Just one more sleep and our adventure on the PCT truely begins. After 2 weeks in Germany and a 3 week road trip to Estonia with my boys it’s time to actually put our packs on and walk the first kilometers of the trail. We’ve been hosted by “trail angels – Scout & Frodo” in the suburbs of San Diego for 3 nights for free. Ferried to an outfitters and the Phone store for sim cards. Our resupply was done at the local store up the road.

It’s taken a lot of time, effort and planning to get this far. Gears ready, bodies and minds toned 🙂 and we’re ready to hit the trail. Actually, we’ve really struggled with jetlag and are pretty exhausted but still pumped for tomorrow morning.

Although we’re many thousands of kilometres from home, our thoughts and hearts go out to all those affected by the white extremist terrorist attack 2 weeks ago. Proud of the response by Jacinda and the people of NZ – the world has watched and is in awe of the outpouring of love and aroha.

It is rainy, sometimes there is a wee bit of blue sky. The trees are still naked, stripped off for winter time in Europe. Rene ran away with his boys and the cat is sleeping.

Short story short: There is no one to play with but the gear!

And so it happens….

You would think applying for a PCT permit online over the internet would be relatively simple in our day and age……..well it is and it is not.

Going back a bit to give you a bit of context will help to understand the dilemma of the permit application.

The Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA) was pretty well forced a number of years ago to introduce a permit system restricting entry to the trail for long-distance hikers to 50 people per day. This occurred as an outcome of the popularity of the trail and the huge growth in numbers all wanting to start the trail during a relatively small window. Hikers walking >500 miles are required to get a permit.

Months of comments on the 2019 PCT Facebook page about fears of not getting the start date you want certainly didn’t help alleviate the pressure we felt on permit application day. 35 permits are issued November 14th and the remaining 15 are issued on the 15th of January.

The process seemed simple enough, go to the PCTA website, go to the permit page, press Go, collect $200 – not quite…..the permits are free. You get a place in a queue, you get emailed when it is your turn to enter the permit waiting room, fill out your form and then select the date you want to start – hey presto – permit applied for!

Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. We two, at the kitchen table, permit day, laptop each, fingers poised as we counted down to permit time…..

3

2

1

Enter

I get place 567 in the queue, Anna gets 3670. I’m finished within 15 minutes, date selected is Uncle Rick’s birthday and off to work. Anna two hours later manages to get the nearest date available slot a week earlier.

I emailed the PCTA suggesting that this totally disadvantages internationals who aim to hike together as they need to book flights and accommodation etc. The PCTA thanked me for my feedback and suggested Anna has another go in January.

Luckily our trail angels in San Diego didn’t mind accepting our booking as long as both had valid permits and didn’t start any earlier than either date.

3 weeks waiting for approval and Done!

Else on our To-Do-List was the California Fire Permit

and the Canadian Entry Permit via the PCT

and onwards!

Preparations began already in 2017 with watching Dixie of Homemade Wanderlust fame – video blogging her way along the PCT. Dixie’s “Vlogs” were actually pretty good and easy enough for a Kiwi to follow. I did struggle a bit with the language and accent as well as the use of non-metric measures (they still use miles and gallons in the US) – but it was a great intro to the trail conditions and culture I would have to learn to adapt to enjoy the PCT. Online gear reviews and other video bloggers like “Darwin onthetrail” (the bloke version of Dixie who walked the PCT in 2018) gave me a reasonable understanding of the trail.

All this palled in significance to the process of applying for a US Visa – basically, no US Visa = no trail hiking in the States. NZ is a member of the countries included in the 90 day waiver program, meaning if your visit is less than 90 days, you just apply for a Visa online and off you go! Instead, for stays of longer than 90 days, you need the whole kit and caboodle. I downloaded the application form from the US Department of State to see what we needed to do and what information was required.

If anyone from the Department of State, Homeland security or any other department involved in immigration affairs is reading this…….I just want to say that the process was actually OK – lengthy, slightly frustrating, a little intimidating but eventually successful. Any comments I make are in no way to be taken as a criticism of the application system or of the Government of the United States of America – but for someone from a tiny country in the southern pacific ocean I found some of the questions quite concerning.

So it was, late April 2018 – a year out from starting the trail – that I went through the application form. If unsuccessful we would need time to change plans and walk in Canada on a different trail. Apart from the usual; Name, Passport and DOB, I also had to fill in my University studies, last 5 years employment details and a host of other information. That was just a warm-up till I got to the really interesting section which included what at first sight were what I considered to be really bizarre questions – I kept thinking, ‘what moron is going to answer “Yes” to any of these?’.

