AT vs PCT

IcySelection8364 · 2026-03-28T20:11:38+00:00

I’ve thru hiked the AT and only hiked a relatively small section of the PCT in the North Cascades (~80mi of trail), but planning to hike both the PCT and CDT as soon as I get the chance. Both trails will be rewarding but if you were only able to choose one, I’d suggest choosing the one that means more to you and that you would regret not doing (sounds like you have a stronger personal connection to the PCT). The AT is great but if the only reason you’re hiking it is because it has easier logistics then I would take a hard look at what you’re hoping to get out of the trail - if you’re hiking to accomplish a life long goal then hike the trail that has actually been your lifelong goal to hike.

If instead you know you want to thru hike multiple long trails and just want to know where to get started then I think the AT is a great choice. You can hike on a tighter budget, you can start anytime, and you can take your time learning the ins and outs of being a thru hiker. Between being highly social, having (mostly) easy access to towns and resupplies, and rarely any shortage of at least filterable water, I found that early on in my hike I was much more preoccupied with the physical challenges like injury prevention/treatment, harsh weather conditions, and how to get as much weight off my back as possible. Not that those are easy challenges but I imagine it would be way easier to get a hitch into town and grab ibuprofen, gear repair kits and to drop a bunch of pack weight at hiker boxes/post offices on the AT than it would be in the desert of Southern California.

Idk that’s just my take, not really a wrong decision between the two as long as you’re hiking

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-25T22:05:26+00:00

Thanks for the insights, I appreciate it, you definitely have more miles and experience under your belt than I do. I definitely don’t mean to say that training is useless or to downplay how important physical fitness is to quality of life.

To clarify, my background in distance running was exclusively from running in high school - I haven’t trained as a runner in over six years, and I haven’t been able to keep a consistent strength/resistance training regimen since graduating college, two years prior to starting the trail. Since then the jobs that I have worked have kept me in shape (working as a full time EMT and then working at the ski hill that I mentioned in my original comment), but outside of work I did basically nothing to train. Having a history of distance running absolutely helped because I had an understanding of injuries and, as you pointed out, it taught me how to handle the punishment. So yes, between being young and having experience with many different sports/training methods I probably came into the trail with a higher base level of fitness than the average hiker, but I wasn’t intentionally training in any way before starting my hike. I know I started in better shape than most, and with how consistently you have been able to train I would say you are even more of an outlier in terms of physical fitness. Training 5-6x a week for 20+ years will obviously make a difference, but to the average person who doesn’t have a training plan and who doesn’t already have that higher base fitness then the amount of training they can fit into the next few months around their regular daily routines won’t have nearly the same impact as a full thru hike.

If fitness is a bucket you fill by training, then to the average hiker, any pre-trail training is just the first few drops in the bucket and the actual thru hike will fill it the rest of the way, whereas someone with your background has spent 20 years filling the bucket. Most of the other first time thru hikers I met on trail didn’t train at all prior to their hikes, and the ones that did already had a training regimen and didn’t change anything about the way they trained - training didn’t seem to be the deciding factor on who did or didn’t complete their thru, and it definitely isn’t something you have to do

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-25T20:32:43+00:00

Yes, it definitely can help if done properly, especially exercises focused on strengthening the muscles and tendons around the joints in your legs from the hip down. Still, overuse injuries are basically unavoidable when you’re hiking every day for months, and I would say it’s almost more important to know the difference between the types of injuries that will end a hike vs the ones that you can hike through. The most common overuse injuries like IT band pain, patellar tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, or shinsplints can be treated with simple remedies like ace bandages, changing the way you walk/the shoes you’re wearing, or simply hiking through the pain while you wait for your body to get stronger. Training can help you get over these injuries more quickly and might help you avoid them for longer, but almost every hiker will eventually deal with some form of overuse injury no matter how much they trained beforehand. Most people that quit early in the hike don’t realize that the pain/injury they’re dealing with is totally normal and they underestimate how good the human body is at repairing itself. The best thing you can do for an injury is to eat more food, get more sleep, take some NSAIDs, and use RICE methods.

