On March 27th, 2024 I set out from Cape Henlopen, Delaware along the American Discovery Trail in an attempt to walk to San Francisco.

The American Discovery Trail gets quoted as being 6,800 miles long but that is counting the section in the middle where north and south options exist. From my research the southern route is the default and generally considered better by people who have done both and that's the way I went. This makes the trail 5,000 miles long though few people stick to the actual route as countless shorter road walks can easily cut a coast to coast hike down to only 3,000 miles. Anecdotally I found a number of folks who went coast to coast in around 3,200 miles.

I tried to set an aggressive but manageable pace sticking to the actual route and everything went relatively smoothly until I reached Colorado at which point I caught the flu which apparently led to me developing some pretty severe planar fasciitis when I got back on trail. I also managed to break a rib through a random fall walking along a road in Utah requiring more time off trail to rehab.

Eventually I was forced to the season on October 25th, 2024 after 3,592 miles in Moab, Utah. This was after fighting severe foot pain for the last 600 miles. I ended there because the next sections involved remote areas with long food and water hauls and any exit or return would be a lot more complicated.

Due to medical issues by plan to return in 2025 had to be delayed for a year. I hope to return to Moab in fall of 2026 to complete the remaining miles.

As someone who liked to do thru hikes that are more on the remote end and who uses my phone heavily for shooting / editing / posting videos on trail I am well versed in the ins and outs of how to keep electronics powered on trail.

The initial planning phase of any big hike can be daunting much less a 4,900 mile walk across the country on a loosely defined route of roads, sidewalks, and occasional trails that is rarely attempted much less done successfully.

When I started looking seriously into the American Discovery Trail I had some struggles even with a strong background in thru hiking. My goal with this post is to give you a place to start as far as basic resources. Other posts will cover what the trail is actually like, gear suggestions, and other topics.

This write-up can be considered a supplement to my pre hike planning and prep video which can be found here:

After having thru hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 2020 and the Appalachian Trail (plus a bit more) in 2021, there was really nothing to be done but go for the third of the big three US hiking trails aka the Triple Crown of Hiking. So in summer of 2022 I set out to do the Continental Divide Trail southbound from the Canadian border.  

Things could have gone a bit smoother.

In 2021 I hiked the Eastern Continental Trail all the way from Key West Florida to the northern tip of Nova Scotia. I covered roughly 5,000 miles over the course of 302 days making this the biggest hike I'd ever attempted. And it was done just 3 months after finishing the Pacific Crest Trail.

While I wasn't meticulous about tracking every aspect of my hike I did keep a daily mileage spreadsheet (linked above) and thanks to credit card statements I was able to compile general cost numbers.

On December 28th, 2020 I flew off for Key West Florida with nothing other than my phone, backpacking gear, and an optimistic plan to walk the seldom done Eastern Continental Trail all the way to Canada. Assuming the border opened I hoped to finish up in Quebec at Cap Gaspe completing the entirety of the Florida Trail, Pinhoti Trail, and Appalachian Trail along the way. 

On October 26th after 302 days and a bit over 5,000 miles I found myself standing at the northern tip of Nova Scotia. 

Hey all! 

I spent last summer hiking the 2,653+ mile Pacific Crest Trail all the way from Mexico to Canada. It was often difficult, sometimes miserable, and ever since finishing I've found myself really missing the constant feelings of progress and accomplishment.

So what's next?

For an overall picture of my gear see lighterpack.

After 119 days on trail I'd reached the state of Washington and now I only had 500 miles to Canada!

After my relatively smooth experience through Oregon now I was now facing a more difficult trail and a smattering of new challenges like: historic wind events, seemingly the entire west coast catching fire, unhealthy levels of smoke lasting for days, and rainstorms. And then throw in a snowstorm at Rainy Pass and a still closed Canadian border just to round out the experience! 

And then 28 days later I was standing victorious at the northern terminus having to contemplate life after the trail.

PCT 2020 Daily Mileage Stat Sheet (Public)

I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in the summer of 2020 during the initial COVID19 pandemic. This was my first major thru hike. 

I started late on May 4th and finished on September 29th after 144 days. I was held back significantly by struggles with my foot arch and pack abrasion.

I'd sweated my way through the desert, limped through the Sierra on crumbling shoes, and now...I was still in California for another 600 miles. Bloody hell this state is long!  

