PCT Reflection + Gear List
What's a PCT hiker without a gear list?
I first heard about the PCT when my dad and I hiked a section of it in the summer of 2020; he’d always wanted to backpack from Lake Tahoe to Yosemite, two important and very identifiable California locations, and so we packed up our bags and in two separate weeks, backpacked the 150 miles down to Tuolumne Meadows.
Around the same time, I watched a few YouTube videos of Elina Osborne, a New Zealand-based filmmaker who was thru-hiking the PCT and documenting her experiences online. I loved her videos and her adventure, and thought it’d be the coolest thing ever to do the PCT one day, even though at the time it seemed about as realistic as climbing up Mt. Everest. It’s so long! It’s so far! How does one ever begin to plan that! (I later realized that you can’t really plan something like that, but rather you just have to kind of pack up your things and go out there!)
A few years later in January of 2024, I went on a backpacking trip with the UCLA Backpacking Club, which was probably a top-3 defining college experience for me because of all the different people I met. The cast of people from that trip is quite large, but most importantly features:
Akshat, who became a close friend that quarter and with whom I went on many long walks around the UCLA Botanical Garden with delicious Kerckhoff coffees
Alex, who became one of my closest friends to this day, and with whom I explored the UCLA Tunnels and played lots of Blokus
Dylan, who also became an Excursions Club trip leader that summer and with whom I led 2 AWESOME trips to Joshua Tree and Morro Bay
Brooke, who became my girlfriend about 2 weeks later and hiked the PCT with me! ❤️
And for the purposes of this narrative introduction, 5. Jess! Jess was a junior just like me, and had taken the spring quarter off the year before to thru-hike the PCT in 2023. I’d heard of the PCT by this point, of course, but meeting someone who’d finished the PCT and getting to personally know them made it seem so much more doable to me. It wasn’t just mythically-fit-and-athletic legends who did this sort of thing, but adventurous UCLA students just like me! And after realizing a few weeks later that I myself would be graduating next winter quarter, an attempt at a PCT thru-hike the following year didn’t seem too impossible. (Maybe I’ll even be that inspiration for some of you!)
Fast forward a few months, Brooke and I’d been dating for a while, and I successfully convinced her that a thru-hike together sounded like the best idea ever. We applied for a joint permit to do the PCT, got it, bought all the gear we needed, and in May of the following year, we were standing at the Southern Terminus, wondering how in the world we were actually there. 143 days later, and we were at the Northern Terminus, feeling the greatest feeling of accomplishment ever.
Having finished the PCT now, just a short year after first getting the idea of thru-hiking it, the best word to describe it all is simply, “grand”. Grand views, grand friendships, grand pain, grand hardship, yet all in all, the grandest adventure I could ever imagine. Right from Day 1, the scenery I saw and the people I met were nothing short of magical; the kindness of trail angels and the quick bonds forged with other thru-hikers are now lifelong memories and some of my most cherished.
The PCT was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, full of mental, physical, and topographic high and lows, yet through it all, I learned the importance of companionship in overcoming these challenges. I was so fortunate to thru-hike from start to finish with Brooke and 2 French friends we met on trail (Flo and Pablo), whose support and good cheer were the stuff of legend and made the whole thing possible. It made me appreciate so many things from back home: friends and family I sorely missed, non-dehydrated food, dryness and comfy couches, but now that I’m used to being back, I’m already looking forward to the next long thru-hike out in the great outdoors.
Funny enough, I don’t have too many overarching reflections or epiphanies from the PCT, simply a deep appreciation for the experience and gratitude for everyone I met along the way. Of course, the nature and scenery were unbelievably gorgeous; of course, I loved the companionship and camaraderie of hiking every day with Brooke, Flo, and Pablo; of course, every town stop and trail angel interaction was special and a cherished memory.
At the end of the day, I’m so glad that I delayed starting full-time work and took a 9-month break after graduation to thru-hike the PCT. I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to do so, and extremely proud of myself for seizing the opportunity with everything I had and embarking on this great adventure. I was looking for an epic one after UCLA, and boy did I find it in the PCT!
