The “wild” effect?
PCT hiker traffic way up.
Whether because of the popular book and movie “Wild,” or because of an early snowmelt and hiking season, more hikers than ever before have taken to the Pacific Crest Trail this year—and many are passing through Mammoth.
According to Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA) Trail Information Specialist Jack Haskel, the PCT is becoming busier for a variety of reasons. First and foremost: “The PCT really is a fantastic experience,” he said in an interview with The Sheet this week. “It’s a national scenic trail, and it’s special in a lot of ways: the scenery, the community, the quality of trail; all of these things come together to make it famous.”
The PCT is one of the most challenging trails in the United States, spanning 2,650 miles from the Mexican border to the Canadian border by way of California, Oregon, and Washington.
Haskel said the total number of permits pulled for the trail has increased steadily over recent years—rising from 1,879 in 2013 to 2,655 in 2014—primarily because of the rise of the Internet and social media. This year the PCTA anticipates that thru-hiker permits could double.
“Sharing information makes it easier to do something that’s pretty difficult; it’s logistically complicated, and it’s physically difficult, too,” Haskel said. “The internet makes it easier and more accessible in terms of planning.”
Meanwhile social media outlets like Instagram and YouTube allow hikers to share images and videos of their adventures, inspiring others to consider hiking the trail.
But the impact of Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling 2012 memoir “Wild,” which chronicles her 1,100-mile journey along the PCT in 1995, can’t be underestimated.
“It’s the largest piece of publicity that the PCT has ever received,” Haskel said. “It’s inspiring people around the world. We’re seeing a lot more foreigners on the trail [since it came out].”
Haskel couldn’t say what the so-called “Wild Effect” has had on the number of permits pulled this year, as the PCTA won’t have those numbers until the end of the year. But while the actual number of people planning a thru-hike this season is unknown, more than 15,000 people visited PCTA’s long-distance hiking page in December 2014, a 340 percent increase from last year.
To accommodate the potential growth in long distance permits for hikers doing 500 miles or more in a single trip, the U.S. Forest Service is now capping the number of permits for a given start date at 50. This means hikers are more spread out than in prior years, when the USFS “would see 100 people starting on April 1, and 8 people starting on April 2,” for instance, said Haskel.
This also might account for the steady stream of hikers passing through Mammoth since June.
“We’ve been hearing from trail towns how great the business is,” Haskel said. He noted that many trail towns are rural, remote, and rely on tourism, and are benefiting from this increase in PCT ecotourism. “That’s one of the good things about the PCT, in addition to how it changes people’s lives,” he said.
Here in Mammoth, several business owners attested to the increase in PCT traffic.
When The Sheet asked Mammoth Mountaineering employee Barbara Barnum whether the store had seen an increase in PCT hikers this year over last, she replied, “Oh God, yes. It’s pretty frantic here. And what I’ve noticed is this year I’m seeing people I never would have thought I’d see on the trail. I’m seeing a different type of person coming through, more clean-cut, but it’s still the same happy attitude.”
Meanwhile Sierra Sundance Manager Ellie Kaylor said the store has had “a lot more PCT hikers, actually. A lot of younger people, and from all over; I met someone from Pennsylvania, someone from New York; people who have hiked the whole Appalachian Trail got inspired to come out here and do the PCT.”
Kaylor said she hadn’t heard any PCT hikers mention Wild.
About 700-800 people head out intending to hike the whole trail in a year, and perhaps 60 percent finish, according to the PCTA website. A majority of hikers choose to take shorter trips along the trail.
Haskel noted that PCTA, of which he’s now a part, is largely a volunteer organization that protects, preserves, and promotes the PCT, with about 1,500 volunteers.
“We’re looking for more people who live near the trail that want to get involved,” he said. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to maintain this trail.”
Haskel said that while volunteers helped clear fallen trees after ‘The Devil’s Windstorm’ in 2012, “there’s still substantial repair work that needs to be done in the Sierra Nevada, and honestly, it’s a really fun, worthwhile thing to do, to get involved.”
Visit www.pcta.org/volunteer for volunteer information.
Those interested in the hike can also visit the PCTA website for maps and more information. And for those interested in the stories of PCT hikers, you can find a live tracker that collects a stream of current hiker locations, gathering their photos, videos, and blog entries.
“There’s so many stories,” Haskel said. “People have fallen in love; some have cancer and it’s an end of life decision to hike the PCT; there are a lot of artists; there are hikers young and old; people from around the world … it’s really pretty amazing.”
