The First (Metaphorical) Steps of Hiking the PCT!

With the popularity of the Pacific Crest Trail growing in size, a permit is required for hiking the continuous trail. And let me tell you-the process of obtaining the permit is a tad stressful and nerve wracking! Luckily, this was the first year that people were able to link names together and apply together under one permit. This was a huge relief to Craig and I since we wanted to obviously start on the same date! Once we were registered and linked together the waiting game began. We received an email on the 14th of November with a time that we were able to register, from 10:30 AM PT to 3:30 PM PT, with the earlier times being more ideal since more spots would be available. 35 Permits were offered during this phase.

Unfortunately we did not receive the best time for applying, I think it was around 3:00 PM PT, so the odds of us obtaining a permit felt very slim after this news. We logged on to the permit portal a few minutes before our allocated time and made sure we were able to apply as soon as it was our time. We were able to see the permit calendar in real time so we saw the numbers dwindling quickly before our time. Right at our time we logged on and chose the earliest date available, which was mid May. Although this wasnt the most ideal starting date, we were ecstatic to have received a permit!

After the joy of getting a permit, we started to wonder if we would be able to change the permit start date in the application date on January. If that was possible we wanted to change our date to the beginning of April to avoid some heat in the desert! Our question was answered the day before the second application was open, we each received a time to register, I got an early time-around 11:45 AM MT and Craig got around 12:15 PM MT. We jumped on our computers and went to the permit portal at Craig's time, and to our surprise were able to change our starting date to a whole month earlier! This meant starting in mid April which will hopefully mean cooler start in the desert, and more time for us to complete the trail before snow starts falling up North.

I cannot even express how incredibly grateful to even have this opportunity to even think about this huge adventure, let alone be in a place where the dream is going to become a reality. I think that this is going to be one of the most challenging things I will ever do but I am excited to push my limits and see where my feet can take me :) !