And now, time for the gear list! Most PCTers/other long-distance-trail-hikers I know of and follow online feature some sort of gear list, so I figured that I might as well go ahead and make one myself, too. If anything, it’ll give me a great starting point when packing for my next thru-hike! There are tons of great ones out there (my favorite is Elina’s itself), so I’m excited to add mine to the collection.
Last thing: this post will be ~1,000,000% MORE enjoyable if you read the footnotes in the gear list and their assorted anecdotes, quips, and photos, so please please PLEASE read this in your browser or the free Substack app! To use these delightful little creations (the footnotes), simply click on them, read them, then click the number again to return to the main article. It couldn’t be any easier. (Alexandra, have fun)
Wait, do you hear that? Is someone saying something? Is that a whisper in the wind? OH WAIT THAT’S ME ASKING YOU ONCE AGAIN TO PLEASE READ THE FOOTNOTES IN YOUR BROWSER OR THE FREE SUBSTACK APP!
Ok phew, glad we got that out of the way. Let’s get started!
The “Big 3”:
Backpack: Hyperlite Unbound (55L, Black, Tall)1
Sleeping System: Enlightened Equipment Enigma Sleeping Quilt/Pillow + Thermarest NeoAir XLite Sleeping Pad3
Clothing:
(You may notice a lot of Patagonia products here, which happen to feature extensively on this list as Brooke has a 60% off Patagucci discount with her job at Fleet Feet 🤑)
Mammoth Mountaineering Supply sun hoodie4
Shorts5
Patagonia base layer pants7
2 pairs of underwear
2 pairs of Darn Tough socks (for hiking)12
1 pair of fluffy socks (for sleeping)
Beanie13
UCLA Parking hat14
Shoes:
Flip flops16
Assorted Items Used to Prevent Starvation and Other Hunger-and-Thirst-Related Calamities (or AIUTPSAOHATRC, for short):
JetBoil Stash17 + Gas canister + Lighter/emergency backup matches
Sea2Summit Alpha Light Long-Handled Backpacking Spork18
1.5L Smartwater/Fiji/Essian water bottles26
Electronics:
Miscellaneous:
Glasses34
Pocketknife
Chapstick
First aid kit
Hand sanitizer
Pen35
PCT business cards36
Toiletries37
Sunscreen39
Wet wipes… for wiping
Sitting pad40
PCT permit41
Things that I brought with me to San Diego and were, over time, dropped off with friends on trail or mailed home (also known as “Why tf did I bring this with me” items, or WTFDIBTWM for short):
Titanium cup44
Titanium bowl45
Physical wallet46
Toiletries bag47
Hand warmer battery48
Extra shirt49
An entire roll of toilet paper (wtf)
Favorite recipes/food to eat on trail:
Trail mocha
Ramen (So f’ing delicious. Add Cholula, dehydrated veggies, and bone broth for maximum flavor, nutrients, and yumminess)
Overnight oats in a Talenti jar (with peanut butter), prepared with love by your girlfriend
Wild huckleberries and blueberries in Oregon and Washington, respectively
Every single type of granola bar known to man x1000
Jolly ranchers (perfect sugar boost for climbs, 1 Jolly Rancher lasts ~1 mile)
Snickers (the highlight of every day)
Tips for thru-hikers or someone thinking about thru-hiking:
Honestly, I’m not exactly sure how big this list will be, and at the moment I’m drawing a lot of blanks. Likely, I’ll be coming back to this list in the following weeks as I remember random little tips and tidbits from the PCT. Happy Trails!
If you’re hiking in a large group (a trail family, or tramily), you can often find free lodging in towns by posting in the local Facebook Group for the PCT trail angels in that town. One of the tramilies we hiked on/off with in Oregon did this very successfully in many of the towns on trail!
