90), or at Stevens Pass on the Stevens Pass Greenway.
Available to hikers and horseback riders only, the trail covers everything from sun-baked desert valleys in extreme Southern California to temperate rain forests in the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific Crest Trail also meanders through old-growth forests in the Northwest, alpine mountain ranges like the remote Northern Cascades, and windswept desert landscapes in the Mojave Desert. Tired of seeing Yosemite from the sterile confines of your car? Add some pizazz by walking there instead. You'll see more in a mile on the trail than you could catch in a hundred miles from the window of an RV.
Quitting your job and selling all your belongings in order to make the trip in one push tends to intimidate most travelers, but rest assured that the trail is accessible from a variety of communities big and small along the trail. Take on as much as you want and come back later for more. The Pacific Trail welcomes visitors for the afternoon, the weekend, or the summer. Some hikers spend a lifetime hiking the trail in more manageable chunks, making a yearly pilgrimage to a different section each time.
If you are one of the brave 300 or so people who attempt to thru-hike each year, it's time to get planning. The average hiker spends over half a year in preparation before eventually tackling the Pacific Crest. With five or six months worth of 20-mile hiking days, dried backpacking meals, and trail dust ahead of you, pack a good pair of shoes and cancel your cable. Not surprisingly, the undertaking rewards the hiker with spectacular scenery, an intimate communion with nature, and a forever-altered outlook on life. And at the end of it, you might not want to renew your cable after all.
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