He quit his job and hiked from Mexico to Canada

Last summer I quit my job in order to walk the 2650 mile Pacific Crest Trail in its entirety. Along the way I took hundreds of videos and taught myself to play ukulele.

First question he answered on Reddit

1- How long did it take you to do this trip?
6 months round trip from Athens, Ga. 5.5 months of walking.

2- How much money did you have to save?
Saved 10,000 used 9,000 including gear, food & airfare home.

3- What kind of preparations did you have to make?
A lot of people send themselves boxes ahead of time, but I hiked about 100 miles on the AT and got sick of the food I brought rather quickly. So, I decided it would be better to get food and extra gear as I go. In terms of saving money, I lived frugally and worked multiple jobs for about 6 years saving up for it. I also had to live in a friends dingy basement to find a place where I was not restricted to a lease.

4- How many gigs of video/photo did you amass?
240gigs of mostly jumbled rubbish videos.

5- What gear did you bring (I’m actually interested in your photo/video gear!)
For video I brought a gopro 3+ silver, but it got stolen in south lake tahoe. From then on a mix of Samsung galaxy III and my buddies iphone. You can tell the drop in quality about half way though.

6- Coolest memories?
Maybe not what you would think. We did a 24, 24, 24 challenge where you walk 24 miles and drink 24 beers in 24 hours (and turn your beers into wizard staffs). We ended in Belden which was having a music festival for Fourth of July. There was a barge in the river with a water slide and margarita bar. After months in the wilderness being surrounded by thousands of people all wanting to talk to us it was so surreal. One of the best memories of my life. Also climbing Mt. Whitney was really cool

7- Worst moments?
At mile 900 a lot of my friends quit, and because I was going slow I didn’t catch them in time to say goodbye. It was nauseatingly hot and humid, my water filter broke, there were a clouds of mosquitoes big enough to cast shadows and I got shin splints which feels like someone stabbing a fork in your leg everytime you take a step. So I was lonely, depressed, dehydrated, nauseous, itchy, in pain and I still had to walk up and down mountains. Absolutely terrible. One of many times I almost quit.

8- Can you play us a song on your ukulele?
That background music was a song on my ukulele. I made it up on trail and played the harmonica myself.

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One Response to He quit his job and hiked from Mexico to Canada

  1. Larry says:

    I am envious of people that take the time out of their lives to go on an adventure like this. I dream of taking off on my motorcycle and staying gone for about 6 months seeing national parks and historic landmarks and camping out a lot. At 58 years old, I may be able to do that in the near future.

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