Like I said earlier, there really isn’t any way to 100% prepare for the trail, so just bring everything you think you might need, eliminate 50% of it, and then eliminate another 50% once you’re actually hiking. The number of things I gave to visiting friends or mailed home is a little bit ridiculous when looking back on it
Having a blog is such a great thing while thru-hiking, because it’s a super easy way to stay up-to-date with everyone at once without texting/emailing everyone the same updates and photos! Plus, you can include post office addresses at the beginning of your blog posts, so your dutiful readers can send you mail and packages on trail! Thank you to everyone who sent me things on the PCT!!!
And many more to come…
Your backpack is probably the most important piece of gear while backpacking… it’s in the name. I was recommended to get a Hyperlite bag by two different friends, and trusted their advice enough to get one myself without trying out one on a trip myself. I used it for a month in the UK before the PCT and enjoyed how light and spacious it was. It doesn’t have any compartments or zippers (except on the hip belt), just one giant dry bag that you stuff everything into. I was skeptical about that at first, but quickly decided that I really enjoyed it and developed an efficient way to pack all of my things into it. The material of the bag itself is waterproof, which was SO amazing as I never needed to put a cover on it when it rained… everything inside just stayed dry! The bag also doesn’t have a frame, per se, but rather a hybrid back support that saves weight for the hiker. This was good enough for me, except when the bag was particularly heavy after a weeklong resupply. It then really hurt my shoulders, which I learned to push through.
Hyperlite has a very generous warranty policy, and after I got a few tears in the water bottle pouch and a piece of the back support broke, they shipped me a new one to Cascade Locks for free and paid for the shipping label to send my old one back to them for “R&D purposes”. Ideally, I wouldn’t have to replace my backpack in the middle of a thru-hike, but it was nevertheless very nice that the company did so for free and paid for the entire thing. Hopefully, I’ll have enough money to try out several different bags for my next thru-hike before settling for one more permanently. In the meantime, I’m sticking with my Hyperlite!
This tent was unbelievably nice and I highly highly highly recommend it for 2 people. It was quite light, very spacious, and held up remarkably well over the 5 months that we set it up every night. The stake, tent, and pole bags ripped pretty quickly on the trip, but we didn’t really need them anyway. Thank you Global Man for sponsoring our tent!
Some people had trekking pole tents, but those seemed to last only ~3 months before things started breaking, and on days when it was particularly stormy those hikers suffered. We were warm, though!
I started off with a sleeping bag, but it was quite old and there wasn’t much down left by the feet, so my feet’d get really cold on cold nights. About a month in, my parents got me a new backpacking quilt for a graduation present (thank you!), which I used happily for the rest of the trail. A backpacking quilt is basically a sleeping bag without the bottom, which is completely fine and still very warm if you have a nice pad under you while saving a good amount of weight. My sleeping quilt was 950FP, rated to 20 degrees, and size Long/Wide. In Washington, I used a sleeping bag liner, which added another 10 degrees of warmth to the quilt. Brooke had a 0-degree bag and was cozy the entire trip.
For my sleeping pad, I can’t recommend a Thermarest enough! I absolutely loved this purchase and I slept like a baby every night, possibly even better than in a bed. Yes, the price is quite steep at ~$200, but I figured that I’d much rather spend the extra money to sleep comfortably than have a shitty sleeping pad and nearly freeze to death every night. That was 100% the right decision! About two months into trail, the pad got a few tiny holes near the inflation valve, which I patched with some trail glue (described later). It turned out that these holes were due to a manufacturing defect, so they sent me a brand new pad for FREE to trail, which I kept unused so I’d have a new pad once I’m home. Yay!