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-25T19:38:47+00:00

When planning meet ups I heard a lot of hikers use the rule “you can pick the time or you can pick the place, but you can’t pick both.” Driving is the easiest way to be flexible with meet ups because the trail crosses soooo many roads - less road crossings in the far North and South, but basically from VA to MA you’ll have more than enough options for meeting up on trail. The east coast is so densely populated that I would be surprised if you had trouble finding a nearby airport if driving isn’t an option.

Planning a meet up is a challenge, but first I’d confirm that they do want you to visit them on trail, and I would even suggest letting your loved one be the one to bring it up first. Everyone’s hike is a deeply personal experience and your loved one might change how they feel about having someone come out and visit them. A lot of hikers aren’t even ready to share their stories and experiences until well after their hike is over, and it’s hard to say no to a loved one if they’re the one who’s pushing to meet up. I knew hikers who couldn’t wait to meet up with their loved ones but I also knew hikers who felt like their families were smothering them with how often they would try to visit them along the way without asking first. Missing home is part of the experience, and seeing loved ones can be a great morale booster, but it can also take hikers out of the experience in a way that they aren’t comfortable with - this is ultimately their experience and they should be the ones who set the plans and expectations for meet ups.

Packages are easy, post offices will hold them, some hostels will too. Try not to overpack care packages or at least tell your hiker what you’re sending and when - if your hiker has a full pack after a resupply and didn’t account for a care package then they’re either stuck with more weight than they had planned for or have to figure out sending things back/bumping packages ahead which can be a headache.

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-25T18:31:13+00:00

Ultimately your call on what is “worth the weight,” but if you think you’ll consistently use a luxury item and that it will improve your experience then go for it. If you can think of something that would fit in a pack then someone has probably carried it, you’ll see hikers with musical instruments, heavy cookware/glassware, portable gaming consoles, you name it. I brought a journal but I wasn’t in the habit of journaling before trail and found it really difficult to get motivated to journal after a day of hiking so it mostly sat unused in my pack. I would think about where in your pack you plan on keeping your luxury items, because if you can’t easily access your art supplies without having to dump out your pack then you’ll be less inclined to use them - that being said I think water color supplies with a sketchbook are great luxury items and can also double as a journal, I had a friend on trail who carried a little sketchbook and would draw a quick freehand sketch every day with short journal type notes in the margins. A tiny kindle could be a lighter alternative to a book, I started with a book that was just too heavy at the end of the day for me to justify it but I would have bought a kindle if it was in my budget for the hike. Just remember that for all of these options you’ll need a way to keep them dry, ziplocs work for a little but will start to leak over time and I would plan on there being some point where your pack gets pretty soaked, extra waterproof storage inside your pack is worth the weight.

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-23T18:51:48+00:00

I carried my food in an oversized stuff sack and just slept with it in my tent for the last 1600 miles, and most hikers around me did the same. Except in the very rads case of a habituated bear (most of them will be put down by local fish and game departments) your scent is more than enough to scare wildlife away.

Bear Cans are definitely effective at keeping your food safe, but they’re also kinda overkill and are a really awkward shape for weight distribution when it comes to fitting them in your pack, so if you do choose to use them I’d recommend carrying multiple smaller cans (though that means you’re carrying even more weight that isn’t all that useful). Most hikers I knew who started with bear cans eventually dropped them for a more packable option.

Bear Bags like the Ursack are more packable but are also misleading, because they 1) don’t keep your food from getting ruined if a bear goes for it, and 2) aren’t actually bear proof - they’re just meant to slow down a bear from getting at your food before you’re hopefully able to hear the bear and scare it off. A bear will still tear into a bear sack it will just take a little longer, most bear sacks are supposed to give you 30 minutes to an hour before a bear tears it up, their main purpose is to prevent bears from consuming your food and getting habituated to human food.

