Steve & Ray's Excellent Adventure

On the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in Washington State

Or... How to hike 500 miles in one week segments...

PCT Segment: The Suiattle River to Rainy Pass - October 6-11, 2001

Miles: 59 (not including 14 mile day hike to Gamma Hot Springs). Days: 6 (but we planned to take longer)

Method: This segment was accomplished via one through-hike, with a day hike to the elusive Gamma Hot Springs on Glacier Peak. Now that we have a GPS reading on the hot springs, it will be easier to find - we had to search for 2 hours. This hike took far less time than planned, mainly because the weather sucked, and we decided to keep hiking rather than sit in a tent in the sleet. Had we hiked this section as planned (in good weather) it would have taken longer and been more enjoyable. As it was, we hiked in slush, and most of our stuff got wet. Not our best hike, but still fun.

Map

The map, below, shows our route, our camp locations (some have GPS Coordinates), and our car pickup and drop-off locations. Car drops are marked , and car pick-ups are marked . Direction of hiking is marked with a red arrow . Photos along the route are marked by icons - clicking on the camera will bring up a new window with the associated picture (icon locations are approximate - I did not get an exact spot for each picture). Simply close the photo window to go back to the map.

NOTE: This text overlays a large map - it WILL take some time to load - please be patient. Use your scroll bars to move around on this map, and click on camera icons to see photos taken from approximately this point on the trail.

Itinerary

The graphic, below, is an excerpt from a spreasheet that provides daily mileage, elevation gains and losses, and if available, GPS stops. Make sure to watch the direction of the arrows - arrows pointing up are hikes South to North, arrows pointing down are North to South. There is a key at the top of the graphic that will help explain this. The spreadsheet was included as a graphic in order to keep the overlayed graphics together. If you would like to download the entire spreadsheet, click this link for a Microsoft Excel file. Be advised that the spreadsheet has some macros, so depending on your security settings, it may warn you about macros possibly containing viruses. While there are no viruses included, the macros only move around on the sheet, and you don't really need to activate the macros if you don't want to.