Pretty much everyone wore a sun hoodie on trail to avoid getting completely sunburnt. A sun hoodie is made of athletic material, and has long sleeves and a hoodie, which when worn with a baseball cap keeps you shaded and your skin protected. 95% of the people I met on trail did a version of a sun hoodie and hat combo. There was a phase where I had other hikers sign my sun hoodie with a Sharpie so that I would have a cool souvenir at the end, but the permanent marker wasn’t permanent after a few washes. Jolly Gear is another great sun hoodie brand, and I’ll probably get one of their sun hoodies for my next thru-hike. This sun hoodie is still wearable, and I used it when chopping banana trees and assorted vines in Hawaii
I went through 2 different pairs over the course of the PCT. Started off with some green ones that didn’t have a drawstring waistband, which meant they started sagging after the first week when I lost some weight. Got some UCLA shorts at graduation that had a drawstring waistband and wore them to the end. Make sure to have some way to secure your shorts around your waist because your waistline will inevitably change as you hike all day for months on end
I got green pants from REI and loved them
Kept me warm at night and in very cold mornings/evenings. Also perfect to wear while skiing, which I do. Bought for $20 at the Mammoth Gear Exchange in Bishop, one of my all-time favorite places on Earth
Now this was just an elite piece of gear! How can something so light and thin be so warm at the same time? This was my go-to item when it got a bit chilly while hiking or in the mornings/evenings when it was cool but not yet cold. Loved it, no issues at all, held up perfectly, and still seems to be in mint condition after 5 months on trail
A huge win here as well. Nice and light, extremely warm. When paired with the R1, it seemed that I’d never be cold again. More ideal for colder conditions, I went with the R1 when it was just chilly and this one when it was properly cold
Perfectly waterproof throughout the entire trail, no problems. It was orange af and super bright, so my hiking partners could always see me lol. I thought the orange might’ve even been a bit too aggressively bright, but that’s just me.
I didn’t actually wear these much on trail except for one time when it was pouring rain in Washington, but I wore them in town frequently when doing laundry. Saved me from getting arrested for public indecency on many occasions as a backup pair of pants when my main (and only other) pair was being washed.
I cannot speak highly enough of this brand and how amazing they are to thru-hikers. The socks are very durable, comfortable, and well-designed (they have lots of fun ones), but most importantly, they have a lifetime warranty with no questions asked. If you’re a thru-hiker and you send them photos of your socks with holes in them, Darn Tough will send you brand new ones to a post office on trail for free!!! Kat, you’re my hero!
Obtained by winning a shotgun-a-Redbull contest with the UCLA Ski and Board Club
Thank you Tallis for this amazing gift, I’m still wearing this hat even though it’s bleached af
I absolutely love love loved these trail running shoes, and went through 5 pairs of trail. All of them were the same color and size, and it was so funny to see the difference between the new and old pairs right before I’d swap them out. Highly recommend buying all of your shoes in advance if you know which pair you like, and then having family/friends mail or bring them to you on trail when you need them. One pair of trail shoes lasts ~400-500 miles. Strava has a really cool feature that tracks the mileage of your gear, so I’d get an email when it was time to swap out my shoes! I didn’t see anyone on trail wearing hiking boots, everyone wore some variant of trail running shoe to keep their feet breathing and dry
To wear around camp and in towns on trail
This was such an amazing purchase, and lifted my mood and warmed by stomach with hot food more times than I could count. This JetBoil was the perfect size for two people, and eventually became my only cooking utensil on trail, serving as my cup, bowl, and companion while hiking. After 5 months of daily use, it’s still in perfect condition. I did meet a few hikers on trail who were stoveless to save some weight, but those folks seemed a bit depressed and would look enviously when the JetBoil started cooking
I found this spoon in a hiker box in Warner Springs, and it quickly became my favorite piece of gear on the ENTIRE trail! I love it. I nurture it. I caress it dearly. I didn’t expect this spoon to make me so happy, yet every time I’d eat with its extremely lightweight handle, I was simply filled with joy. There was a terrifying moment where I accidentally forgot the spoon in a hostel in South Lake Tahoe, but upon realizing that I’d lost my beloved spoon, I called the hostel right away and had them mail it ahead to Lassen National Park. Thank goodness. Unfortunately, they don’t make this type of backpacking spork anymore, so it looks like I’ll need to take care of mine until the end of time. This is the modern equivalent of it, though there’s no way it’s anywhere near as good as the one I found
It was so great, in fact, that I sent a thank-you email to Sea2Summit thanking them for making such an excellent spoon, and they even responded! (you may recognize that I copied most of this footnote from that email lol)
Me:
Dear Sea2Summit,
My name’s Dennis, and I’m a thru-hiker who just finished the Pacific Crest Trail a few weeks ago. I spent the past 5 months eating with a Sea2Summit backpacking spoon, which I found in a hiker box in our first trail town of Warner Springs and quickly became my favorite piece of gear on trail. I didn’t expect this spoon to make me so happy, yet every time I’d eat with its extremely lightweight handle, I simply felt so happy. There was a terrifying moment where I accidentally forgot the spoon in a hostel in South Lake Tahoe, but upon realizing that I’d lost my beloved spoon, I called the hostel right away and had them mail it ahead to Lassen National Park.