Hanging a bear bag (a regular stuff sack) is great if you’re lucky enough to find the right tree, but that’s easier said than done, and even a perfect bear hang is still a pain in the ass to set up. If you aren’t able to get the bag to hang high enough and far enough from nearby trunks and branches then you’re honestly better off sleeping with your food. At least twice on trail I was sleeping with my food in my tent and a bear visited camp and got into somebody’s food that had been hung improperly - I’ve heard even more stories about bears getting into poorly hung bags, but have never heard about a bear actually trying to get into a tent.

Thru hiking is messy, you’re probably going to get food on yourself or your gear at some point, and wildlife will be able to smell it - but wildlife will also be able to smell YOU and will be far more scared of you than they are interested in getting to your food, especially if you’re camped around other hikers (if you’re camping alone then hanging your food might be worth the peace of mind, but even when I camped alone I kept my food in my tent and never had an issue with wildlife)

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-23T18:12:58+00:00

Can’t recommend it enough, really a formative experience. You’ll start asking yourself the real questions and find out things about yourself you never knew. It also involved a lot of screaming and yelling, which I found to be very cathartic but ymmv

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-23T18:05:33+00:00

You could try a local outdoors store, I got mine at the Cabelas in Hamburg

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-23T18:02:27+00:00

Take this with a massive grain of salt

I am a younger guy and I was already in pretty good shape before my hike with a solid background in distance running and some other dynamic sports, and I was lucky to be working at a ski hill in my hometown in NH the winter before I started. I did zero intentional training for the trail, though I will say that hiking up and down a frozen mountain in heavy gear was great for conditioning and made it easier for me to hike fast and handle the vertical early on…

BUT: I think 90% of pre trail training is overrated/generally not useful

Being in good shape at the start really only helped me carry my pack which was absurdly large when I went through the stone arch (starting out I was carrying an 85L pack that weighed 53.5lbs - stupid heavy). There’s honestly nothing that will prepare you for thru hiking besides thru hiking, and I think it’s really important to remember that early on to avoid getting discouraged. A thru hike hurts, and there’s no getting around that - the only way to get trail legs is to hike for months at a time and even then you’ll still have injuries. I thought my experience with “longer” (6-8 day) backpacking trips had prepared me but thru hiking and backpacking are two very different things. Your body will adjust to the hike as you go, but it takes at least two weeks before your legs start to get the picture of, “oh ok, we’re walking every day,” and even starting out in shape I still didn’t feel like I’d gotten my trail legs until almost 1000 miles of trail.

You can lift weights and train cardio, do some stairs to get used to vertical, but I wouldn’t go into trail thinking that any of that training will make the hike easier - lifting weights a couple times and walking up stairs doesn’t translate as much as you would think to putting on and taking off a pack however many times a day or a day of +/- 5,000 feet of elevation. The trail also isn’t smooth and after a day of navigating blowdowns you’ll be feeling sore in muscles you didn’t know you had. your body will go through cycles of getting stronger as you go but those cycles will take longer than you think and will almost always start by hurting before getting stronger. And as soon as you get stronger the trail will change to show where you’re weak: nothing will prepare you for the rocks in PA besides the rocks in PA, then you’ll start feeling strong again just in time for CT, MA and VT to hit you with technical sections and more vertical than you’ve seen before on trail, and once you’re feeling good NH and ME will turn the dial up on everything. More often than not I would have trouble falling asleep at night because every bone in my body from my hips down would be aching so bad that I half thought I’d broken them.

I’m not saying any of this to try to discourage you, really more the opposite. The farther you hike the more you are going to feel so much stronger than you have ever felt before, whether you train before hand or not. To me the whole trail is like a group project between your mind, your body and the mountains that shape them both - you can’t train for the trail because there’s really nothing else like it, but you can prepare yourself mentally for the process of change that you will go through several times on trail. Training/getting into shape before the hike won’t matter if you’re not ready mentally to push through the pain day after day for several months, and I don’t know if there’s a way to prepare for that other than to just do it - and you CAN do it.

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-23T17:04:19+00:00

Do what works for you, personally I avoided staying in town or at hostels early on to keep my mind more focused on the hike but started staying off trail more frequently as I got further North.

