Things sure have changed! In high school I did a ton of hiking in the California mountains in the early 90s, including several week-long Sierra trips ending with Mt. Whitney. I would love to hike the PCT someday. I had no idea it required 20-25 miles a day. With elevation change that's a tough day hike, let alone a sustained average with a full overnight pack. OTOH, when I was hiking more, a week-long pack was more like 50 pounds, and now 25 is heavy?
You would be pretty surprised what you can carry for under 18 lbs or so. (not counting food/water)
Doing so comfortably is a different story. ($)
There's a huge cottage industry of lightweight gear manufacturers [1] (I curate a list) that you won't find in the big retail stores. Lots of focus on smart feature engineering, lightweight hardware and materials, consistent feedback from customers driving their revisions. It's been pretty neat to watch.
I can't speak in dollars or volume, but I visited Katabatic Gear a few years ago. To my memory, the owner had a small office & warehouse in the industrial part of town - comparable to a small auto shop - and one assistant.
Plenty of these operations literally run out of a garage though, and Katabatic Gear used to be one of those. I believe Cold Cold World packs are all still made by the owner.
I have been immensely pleased with my "cottage gear".
It's a pretty wide range, some of them are (obviously) big manufacturers. Others, like Enlightened Equipment, started in a garage. Some of them are still in the garage/living room. Those are the ones that I'm truly interested in helping promote, as they don't have the time/knowledge to do it themselves.
Like Silverstorm, I've been incredibly pleased by the gear I've gotten from these smaller manufacturers. So much so that I built this website to help other people find them.
To be sure, that is a lot of miles, but the PCT is mostly trails designed for pack animals. This means gentler grades and less elevation than the 500 mile shorter Appalachian trail (for comparison). 20-25 miles per day on the AT can be down right brutal. It is just another day for many on the PCT. Also, you do need to carry a lot of water at points on the PCT, but I agree. 25 lbs is heavy when you are trying to cover big miles.
I try to never carry more than 4 days of food and my base pack is downright light. It is pretty great. Call it about 7 lbs. I don't feel I give up very much comfort honestly. I like to go big distances and see a lot of things.
As an experienced, but intermediate hiker, we took a mixed group through the MD/VA sections of the Appalachian Trail. The dramatic elevation changes were killer, and I think we topped out at around 12 miles in a single day.
What are the trail accommodations for the PCT? The AT has wonderful, but primitive shelters along the trail, and spring water at some of the points which made the whole affair a LOT more manageable than it would otherwise have been, even though we went in a cold, rainy November.
There are only a handful of shelters on the PCT and water is more scarce than the AT. These are a couple of reasons I tell people that the PCT is logistically more difficult than the AT, while the AT is physically more difficult than the PCT.
Due to the pace required to complete the PCT, camping locations are generally located by time rather than location. That is, towards the end of the day, you just keep walking until you find a comfortable place to set up camp.
Yeah. It is no joke. My comment to others was, "Here on the east coast, we don't have mountains with the elevation of the mountains on the west coast. To compensate for this, it seems we decided to blaze our trails over every mountain along the way."
a week-long pack was more like 50 pounds, and now 25 is heavy?
The weight fanatics still existed back then, drilling their toothbrushes and cutting off unneeded straps, but the industry has advanced and "lightweight" has become a mainstream goal.
Which, I think, is good. It's easy to take lightweight too far, but given that long term a very heavy pack is rough on the body even for fit people, I won't cry over the disappearance of 80lb hiking payloads.
Things sure have changed! In high school I did a ton of hiking in the California mountains in the early 90s, including several week-long Sierra trips ending with Mt. Whitney. I would love to hike the PCT someday. I had no idea it required 20-25 miles a day. With elevation change that's a tough day hike, let alone a sustained average with a full overnight pack. OTOH, when I was hiking more, a week-long pack was more like 50 pounds, and now 25 is heavy?