I took a ton of photos on trail, including a few of me with this beloved spoon. I’ve attached a Google Drive link to the photos I took on trail because the spoon just made me so so happy! The final one is me enjoying a trail mocha (one packet of Swiss Miss + instant coffee packet) at the northern terminus of the PCT, which of course I stirred with my spoon. Thanks so much for being a part of my PCT adventure, and happy trails!
Best,
Dennis “Bloodhound” Gavrilenkohttps://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LJ0hw8_XYApofZIZJAo6XI7l5zMUSTDJ?usp=sharing
Them:
G’day Dennis!
Just as you felt so happy with your spork, we find the same level of happiness knowing (and seeing) that we are able to help make your awesome PCT thru-hike a little bit better!
For context, it appears you have the Alpha Light long handled spork in your possession! What a prize to stumble upon! As a brand we transitioned away from that product and replaced it with our Frontier Long Handled Spork, but you have a good one there that should bring you joy for many years to come. And just a little secret... many of us use that same spork whether we’re on the trail or sitting at our desks. Everyone has to write there names on them so they don’t get mixed up.
Thank you very much for sharing with us and CONGRATULATIONS on our PCT accomplishment. We are honored to be part of your journey.
Cheers!
Sea to Summit Team | www.seatosummit.com
Sea to Summit - North America
This was just an awesome piece of gear! A fuel transfer basically… transfers fuel between two gas canisters, which long story short means that Brooke and I saved a bunch of money on gas on the PCT. We only had to buy a few cans of gas on the ENTIRE trail, and got most of our gas by siphoning nearly empty cans in hiker towns along the way. 11/10 recommend having one on trail
Perfect for overnight oatmeal or cold-soaking ramen when you’re in a pinch. Very good collection basket for Oregon and Washington berries
I somehow messed up the numbering of the footnotes and all the ones after this was were off by 2 notes, soooooooooooo I’m putting in 2 placeholder footnotes to get the numbering right rather than editing ~25 footnotes down two spaces 🙃
Second of two footnote placeholders, hope you’re having a nice day 🫡
To protect food from bears. Also a great chair and place to stick your many stickers onto. Legally required in the Sierras from Kennedy Meadows South to Truckee
Used to collect water from rivers, creeks, ponds, lakes, brooks, hoses, the sky, etc. for subsequent filtering
A tiny little contraption that filters water magically well. Every single hiker that I met on trail used a Sawyer to filter water. See photo below to see this filtering process happening in the High Sierra!
These bottles were great water bottles, and lasted about a month each before I’d replace them. They fit perfectly into the Sawyer coupling for an easy water filtering connection. I carried two of these bottles in the desert, and only one for the rest of the trail when there were plenty of water sources all around
This was my camera, Strava tracker, navigational tool, library (especially through the library app Libby), geocaching companion, connection to the outside world, and everything else I needed. My phone was in airplane and power-saving mode 100% of the time I was hiking, and that was only turned off once we were in town. I was never worried about the charge thanks to my battery pack + solar panel duo (read below)
Essential for listening to music and podcasts. I hiked plenty of the trail talking with others or in silence, but spent the majority of the time listening to assorted delightful audio
No streetlamps out in the woods! I loved this headlamp and found it light, bright, and very long-lasting. Highly recommend!