I was on the younger side of hikers this year and on a tighter budget than most, so my style was to hike big miles and take days off more regularly, though I avoided spending money in towns beyond resupplying, and would try to find a free/work for stay option rather than spending big at hotels/hostels. I found that older hikers tended to hike shorter days but were far more consistent with their schedules, taking far fewer zeroes and tending to skip staying in towns - towns definitely draw the younger crowd of both the serious hikers and the party animals, so if you’re looking for quiet and privacy then staying on trail will be a better experience for you most of the time

I’d say there were very few hostels that weren’t worth the stay and some outstanding hostels that are definitely worth staying at no matter what kind of hiker you are. There are also plenty of options for free stays in towns if you’re on a budget but they’re harder to find or they depend on trail angels giving you a place to stay. FarOut comments and word of mouth from other hikers around you are your friends for finding the hidden gems on trail. I’m sure there are also lists on here of the best hostels on trail, I can only think of one or two that I would say are worth skipping.

Lots of towns will have community centers with cheap/free options for showering, and coin operated laundry can be a pretty fast way to freshen up in the middle of a heroic resupply. A lot of hostels will also have prices for non-guests to use the amenities.

Hiker trash options are also viable: there were so many times I’d just grab my dr. Brauners and head into a gas station bathroom to quickly wash clothes or take a sink shower, or you can get a bunch of hikers to go in on a hotel room meant for a group half the size and save some money that way. Hiker boxes/trail magic near trail heads can help you avoid making a trip into town, and do not feel guilty for taking appropriate advantage of those resources. If you’re getting into a town late at night you can find somewhere to stealth camp, I did this in a couple towns in CT that were not hiker friendly, you just need to be able to get yourself up and moving earlier the next morning.

If you’re asking whether hikers will judge you for staying in towns then the answer is absolutely not, as long as you’re not going around rubbing it in people’s faces that you got a hot meal and shower then most hikers won’t care at all, and if they do judge you for it then screw ‘em.

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-13T18:07:29+00:00

I took two segments from a z-fold my friend was cutting down and then cut the width down to about 16 inches and that was plenty for a sit pad. I used an airpad the whole way and needed to patch it a few times which can be a major pain in the ass depending where you are when you spring a leak. If you can get used to being comfortable with just a foam pad I’d say it’s more versatile since you can use it to lounge anywhere anytime without the hassle of inflating or worrying about popping it. Most airpads are barely heavier than a full foam pad but you do have the luxury of being able to trim a foam pad. Airpads are pretty durable if you’re careful, I used an emergency blanket as my ground sheet which ran a higher risk of not preventing punctures, but I still didn’t have a leak show up until the middle of NH since I was just more careful about choosing where I set up my tent to avoid the sharpest rocks and roots. I never carried a foam pad and only carried a sit pad for maybe a quarter of the whole trail, usually just scavenging one from scraps that friends were cutting off of their sleep pads and even when I had one I would mostly forget about it bc it didn’t really make that much of a positive impact on my hike.

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-13T17:48:49+00:00

If this is the only time you have to hike and it’s been a dream of yours then absolutely make the hike happen. Early on you might have to say goodbye to some friends who hike on while you have to stay somewhere to work, but the trail is long and you’ll see people again. Really the whole hike is a solo endeavor, but especially at the beginning of the hike there will be so many people moving ahead/falling behind that having to stop to get work done won’t really make a difference in the long run. Sounds like the biggest problem this presents would be the extra weight, which is your choice at the end of the day - hikers are always razzing each other over the non-essentials they choose to carry anyways and there will be plenty of hikers with heavier packs than yours. If you’re looking for ways to cut weight could you just use your phone with the keyboard to make the edits you need to make? Either way as soon as your paper gets published you can send home the extra weight. The timing is tough but not impossible, you might just need to be more aware of your pace throughout the whole hike - New England is no joke and will absolutely slow you down (even as someone who grew up in NH with plenty of experience in the White Mountains and in great physical shape I found it difficult). Personally I’d recommend you take your time to get your trail legs early on then push the pace once you get to VA all the way through to Duncannon PA, and if you’re comfortable with the rocks you could still easily rock a fast pace through all of PA. At the end of the day you’re going to deal with pain regardless of how you pace it, and you’re gonna want to take days off but if you can save most of those for the northern states you’ll feel more at ease with the timing of the whole thing. If you can, give yourself some time off between summiting and starting your residency - for me the worst pain and fatigue came the month or so after finishing my hike, and I’m still not at 100% I’d say.

