The Cost of Thru-Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail

The cost of thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail can be more expensive than you think, or it can be dirt cheap. It’s all up to the hike you want to have, and the preparations you make.

My lovely wife Jill recorded the financial cost of our 2015 Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike, and broke down the numbers to give you an idea of where the money went.

Trying to pin an exact dollar amount to thru-hiking is an impossible task. The adventure is not the same for any two hikers. The trail itself is simply footprints in the dirt, an objective path that is scarred into the earth, but a thru-hike is a subjective thing, fluid and dynamic. Your hike is going to be completely unique to you. What gear you bring, what towns you visit, what food you eat— these are all decisions you will make which will shape your adventure and pull dollar bills out of your wallet.

So I can’t tell you how much a thru-hike will cost you. An example, however, I can give. The costs shared here are shaped around the adventure Jill and I had, but through our numbers you’ll be able to get an idea of what costs you may cut or want to add. This example can benefit those of you thinking about other long distance trails as well. There may be some unique costs to consider for backpacking the Appalachian Trail or Continental Divide Trail that aren’t represented in this article, but the majority of the expenses are the same. Are you looking to backpack nonstop for a few months? Going to hit town every few days or once a week and fill your gut when you get there? Sounds like a good time to me!

Monetary Cost of a Thru-Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail

Before embarking upon our thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail Jill and I spent two years researching and planning for the adventure. A good deal of our strategizing was around the financial burden that a five month thru-hike would weigh on our shoulders. We searched around the Internet looking for costs and estimates so we could put together a solid game plan, but there wasn’t much in the way of hard numbers to be found, especially numbers that focused on thru-hiking as a couple.

The best consensus we could gather was that it would cost approximately $5000 per person for the entirety of the adventure. Obviously this was predicated upon a wealth of assumptions and could only be considered a semi-informed estimate. That all-encompassing number can vary widely with factors such as how much gear you already own, how many off trail expenses you are paying, and how much you are willing to spend in town.

That number also does not include what is likely to be your biggest costs— the loss of income and stalling of your career. These are real factors to consider which will have a real impact on your life.

Jill and I added up every dollar we spent on the Pacific Crest Trail. Here it is for you to see and learn from, but know that each person will build their own thru-hike, have their own experiences, and spend their money in unpredictably different ways. Hike your own hike, but prepare as best as you can for it.

Our Thru-Hike Grand Total: $13,972

Per Person Cost: $6986

That’s too much! you might say, or I would do it way cheaper than that!

Well, perhaps. If that’s what you want, go for it! Plan it out. And if you want to spend more money for a more lavish experience then I say more power to you! According to the Pacific Crest Trail Association’s Thru-hiker FAQ, our expenses fell closer to the higher end of the average range.

A typical hiker spends between $4000-8000+ on a thru-hike. Do you like fancy hotels and nice dinners? Are you eating baloney sandwiches and skipping showers? Did you have to visit a doctor or take a week off in town? Are you including the cost of insurance in your cost calculation? Transportation?

As in life, people spend wildly different amounts of money. Beware of starting with too little. The trail can be expensive. Many people under-estimate how much the experience will cost. Running out of money is one of the most commonly cited reasons for why people quit the trail.

We broke our costs down into three main categories:

• During the Hike: $6865
  • Money spent on trail while hiking.
• Off Trail: $2260
  • Bills that would have been paid whether we hiked or not.
• Gear: $4847
  • We had NO gear before we started. None. This is the total cost of ALL of our gear.

Let’s break that down a bit.

During the hike was our largest cost. Our plan was to hike with a moderate sense of comfort. This meant we wanted to allow ourselves times to enjoy the towns we were visiting, sometimes staying in motels and always splurging on as much food as we could get our grimy little hiker hands on. We spent more money in town than some people would be wanting or willing to spend, though I wouldn’t say that we were overly extravagant.

