[pct-l] I hinted at this topic, hiking alone

[Tom Bache]

I am a section hiker (1725 miles so far) who prefers to be alone on the
trail.  It turns out to be easy to find solitude because most of the PCT is
quite empty except within the "herd" attempting to do the entire trail in
one season.  With some planning, one can have excellent hiking conditions
yet spend many days seeing no one.  There are exceptions in popular areas
with a short window of good conditions (e.g., JMT), but they represent a
small proportion of the trail.

I was initially quite surprised by this -- I started by day-hiking Section A
November-March and saw no one on the trail except the few miles near Mt
Laguna -- 3 million people within an hour of the trail, and no one on it!
But I came to realize that very, very few people use this trail -- we are
blessed to have it.

Tom Bache
San Diego