The Northern California section of the Pacific Crest Trail has a reputation for getting people down and I can understand why. After finishing the Sierra it feels imposing to still have over half the trail and 1,500 miles to go. Also having left the epic views of the Sierra behind and having to deal with the fact that ever town stop involves a big descent followed by a steep climb to get back out causes things to drag. Especially after a large town meal and a few beers.

I also really didn't expect the heat. Suddenly we were back in mid 90s and now there was high humidity to boot.

But there were also spectacular rivers, lush vegetation, and some of my favorite town stops of the entire trail.

During the summer of 2020 while absolutely nothing was going on in the world I thru hiked the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. Since all I had with me was my phone I wasn't able to do my usual style of blog posts on this site and had to settle for posting pictures on my Instagram / Facebook story quasi daily (which you can still see archived by clicking on the little circles here.) 

That still left me wanting to better capture the experience especially since this year was so unique. I don't have the temperment for a typical vlog (which would have been a lot of "today my feet hurt and I'm tired") so I decided that I'd do a post for each major section relating some of the highlights of my adventure. This covers the first 700 miles of the trail from Campo up to Kennedy Meadows. Stay tuned for posts about the Sierra, Northern California, Oregon, and of course Washington.

The Southern California section of the Pacific Crest Trail tends to get a lot of flack from hikers due to the high temperatures and lack of water. In fact it seems like so many people are so focused on rushing through it in anticipation of the Sierra they don't properly appreciate all it has to offer.  

Along the way I did encounter heat waves, earthquakes, water borne illness, an achilles injury that almost ended my hike, and the occasional curfew due to civil unrest. But looking back it's the section I look back at the most fondly since it was such an iconic start to the trail.

Whenever I talk to people about my 2,653+ mile 149 day thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail they almost always comment on how it must have taken a massive amount of planning and want to know how you can do such a big trip and return to a normal life afterwards.

Well I'm here to share how it doesn't take near as much planning as you might think and how I decided normal life is overrated, threw caution to the wind, and had one of the most amazing experiences of my life thus far.

Hello, my trail name is Masochist and I am one of the dirty rebels who thru hiked the Pacific Crest Trail during the summer of 2020.

In the highly uncertain early days of the shutdown, talk about whether it was responsible or even possible to hike this year reached some slightly excessive levels of vitriol. Now that it's several months down the line and we've all hopefully regained a bit of perspective I feel it's important to relate the thought process leading up to my decision to hike and also document how COVID-19 actually affected life on trail this year. Because I still see people online repeating statements that are just wrong.

I started down in Campo on May 5th when things were past the peak of uncertainty but still very much up in the air. I finished at the Canadian border on September 29 when life still wasn't back to whatever passes for normal these days. Along the way I encountered heat waves, earthquakes, landslides, fires, unhealthy levels of smoke, rain, and finally a bit of snow. And for what it's worth the only disease I personally encountered or even heard of others having on trail was waterborne giardia. 

As far as I'm aware I didn't get anyone sick or contribute to anyone getting sick though that's impossible to know for sure and I would personally feel horrible if I had. I set out taking what felt like an appropriate amount of precaution and despite the early weeks of uncertainty this became the best year I could have asked for to do the trail.

This is the second of three sections I backpacked along the Condor Trail during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. For more information on the trail itself please see the first post Section Hiking The Condor Trail: Bottchers Gap to Kirk Creek. It covers the first 85 miles along the northern end to the point where I was forced to exit at Kirk Creek due to county trail and road closures.

Since then my girlfriend and spent two nights in an Airbnb. This mostly involved sitting in bed researching options on my laptop, taking some very well deserved showers, and resting up my feet while eating everything in sight.

So why did I settle on the the section between the 101 and 166? I'd originally intended to continue the trail south from Vicente Flat but I didn't want to flagrantly violate a trail closure even if the chances of getting caught where I'd be spending most of my time were slim.

Also near the area marked Ragged Point on Google Maps there's a somewhat unfortunate 50 ish mile section of "trail" which involves walking along the beach / PCH. If I had a shot at doing the entire 400 miles then I would have powered through that section but considering I had a hard stop date when I needed to pivot to the PCT I was inclined to spend what time I had along the more wilderness-y section.

