Talk:Pacific Crest Trail

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[edit] 1970s ride by horse

In 1969 or perhaps in the early 1970s I recall a Los Angeles Times article about 2 high school girls who rode the Pacific Crest Trail on their horses from San Diego to Canada, unaccompanied. They simply stayed over at people's houses along the way. I take this fact as a measure of the peace and stability of the U.S. at that time. Perhaps they could still have done this, even today. Ancheta Wis 10:23, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

A)Teenage girls do it solo nowadays. B) There are very, very few houses along the way. C) Taking a 2,600 mile trip on a horse is major logistics effort. The long rides that I've heard about have involved considerable support from folks driving to each roadhead with supplies. There's a d) and an e) too, but without belaboring it I think it is very likely that this user mis-remembers the article he read. -Willmcw June 30, 2005 07:46 (UTC)

[edit] Trail map

I've contacted the PCTA to see if we can get their trail map under an acceptable license. The image I'd like to use is at http://www.pcta.org/images/map_large.jpg. If I can get rights to use that image (or find another decent map of the full trail that is freely available), I'd like to put it as a "skyscraper" image on the right side of the Locations of interest section where there are currently selected images. Mike Dillon 17:45, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Images in Locations of Interest section

Hi there. I noticed that there was a little back-and-forth editing that ended up removing the pictures from the "Locations of interest" section. My original idea is that the pictures would look good filling up the empty space on the right side of the section, so that's why they were all floated right instead of in a gallery. I agree with User:Hike395 that the change to a gallery looked worse that what I did originally (the two galleries look weird). The funny thing is, I added the pictures to Locations of interest before I added the gallery... Anyways, I don't disagree with removing the redundant pictures (especially in gallery form), but if we can get a tall, skinny trail map as I said in my previous comment, I think that image would be perfect for the right side of that section. Mike Dillon 15:23, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I actually liked the photos on the side, too. Maybe we could make a 2-column table, the left one with places of interest, the right one with images? -- hike395 22:02, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to mess things up; they were displayed side by side in my browser, so I though they might was well be in a gallery. I tried something similar to Hike395's suggestion. It looks fine to me but please check it and make adjustments. I like the tall skinny trail map suggestion, Mike. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 22:44, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
It looks good to me... How about convert the entire gallery into a right-hand-side strip? I'll give it a try. -- hike395 11:56, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
It works on my 12" laptop with my browser (Safari). That probably means it will look OK on most small screens. I think the parallel display of the images with the locations list succeeds, at least until we have Mike Dillon's suggested map. Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:31, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ADZPCTKO

Could someone more knowledgeable than I add something about this event? -- Scott eiπ 17:41, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Height of Forester Pass

I don't believe the 13,180' elevation number. When I look at the topo map [1], it seems clear to me that the PCT doesn't quite reach the 4000m elevation mark: the 4020m contour is clearly higher than the trail on the map. This makes the high point less than 13,123'.

Elevation is always tricky --- topo maps usually are in an outdated vertical datum (1929, rather than 1983). The USGS lists the elevation of Forester Pass as 13,153' (4009m) at [2], but says the elevation is not very accurate. hike395 06:49, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Good points. It's pretty nice that the debate is over a difference of 0.43% ((13,180-13,123) / 13,153). Could be the USFS website is in error, or maybe topozone has the route in the wrong place: here it says it was current as of 1994. Yet here it says it was made from a photo taken in 1998 and created 2001. (I don't get it.) Nevertheless, our best work is to cite, so I've boldly taken a stab at reconciling them. — EncMstr 08:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
The footnote is fine with me. You may be misreading the topozone dates --- they have separate topo maps and aerial photos: the topo map dates from 1994, while the aerial photos are later.
I would go with the median elevation (13153) out of the elevations that we have to choose from, I'll also be bold and change it to the median. hike395 18:20, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Length of lead

The lead on this article is getting a little heavy. It might be nice to break out most of the lead into a new first section immediately before "Thru-hiking". Something like "Overview" or maybe "History". I would probably split the paragraph before the sentence that gives the length, making the tail of the paragraph into a single-paragraph "Overview" section. Mike Dillon 18:46, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Elevation change

91km seems a little much for an elevation change during the trail! Obviously it's a error (seems deliberate considering the ft value is 300,000ft!) but I don't know what to change it to. AlphaNumeric 21:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not absurd - that's the same as climbing 10,000 ft 30 times, or 5,000 ft 60 times. Even so, the linked citation doesn't mention the total gain and we should track down the source for it. -Will Beback · † · 21:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Start class

If there was a nice history section (cited of course) that better covered that topic as well as construction of the trail, that would make this a B class article. Aboutmovies 18:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lowest point

For several years, the article wrote that Bridge of the Gods is the lowest point on the PCT. Someone just changed it to the elevation of Cascade Locks, Oregon. The trail doesn't go through town, but crosses under I-84 and goes directly down to the bridge. See this topographic map. So I think the bridge is the lowest point, at least in Oregon. On the other side of the bridge, I seem to recall the road goes downhill a bit before joining with SR 14: the PCT is on the road until crossing SR 14. Looking at the contour lines on the Washington side, it looks like this point is below 100 feet elevation, even lower than the bridge. —EncMstr (talk) 08:37, 26 May 2008 (UTC)