A few months ago I wrote about my PCT infatuation and linked a lot of my favorite PCT hiking blogs. You can read that post here.

This morning I woke up early, which is not in my character at all LOL  with this fully formed idea of walking the PCT virtually.  I have done a handful of virtual races online, where you sign up - for money - to walk miles that go toward the goal of the race online.  Usually there were about 20 to 30 miles total and took place in Rome or England or even bits of Route 66. You counted up your miles walked and uploaded them to the race site and when you finished, you got a shirt or medal. It was fun and it held you accountable because you had to pay a small fee for it.

I was never able to find one for the PCT though and this morning I woke up deciding that since I couldn't physically walk it, I would do so virtually.

I need to figure the logistics of this now. I want to do a check in here on my blog every 100 miles and maybe find photos of the mile markers and some of the trail in the various sections, so I can see where I am virtually walking. 

I will be using my Fitbit to keep track of my miles/steps and only counting the miles/steps of dedicated walks or runs, not just all my steps from morning to night.  This is going to take me a long long time but hey, goals are good, right?

Most hikers have a window of time to walk the PCT due to weather. Heat in the desert to snow in the high sierra's and winter weather in Washington all factors into the hike, so I won't have to deal with that - but most hikes take about 5 months - 20 to 30 miles a day. I will be doing much smaller miles when I can get in a run or walk, but still, I like this long term goal.   Good work out and at the end of this unknown time period, I will have achieved something anyway.

​Goals, I haz dem.

  A few years ago I was pretty sick and for awhile I just couldn't really concentrate on much and found myself browsing random websites at 3 in the morning.  I had just finished reading Carrot Quinns book, Through Hiking Will Break Your Heart, and recalled she had a webpage as well.  I was hooked.

Since her first hike on the PCT was in 2013, I discovered a TON of other trail blogs from hikers who also hiked it that year. It was this amazing peek of another world and because so many of the hikers interacted with each other, it was seeing the same events from different perspectives and I just loved it.

I used to go hiking a lot as a kid with my family and I quite liked it, aside from that nasty outhouse with the ants and spiders, no thank you, I will go outside.  I loved the big old tent my Dad had - no ultra light that thing. It weighed like 90 pounds and was made of USMC heavy duty canvas. I think it had room for 30 people and every summer we made him put it up in our backyard for a week or so. Musty dusty smells reminded me of being out in the woods and I adored it.  We broke out his mess kit and cans of Sterno and had a ball.

I wonder what it would be like to hike that long trail. I imagine it would be hard to even think of the Canadian border while standing at the start way down in Campo. I think it would feel unfathomable and better left unthought of - better to do that whole one step at a time thing. There is something incredibly freeing about having everything you need with you. I think about that when I am stuck in So. Cal traffic LOL

Anyway - I read quite a few very well done hiking journals and I am going to share them here so I have them on hand as well as to pass their gifts on to anyone who might like to take an armchair journey with them. Some of them, actually, most of them, are still active hikers and I still read their continuing journeys, wondering what it would be like to have one of my own someday.

These are not in any order, just how I am copying them over and I am probably missing some, will add when I find them.

Stories from Steve - Probably my all time favorite adventure journal

​Craig's PCT Hike/PCT Planner creator

Carrot Quinn - Dispatches from the Wild

Mexico to Canada 2013 

So Many Miles - Thru-Hiking Truck Driving Miles

Darkroom & Dearly

One Who Cannot 

​As the Trail Turns

In These Woods

Brown Girl on the PCT

Woody's Adventures

Lead a Life Uncommon

​Witch Wandering - and I hope she can finish the journal someday - she writes so well about her travels.