What to bring on your next 2,600-mile walk
Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail or anything like it takes a lot of research and gear. So what would a research and weight-obsessive tech writer bring?
It’s that time of year again. Winter, in the places it actually exists, is slowly starting to turn into spring, and it feels like the time to start making summer plans. For lots of people, that means heading outside to do some hiking.
Personally, I’m planning on doing a bit of that myself: over the next few months I, and thousands of other people, will be attempting to walk from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, which spans around 2,650 miles through California, Oregon, and Washington. There’ll also be people doing a similar journey in different places, such as the Appalachian Trail on the East Coast, the Continental Divide Trail through the Rockies, or any number of slightly shorter regional hikes like the Florida, Colorado, or Pacific Northwest trails.
I’m sure everyone reading right now would absolutely love spending four to six months in the wilderness, walking upward of 25 miles a day over steep terrain. But doing so requires a lot of equipment, and it can be hard to know what to bring or where to even start researching.
October 4, 2023
Mitchell Clark
Mitchell has been interested in tech ever since they found out you could change the background image of a folder in Windows ME. They’re still trying to find something as magical as that. They can be contacted at Mitchell.clark@theverge.com.Ethics Statement: Mitchell has worked on a public health program used by state health departments, and so won’t report on it or its competitors.
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