We didn’t bring a stove on trail which, at the time, was almost unheard of in the thru-hiking community. Because of this our trail food was limited to pre-packaged items and dehydrated or “instant” foods that could be cold-soaked. In a sense this could be considered a cheaper way to hike if you’re accustomed to cooking Mountain House type meals on trail, but it could also be considered more expensive if after a week of little more than cold Ramen and Clif Bars our hiker hunger was super-spiked in town, causing us to become gluttonous food vacuums whenever we came across a restaurant. It’s a subjective and difficult to define cost. Everyone’s diets and preferences are different, and the trail doesn’t change that.

Gear replacements are another cost to consider, though it didn’t amount to much for us. Most everything we carried was fairly new and high quality, so very little broke down during the hike.

Off trail expenses were unchanged bills like cell phone plans and student loans. There was quite a bit of saving here which isn’t reflected in the pie chart. We weren’t paying any rent during our hike, and we also cut out unnecessary bills like car insurance while we didn’t need it. There were some costs that couldn’t be avoided, but that’s why you need to plan ahead.

Gear was a big chunk of our financial cost which may not accurately represent your cost if you’re already an experienced backpacker with plenty of solid gear. We started the trail with zero gear. While Jill and I had hiked many miles before starting our Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike, any and all gear we had was not adequate for a 2650 mile hike. Our Nike shoes and Walmart tents weren’t going to cut it, at least as far as we were concerned. So over the two years we spent planning the hike we accumulated all the gear we would take on the journey. You can see our full starting gear list on the intro to our Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike.

Some of that gear was sent home and some did need to be replaced, but the majority of our gear was used for the entire hike.

Lost income is not represented in these numbers, but it’s the biggest factor of all. Jill and I quit our jobs to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail. We were living in the San Francisco Bay Area during the years we planned for this adventure, but then we quit our jobs, moved our belongings back to our families in Oregon, and started walking northward from the Mexican border.

The basic assumption is that you’ll be without work for the six months of your hike. Some people don’t have to quit their jobs and are able to take a leave of absence, and some thru-hikers are already retired, but the majority of people will need to plan around the income they won’t be making during this trip. When our thru-hike was over Jill and I lived for free in a trailer on her parent’s property for six months before Jill was able to find work again. That means we went an entire year without any substantial income. Our trail savings had depleted and we racked up a fair amount of credit card debt before things started to normalize again.

I never returned to work, not a “job” at least. Immediately after finishing the trail I started investing my full-time work into my writing career. I put together our trail journal Adventure and The Pacific Crest Trail and some fiction books. I started a few blogs and podcasts. Though I’ve made a few bucks through my words, I still haven’t maintained a reliable source of income since starting the PCT back in 2015. This is a cost partially inflicted by my thru-hike. I didn’t want to return to the working world after my grand adventure, and I’ve been doing everything I can since then to avoid seeing a staffing schedule ever again. This, and any number of unknown scenarios, are potential costs of a thru-hike.

Hike Your Own Hike

There is a lot of criticism on Facebook and Reddit or wherever you’re doing your community research and discussion. I don’t get it. Just about every person I have ever met on trail has been astoundingly friendly, but something about sitting behind a computer screen turns them into nasty trolls. There is too much judging on these forums, yet those aggressors will turn around and defend their own decisions by preaching the “Hike Your Own Hike” motto. Forget the negativity. Use other people’s knowledge and experiences as constructive feedback, but plan your hike for yourself. Don’t let anyone else tell you how the hike is supposed to be done.

Jill and I could have saved money by buying more used gear and by breezing through trail towns rather than losing ourselves in them, but we would have had less fun and possibly more gear issues to deal with. Our plans changed as our adventure went on. After taking advantage of every lodging opportunity Southern California had to offer we rarely spent a night on a paid bed north of the Sierra. Not gorging on town food takes a lot of willpower, though, and is not something we ever restricted ourselves from enjoying. Mammoth Lakes— ooh boy, that’s a night of Italian food I will never forget.

I met thru-hikers who had an RV meet them at every road with fresh food and a chef who made their meals. I met thru-hikers who lived through the unwanted items in hiker boxes and by dumpster diving in town. You can get out there and experience a thru-hike in any way you please, but make sure you plan ahead and prepare. You do you.