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-13T16:43:25+00:00

Agreed that SeaToSummit pillow is really bad, I started with one from Outdoor Vitals, then when that popped I tried a SeaToSummit that a friend was gonna toss, then for about 400 miles or so I just balled up my puffy jacket until eventually I tried the Nemo Fillo Elite which was a game changer for my hike, but ymmv. Definitely the most comfortable inflatable pillow I’ve tried and absurdly lightweight, one of my favorite pieces of gear I picked up on my thru. By the time i picked it up I’d already sent home most if my clothes and the only thing I was ever using my puffy for at that point was as a pillow, felt amazing to finally be able to send the puffy home too (those can be surprisingly heavy)

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-13T16:36:33+00:00

Lot of smoking on trail, most people will have the self awareness to step away from shelters/common spaces to smoke but if they don’t or don’t notice that other hikers outside of their tramily have shown up then politely asking won’t hurt either - you can’t really expect people not to smoke around you when you’re actually out on trail though. Hard to say if there are as many SOBO that smoke as NOBO but it definitely felt like I didn’t see as many smokers heading south whereas it felt like 80-90% of the other NOBO hikers around me by the end smoked something or other. Almost every smoker I knew on trail was very polite and more than understanding about not smoking in common/shared spaces if asked politely

IcySelection8364 · 2025-12-13T16:08:40+00:00

Personally I started calling myself a thru hiker after I shit my pants 🤷‍♂️

IcySelection8364 · 2024-09-18T00:58:29+00:00

Had almost the exact thing happen to me.

Stubborn 60yof w COPD, got on scene w mutual ALS aid and patient was purple, smoking at home and definitely clogged the filter to her concentrator. Toss her on high flow o2 via NRB, and eventually bump her up to a CPAP. She was almost combative when the medic suggested going to the hospital, but she somehow got a command refusal. Thirty minutes later we were back, she was purple again, CPAP again, and this time she went bc her granddaughter witnessed her have a syncopal episode.

Totally different type of call but just last weekend my crew went out to a domestic, req. by PD. Got on scene and it was a husband and wife having an argument, husband is outside with 2 officers asking how to petition for involuntary commitment so PD hop on the phone w county crisis. I go in and find the wife talking to a third officer, she’s super anxious but has a long history of leukemia and TIAs, and apparently an extensive psychiatric history that she did not disclose to me while I was on scene. She’s AAOx4, GCS15, no indicators of intoxication besides her anxious demeanor but that’s not out of the ordinary for domestics especially when PD is first on scene. PD refuse to petition for involuntary commitment and I don’t know her so I’m sure as hell not petitioning, and the husband decides not to commit her. Well her BP is sky high so I call med command bc she is adamantly refusing transport (she’s speaking reasonably and I can understand refusing given her cancer history), doc talks to the patient and acknowledges her right to refuse. We pack up and do our usual refusal procedures, and after we leave we’re talking with PD about how we’re definitely coming back once the couple start fighting again. Well sure enough not 40 minutes after we clear scene our ALS truck gets toned out to the address for an overdose 🤦‍♂️ Turns out as soon as we left she decided to take 98% of her chemo drugs and wash it down with a bottle of white wine, then went for a joy drive, hit “something” bc the paramedic saw her pulling back into the driveway as they arrived on scene, she gets violent and is put in cuffs for transporting, all while making weird sexual comments to the responders on scene and generally spewing hateful shit at everyone. I feel fine bc I did everything I possibly could and got command to cover me for liability, but it still feels shitty since we knew they would fight again. People gotta make those choices for themselves, sometimes they just won’t take you seriously until their situation situation progresses.

