PCT 2024 – Statistics

In this post I would like to share some statistics with you about the PCT. First, I’ll show you some general statistics about my hike.

• Days on the way: 113
• Zero Days (days without hiking): 4
• days hiked: 108

• Trail traveled on the PCT: 2273 miles (3658 km)
• Total distance traveled (to fetch water, run to the road, …): 2371 miles (3815 km)

• Average distance per day: 20.98 miles (33.77 km)
• Average route without Zeros: 21.95 miles (35.34 km)

In the following diagram I have graphically displayed the distance per day (in km). The different sections (desert, Sierra, Northern California, Oregon, Washington) are beautiful to see from my point of view. While I slowly increased the number of km per day in the desert, I didn’t really get past 40 km a day in the Sierra. In northern California and Oregon, however, the pace was able to pick up significantly before it went all the time further towards the end (apparently I didn’t want to arrive :D).

Here I have divided the same value into buckets, which makes it easy to see how the distribution of miles per day has changed. While hiking in the desert and Sierra for most of the time between 15 and 25 miles a day, I was able to complete more than 25 miles more than 25 miles in Northern California and Oregon.

It is also interesting that I actually built exactly one zero-day in each section except in northern California. While it was in the desert and the Sierra at the end of each section to recover a bit, I had to take a day off in Oregon as my shoes were delivered late and in Washington I needed a whole day to circumnavigate a fire. If these two forced breaks hadn’t been there, I would probably have gone through with two break days.

Skipped parts

Unfortunately, due to various fires, I had to skip smaller and larger sections on the PCT again and again. For the first time I had to bypass a fire from Mt Shasta (mile 1498) to Seiad Valley (Mile 1653) and left 155 miles. In Oregon, it then went 59 miles from Crater Lake (Mile 1845) to Shelter Cove (1904). Finally, I jumped a larger piece from the Stevens Pass (Mile 2461) to the Harts Pass (Mile 2619) and thus skipped another 158 miles. So in total I had to skip 372 miles and therefore only completed 2273 miles on the PCT, which is only 85% of the whole trail. In a way, this also explains why I arrived in Canada after less than 4 months, although I had actually planned 4.5-5 months. Below is the overview map, where you can clearly see which sections I had to skip:

fun facts

Here are a few more facts:

• Nights in a bed: 6
• Nights in the tent: 85
• Nights in the open air: 22

• Number of shoes: 4
• Number of t-shirts: 2

• Rattlesnakes: 14
• Koyotes: 2
• Mountain Lion/Puma: 1
• Bears: 0 (no idea why I didn’t see any)

• Packs of tuna: too many 😀