A couple of my all time favourite questions were:
“Have you ever knowingly aided, abetted, assisted or colluded with an individual who has committed, or conspired to commit a severe human trafficking offense in the US or outside the US?” Unfortunately no scale was provided as to how “Severe” severe was…….so trafficking one human at a time isn’t potentially as bad as say a dozen at a time?
“Have you ever committed, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in torture?” I personally find Black Friday torturous, this consumer consumption frenzy exported from the US, but I don’t think this counted.

The day came to enter all the information gathered online. A special electronic photo was required (the only square shaped one I’ve ever needed). So I started filling out my DS-160 online application form……23 screens later I got to the sign and submit screen……fingers trembled as I hit the button…….then suddenly up came the “Confirmation” screen! I’d done it! 45 minutes and the first step was completed. Sadly, this would just lead to some very frustrating visits to the online portal, to get a barcode to take to Kiwibank, to pay for the Visa, to return later to the portal to enter in Kiwibanks code from their receipt. Eventually this was all sorted and I could book a date for my interview. Date for my interview? In Auckland? But the US Embassy is in Wellington, I live in Wellington……No! Visa’s are dealt with by Consular Affairs and the Consulate is in Auckland. What? I now need to travel all the way to Auckland to have an interview? Yep!

So, we get an appointment for roughly 2 months later and have to travel to Auckland. Road trip! We turned the trip into a long’ish weekend, visited a friend in Taranaki on the way and arrived the night before our interview in Auckland. Our appointment is for 9:45am, and so it appeared for the other 10 people queuing at the Consulate. We are ushered through security (no body scanning thank goodness) and had our bags checked. Through the big door out the back and into the next queue for the documentation check window. All documents appear in order. By this time I am a little bit intimidated. Next we queue for the finger printing, the guy is super friendly and chats to Anna in German (he was posted at the German Embassy previously). Not content with just the index fingers, we had all 10 digits processed. Then the final queue for the actual interview…..

After overhearing another queue member in front of us being grilled and eventually being refused his Visa (the interview area is actually quite public) I was becoming a bit more apprehensive about our chances of success. Two interview windows were available and luckily we seemed to get the “nice lady” who had previously appeared to rubber stamp others in the queue. Anna got two questions, I got three, about our work mainly. We said we needed the Visas because we were going to walk the PCT. Upon suggesting that she should do the Te Araroa Trail, she laughed and said “you guys are great, you have your visas! Have a great day!” What? Just like that? No thumb screws? No harsh lamp shone into our faces? All this effort and we get a couple and questions and it’s approved? Wait! We left feeling it had been a bit of an anticlimax but happy none-the-less with the result – Thank you US Consulate – Thank you Donald!

Now the next hurdle, our PCT Permits……..

Thanks for joining us! 

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

It seems like forever ago now that the journey started, setting up this blog forces me to reflect on just how long it’s actually been. Flights are booked and paid for, US Visa issued, PCT permit approved, leave from work arranged and all gear has been mulled over and purchased. The preparation for the journey is actually far longer than the hike actually takes.  

It all started, sort of, while walking the Te Araroa Trail (see my TA Blog), our long distance hiking trail down-under.  Uniquely Kiwi, very different from the US Trails and certainly nothing like the Camino de Santiago. At only 3000kms, and having only just opened in 2011, I walked it in the Summer of 2015/16. That season only around 300 thru-hikers attempted the trail. The trail is not a continuous wilderness trail – do not come and walk it if you want to walk a continuous wilderness trail. The TA is a Cultural/Wilderness trail and as such has a bit of road-walking – in fact it took us 900kms to actually have an entire day in the wilderness with no form of road. I’m not complaining, I loved it, I loved every single day, every single kilometer, every single challenge – yes, some days I wanted to chop my feet off as they hurt so much – no fault of the trail though – you can’t always match your limited shoe selection to the terrain you encounter.

During the TA the idea of doing the PCT began to percolate. Similarly, deciding to do the TA came from walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain with my son during late Winter in 2013. Trails have a way of doing that, plenty of time for reflection, plenty of time for planning your next adventures. Our crew on the TA managed to have the privilege of walking with some people who had done the PCT, the stories sounded great and so the research on the Interweb began. As it turned out, my fellow TA crew members all sort of wanted to do the PCT as well, but for various reasons they won’t be joining me. Only one other TA Jandal crew member is joining for the next adventure – Anna.

The two biggest issues facing Kiwi PCT hikers are: getting a US Visa for more than 90 days and getting a PCT permit for your start date to fit in with international flights etc. Next is the mission to get both, and what a mission it was………….