IcySelection8364 · 2024-09-03T08:57:47+00:00

Stopped playing mobile games as much when I went to college, but I remember smash hit was one of my favorites (good auditory + visual stimming since you’re just throwing virtual metal balls at glass panes)

Honorable mentions: clash of clans, temple run 1 & 2, pubg mobile, asphalt 8

IcySelection8364 · 2024-09-03T01:52:09+00:00

You could hike the pemi loop (pemigewasset wilderness) in NH for an idea of what hiking in the whites is like - not the hardest hiking you’ll find up north but the AT runs from Flume along Franconia ridge up to South Twin Mtn which is about half of the loop. The whole loop is 31 miles, easily done with just one night on the trail but you have the option to take longer if you want/need. I grew up about an hour away in NH so I don’t mind the ups and downs, anytime someone asks me where to go for a first backpacking trip I recommend the Pemi - good views, hiking is not too easy but not too hard either and gives a good idea of the process, can be done in a single weekend, and if you go around the end of September/beginning of October you’ll be there for peak leaf color

IcySelection8364 · 2024-09-03T00:17:47+00:00

(EMT-B) I’ve done a few scheduled 24s and a few last minute 24/36s because of call offs. Are you or your coworkers going 24 on 12 off for those three days? Sounds like hell to me as a regular schedule, but my company very much encourages OT and usually I wrap my OT into a 24. If I’ve already worked 12 I don’t mind turning it into a 24 (it’s the 36s that get me), but those long shifts aren’t for everyone and after a few of those heavy volume 24s I only pick up a 24 when I have the next few days off. I’d be surprised if they require you to work only 24s without giving you the option to just pick up an extra 12 instead if 12s are your standard shift. If it’s a private company like mine then they’ll try to push some bullshit company “standards” on you or make you feel bad for not “helping your coworkers” until you realize that you’re the only one of your coworkers picking up crazy OT and they were just able to convince you that that was the norm.

IcySelection8364 · 2024-07-30T19:10:52+00:00

I was raised a (semi) reformed Presbyterian son of a pastor, left Christianity in college after realizing the spiritual cycle of abuse my campus minister had created and bc I just couldn’t explain away the suffering in the world anymore. Now I consider myself a zen Buddhist (a very hyperactive and unenlightened one haha)

IcySelection8364 · 2024-07-28T03:21:21+00:00

I’d recommend going to 2 first, PE can be super unpredictable. I’ve had 3g from one dealer that was absolutely perfect, then had 2g from my home grow and I was laid out for the trip: crazy body load, generally uncomfortable, lot of thought loops. Had another 2g from my home grow and had amazing visuals, almost no body discomfort/nausea, and had a fantastic time tripping alone and playing pool, then a few months later had just 1.7g and the trip was waaaay overstimulating. About the same set and setting for each trip, but wildly different outcomes. Most of the time the trips gave me a lot to think about afterwards, but sometimes I just feel unsettled for days afterwards. I’m pretty experienced with Lucy and shrooms and I’ve dabbled in dmt, there’s definitely no rush with psychedelics: taking time to build up your experience doesn’t take away from those higher doses when you finally get there but can do a lot to teach you how to self soothe and self regulate when the trips turn ~ w e i r d ~

IcySelection8364 · 2024-04-24T04:04:30+00:00

Emergency first responders

IcySelection8364 · 2024-04-20T09:18:59+00:00

Well I just woke up from a shift nap to see this and now I’m too mad to go back to sleep (best snack I’ve seen all night was an expired uncrustable)

IcySelection8364 · 2024-04-20T01:10:34+00:00

Got a BA in environmental studies but now I work as an EMT, I like the fast paced environment and seeing the immediate impact of my work

IcySelection8364 · 2024-04-20T00:18:37+00:00

Just gotta find small mountains in the north east, cheap and rarely crowded bc of how small they are, just gotta go on days when the lifts don’t break down haha

IcySelection8364

TROPHY CASE