Talking to the always informative Brian Sarvis I settled on starting at the 101 near Cuesta Pass and heading south. He said the trail was likely to be in better shape than what I'd been through and he said it was a spectacular section where he'd seen more bears than anywhere else along the trail.

So the morning of April 18th I threw everything back in my pack and I was off for another round of tick infested bushwhacking.

April 18th to 22nd
Condor Trail
58 miles, 8,800'

Life has been rather interesting the last few months. In February my girlfriend and I gave up our apartment in favor of living out of a conversion van in a local campground. It seemed like the perfect fit for our lifestyle which rarely involves sitting around at home these days and would hopefully allow us extra flexibility when it came to travel.

With all the planning that went into downsizing and the move itself I felt like I'd considered everything. Except, oh I don't know, a worldwide virus pandemic causing mass closures of campgrounds, businesses, ect.


And so here we are in the times of COVID-19. The campgrounds we used are all closed. An issue with our vans solar system left us without reliable power and forced us to throw it in storage and temporarily move into an Airbnb so we could meet our teaching commitments. And then I got sick.

I don't have confirmation what I had thanks to the testing situation but I had all sorts of potential exposure thanks to a public transportation trip a few weeks ago, campground living, and contact with a friend who did test positive for COVID-19. I ended up having a rough few weeks health wise.

Meanwhile the shutdown forced us to end the Wilderness Travel Course early without the snow travel or snow camp outings and then I had to cancel the Spring Advanced Mountaineering Program course completely. And without a home to shelter in per the state orders I started to look at options to get on a long trail as soon as possible.


Amongst the other issues the virus caused shutdowns of local trailheads and so I wanted something relatively obscure that would get me away from any crowds. Starting the Pacific Crest Trail early was an option but that situation has been fluid with more closures potentially on their way and reports from people on the trail of getting doxxed or even death threats from slightly obsessive Facebook keyboard warriors. All of which left me inclined to stay away until my May permit date.

The end result was that I found myself taking a hard look at the Condor Trail.

The Condor Trail is 400-ish mile thru hiking route that runs the length of Los Padres and promises a remote wilderness experience. It first came onto my radar after my Hot Spring Trail trip back in February and had the advantage of going through a lot of areas I've yet to visit.


The dashed black line is the entire trail. I ended up doing three sections and this write up covers the northern red section which I did across 8 days before a local road and trail closure caused me to skip south.

April 9th to 16th, 2020
Condor Trail

85.5 miles, 15,000'

[Pics] [CalTopo]

The Santa Monica Backbone Trail (aka the BBT) is a long distance trail running the length of the Santa Monica Mountains. It has been around in various forms since the 80s but it first hit my awareness in 2016 when I saw a press release announcing that it was now complete. I promptly got excited, looked into it, and was discouraged by the warning that it was a long trail that wasn't intended to be thru hiked because of the lack of backcountry campsites. The recommendation of doing it as a series of dayhikes just didn't have the same appeal considering the drive to get there but they did mention plans to add campsites in the future. So I filed it away in my list of things to do someday.

Fast forward to spring of 2020. I've been trying to get ready for an attempt of the Pacific Crest Trail and looking for PCT-like hikes where I could get some distance in. That caused me to take a more serious look at the BBT and start asking questions of friends in the area.


The backcountry campsites still don't exist and fire damage over the last few years has made the developed off trail camping options even worse with the closure of Circle X Ranch. However after my experiences on the Desert Trail and Hot Spring Trail sections I was ready to be a bit more flexible.



I ended up doing the trail east to west over 5 days and I had a spectacular time. I've done my best to compile everything I used, saw, or looked at and hopefully this can help spur interest and the further development of the trail so that more people get to experience this remarkable trip.

March 4th to 8th, 2020
Santa Monica Mountains Backbone Trail

After my last big excursion Section Hiking The Desert Trail: Mexican Border to Borrego Springs I was eager to get out again on my next PCT 2020 prep hike.

I'd already looked at and discarded the California Coastal Trail for not really being a trail down here in Southern California and the big trek through urban Mecca had me a bit less excited for the next Desert Trail Section. Fortunately I had another prospect and turned my eyes to the Hot Springs Trail National Scenic Trail Proposal.

February 5th to 9th, 2020

The Hot Springs Trail National Scenic Trail Proposal

Santa Barbara to Ojai

5 days, 57 miles, 10,300' gain

[Pics] [CalTopo]