To charge my devices at night
To charge my battery pack during the day, sent home after Oregon because Washington is cloudy… and we’re hiking through forests all day lol
To charge my devices from my battery pack, and my battery pack from my solar panel
I was a bit skeptical that trekking poles would make that big of a difference on trail, and now I wholeheartedly swear by them. A good amount of my hiking brain power went into considering how many extra legs trekking poles were worth, and I eventually settled on 0.6. That means that hiking with trekking poles is like having 2.6 legs in terms of stability and speed increases… make with that information what you will
Crucial item so that I could, well, see. I quickly realized that contacts were horrible on trail and I permanently adopted them for hiking. Plus, they transitioned into sunglasses, so I didn’t need to bring those separately!
Perfect for signing geocache logs and PCT business cards
This was an addition Brooke and I made to our gear about a month into trail, and it was awesome! In the first month on the PCT, I noticed that many of the hitchhiker drivers or trail angels we’d meet on trail would ask if we had blogs or if we had any way to keep in touch with us, so I whipped up a fun little business card in Canva that we’d give out to the folks. It only costs about 20¢ per card, and we could write on them to customize them however we’d like! Plus, if we forgot anything in the car we were hitchhiking in, it was a great way to easily leave our contact info with them. So happy we made these, will 100% have them for my next thru-hike, too :)
Floss, toothbrush, and toothpaste only. One quickly realizes that deodorant is useless when you wear the same clothes for a week and hike 20+ miles in them every day. Plus, we got used to the terrible smells pretty quickly, which I didn’t completely process until my sister begged me to take a shower after I arrived in SF
This was an unexpected godsend, and I learned about this from Bob, a fantastic employee at a gear shop in Ashland. You apply it in the shade on a hole in your gear, and it’ll cure after a few seconds of direct exposure to the sun’s UV rays. Perfect for patching holes in my Thermarest sleeping pad and backpacking pillow, which I had to do a few times toward the end of trail
Judiciously applied to me by Brooke every morning. We hiked most of the trail with Flo and Pablo, two medical residents from France. Flo’s a dermatologist and made sure we knew the importance of sunscreen. Apparently there’s a difference between face sunscreen and normal sunscreen. Now I know
This replaced my failed backpacking chair experiment and was so nice… I found a piece of a larger foam sleeping pad on the ground, and used the sitting pad to make any patch of dirt or granite boulder 100x more comfortable
Surprisingly, my permit was only checked 7 times the entire trail, but it was still a cool souvenir to carry. Several times I’d meet rangers who wouldn’t ask for my permit, and I myself asked them to check it so that I could collect their cool signatures
Highly recommended for emotional and comedic support during mental, physical, and topographical lows. I love you Brooke! ❤️
I had a love-hate relationship with this item, which basically means that when I was sitting in the chair, I loved it, and when I wasn’t sitting in it and carrying it in my bag, I hated it. I eventually decided that even though the chair was 1.5 lbs, carrying it more than 2000 miles was a bit excessive. It’s pretty crazy how quickly a bunch of individually “light” items quickly add up to weigh a ton. I abandoned the backpacking chair experiment after the first 2 weeks
I started with a bunch of extra utensils and eating contraptions, until eventually Brooke told me to get my shit together and just use the JetBoil bowl as my ultimate eating contraption. It works as a bowl! It works as a cup! It works as a mosquito swatter! No need for anything else besides just that
See the above “Titanium cup”
The plight of a backpacker is a constant fight against extra pack weight and unnecessarily high space-taking-up items. After the first week, I mailed home my heavy leather wallet and kept my cash, cards, and stamps in a plastic Ziploc bag
Same situation as the wallet. No need to carry an entire toiletries bag when a Ziploc bag does just fine!
I had a battery-powered hand warmer that I loved only when it was heating my hands, which was about 2 hours per charge. The rest of the time, it was a heavy brick in my bag until I charged it the next time in town. It was one of the very first things sent home
I thought this was a great idea, until I realized that I was going to be absolutely filthy after one day of wearing a shirt, so I might as well only have one and save the weight/space. Plus, the sun hoodie was long-sleeved and had a hood, so it was way better at preventing sunburns than a short-sleeved t-shirt
footnotes 5ever
I absolutely recommend a BYOESGFWYML A bring your own emotional support girlfriend for when you’re mentally low!