Our PCT Thru Hike By the Numbers

I love crunching data! Shortly after getting off trail, I entered all of our mileage data into a spreadsheet to see how our hike looked by the numbers.

In journaling our thru hike, I kept track of how far we hiked each day. This was made easy by the FarOut app, which tells you the exact PCT mile marker of each waypoint. However, this started to become a little tricky as we hiked bonus miles off the PCT, took alternate trails, or skipped sections all together. So I have two yard sticks: one for the PCT mile marker we reached every day, another for “actual” miles which accounts for bonus or skipped miles.

Total Miles Hiked: 2,506

It may be hard to see, but the actual net mileage was higher than the PCT mile marker until Day 135 in Oregon. This is primarily from bonus hikes on Mt. Whitney and Kearsarge Pass in the Sierras. We skipped 134 miles in Oregon due to a fire closure and road closures, at which point our mileage lagged behind the mile markers we reached.

We hiked over the course of 163 days. Seeing as the name of this blog is “Distance Over Time”, I owe to you to provide our average speed:

2,506 mi/163 day =

15.4 mi/day = 0.64 mph

That’s right, we moved at well under 1 mph – a snail’s pace! Ok ok… that’s not accounting for sleep and zero days, but those breaks are essential for maintaining physical and mental health. They say, “Last one to Canada wins,” because more time on trail means more fun, so why rush it?!

I like this chart showing the difference from average pace. Again, our true average, including all zero days, was 15.4 miles per day. When the line here goes down, that means we hiked less than the average 15.4, and when the line goes up, we hiked more than 15.4. You can see that early on, we eased into it, generally hiking less than 15 miles per day. It levels out around days 60 through 80 when the trail legs quit hurting every day. Once we were out of the Sierras, hardened by 1,000+ miles of hiking, we put on the gas in NorCal. The big drop around day 130 was our 5 days off in Bend and Corvallis Oregon, but we were right back to the ripper pace through Washington.

Average Mileage by Section

Section	Miles per day
Desert	14.1
Sierras	15.6
Norcal	18.1
Oregon	12.7
Washington	16.8

This is the daily mileage over time with a 7 day average overlaid. Our 7 day average exceeded 20 mpd (140 miles per week) only 5 times. That pace was certainly challenging for me, but now I know I am capable of it. If (when) I attempt another thru hike, I think I would be able to set a more aggressive pace from the start.

This is the mileage histogram showing the number of days we hiked a certain distance. There is a noticeable “double hump” distribution. About half of our days were over 18 miles, eight of which were more than a marathon (26 miles). These longer days were typical hiking days between towns. Conversely, leaving town was always hard, and we rarely got far on our first day back on trail. Also, we often set ourselves up for an easy hike into town, so there is a bump in the 6-10 mile range, or what we call “nearos”.

Marathon+: 8 days

Zeros: 16 days

Nearos (1-10 mi): 27 days

With a total of 43 zeros and nearos, we had easy days 26.4% of the time. That may sound like a lot, but 26.4% means we were working more each week than a normal working life with two day weekends (2/7 = 28.6% days off). Excluding the 16 zero days we took, our average mileage was 17.0 miles per day.

Our typical walking pace was 3 miles per hour. Sometimes we moved slower on steep, snowy climbs. Sometimes we moved faster on gentle descents into town when the prospect of a burger and beer provided motivation. We rarely moved slower than 2.5 mph, and I don’t think we ever broke 3.5 mph for any appreciable amount of time, so we’ll say 3 mph is a good average.

Walking time:

2,506 mi / 3 mph = 835 hr

That’s about 21 weeks of full time work over 23 weeks of hiking. Again, that is only time we were literally walking. Time spent getting to and from town, resupplying, and other chores is not included. As much as hiking felt like a full time job, it was always at our own pace, not confined to the 9 to 5 schedule. Always something to do, but living life in the slow lane. It was a nice way to live.

My stride is about 2.5 feet, so with that we can estimate steps:

Steps:

(2506 mi x 5280 ft/mi)/2.5 ft/step =

5,292,672 steps

Now, I’m not one of those step counter people, but 5 million steps in 5 months – one million per month – feels pretty cool.

I hope you enjoyed following along and analyzing the numbers with me!