What is the Pacific Northwest Trail?
Hiking the Pacific Northwest Trail may be one of the most amazing or miserable things you ever do. It’s a less-commonly-hiked National Scenic Trail. About 40-60 people hike this thing each year. It travels through some of the most gorgeous parts of America including Glacier National Park, North Cascades National Park, and Olympic National Park. At around 1,200 miles in length, it is significantly shorter than its cousin, the Pacific Crest Trail.
The trail was originally created in the 1970s, and the first thru-hike was completed in 1977, and recounted in a backpacker magazine issue in 1979. The trail was designated a National Scenic Trail in 2009. However, the first thru-hike of the trail, despite occurring several decades ago, was not significantly different from what it’s like to hike the Pacific Northwest Trail today.
What You Should Know Before Hiking
First and foremost: it is a lot of road walking. If the prospect of road walking hasn’t scared you away, then yes, the trail is BEAUTIFUL — at least in parts. By a lot of road walking, I mean that about 900 miles of the 1,200 miles of trail is going to be on roads — forest roads, logging roads, and asphalt highways.
Road Differentiation: It has come to my attention that many people do not seem to differentiate between dirt roads and gravel roads, referring to these interchangeably. Gravel roads are a form of surfaced, engineered road, while dirt roads are merely graded and “unimproved”. Most of the road walking is on gravel road. I personally think gravel road is worse than asphalt as the surface is more finicky, and if there is any traffic there is considerable dust that you will be inhaling.
Weather Conditions and Trail Conditions
For my 45 day thru-hike of the PNT, I had 31 days of rain. I hear that this is very uncommon, and that many people have 5 or fewer days of rain. I think it’s important to be prepared for rain. You are in the Pacific Northwest, and when you get to the Olympic Range, you will be heading through a rain forest. If you don’t have rain, it will still be hot and humid — which means mosquitoes and bugs. Be prepared for pretty ferocious mosquitoes.
Notes about Specific Gear Choices
My thru-hike of the Pacific Northwest Trail was very, very wet. There were also a ton of mosquitoes.
Wetness
I am done with rain jackets that wet out. I now only use OutDry or ShakeDry Jackets — jackets that can’t wet out. Goretex has discontinued their shakedry line due to PFAS, and Columbia has high variability in the weights of their current line of OutDry jackets. If you are able to find an OutDry jacket that is under 10 oz, I would encourage getting it. At the time of this writing, the only OutDry jackets suitable weights for backpacking are the: NanoTec (~6 oz), Featherweight (~6 oz), and Extreme Mesh (10 oz), which have all been discontinued, but can still be found at times on ebay or poshmark. I find that these jackets preform much, much better than the non-breathable SilPoly jackets that are starting to be favored in the Ultralight Gear community. I do not know what I will do when my current stockpile of OutDry jackets are dead.
Because my hike was so, so wet, I was also very glad to have rain pants. I use the Anti Gravity Gear SilPoly Rain Pants, and I think these are truly great! WIth enough bushwhacking, you’ll still get wet (the seams are only so waterproof), but I was very glad to have them.
Mosquitoes
I had anticipated the mosquitoes prior to starting, and so made a change to my kit pretty last minute: I replaced my down jacket (ghost whisperer down) with my Patagonia Houdini and my Senchi Alpha 90 hoodie. The houdini is one of the best pieces of gear that I have ended up adding to my kit — it is super light weight (~ 3 oz) and packable, and is a great thing to use for mosquito protection. It’s also my preferred layer to keep me warm in the morning when moving before things heat up. When you couple the houdini with the Senchi, you can be quite warm largely when stationary or when moving. I don’t think the setup is anywhere near as warm as my Ghost Whisperer Down Jacket, but it is a lot more versatile. The Senchi also preforms better when wet — which was very beneficial for my soggy thru-hike. I don’t like the senchi as much as the ultralight fandom, so feel it’s really the Houdini that makes the combo.
Trail Considerations
Because the trail is so much road walking, the wear and tear on your joints and shoes is likely going to be different compared to other long trails you may have done. I primarily use Hoke Challengers for my shoe choice on long-distance trails. They are very padded while being super light weight and flexible. Flexibility turns out to be essential for me, as I have long toes, but an overall short foot length up to the ball of my foot. This means that my foot wants to bend at a point that is atypical for what shoes are engineered for. To overcome this issue, I’ve found I need to use a shoe that has limited resistance to being bent after the arch.
Anyway, enough about me. The main thing to note is that my Hoka Challengers usually start dying around 380 to 420 miles on a trail, and absolutely need replacement around 500 miles. On this trail, I could easily rock my Challengers to 600 miles, maybe 700 miles. I sent myself 2 pairs of shoes, but should have only done 1 replacement around 600 miles in retrospect — so shipping shoes to Oroville or Mazama. If you find you can usually get by on shoes for 600 or 700 miles, then I’d encourage shipping shoes to Mazama (Lion’s Den — trail angel off of mile 750), or to Marblemount or Concrete (post offices, as trail angels are sparse and businesses are not thrilled with thru-hikers, which will be a more difficult pickup)
Planning a Thru-Hike of the Pacific Northwest Trail
The trail towns might be better on the PNT than on any other long-distance trail! Every town I stopped at was great. The best towns include:
- Northport (Jamie and Josh are amazing trail angels that pull out all the stops when hosting folks. Definitely contact them!)
- Republic (Mike and Artie are awesome trail angels. Absolutely go to the brewery — you’ll find yourself in conversation with locals very quickly!)
- Mazama (The Lion’s Den has made this town. It is the most welcoming hiker establishment I have run across, and Mary is truly a delight to be around!)
While not essential, I think it is borderline silly (a bad idea) to not purchase and download the Farout guide (formerly Guthook) for this trail. It will give you decent beta (trail information) at various points, including water and trail conditions from other hikers. This is unbelievably invaluable. It is also the only place to get an accurate, updated GPX file of the full trail (Farout now has license to the copyright for the official route, so it’s not freely available).
In addition to the farout guide, I strongly encourage getting a secondary topo mapping app like CalTopo or Gaia, and making sure to download decent maps of the region before you start hiking. The most popular topo app is Gaia (what I use, but I have concerns with the company that owns it, so would love to switch). I have a GPX of my hike here, which included some Alternatives and deviations from the default route. For instance, the bush whacks I did I would not recommend that anyone should follow.
This trail is “easy” to do big miles on in many sections, on account of the frequent road walking. In other sections, you’ll be struggling to push miles due to bushwhacks and changes in elevation. The hardest place to push miles is Montana, the Selkirks, and the Pasaytan Wilderness. I averaged ~27 miles per day for my thru-hike — so many 32+-mile days. The Montana portion of the trail is frequent ascents and descents of 2500 feet. After Montana, the trail turns into a lot of road walking with more gradual ascents and descents with a few exceptions.
What About Bears?
Yes — there are bears. The entire trail, for the most part, goes through bear territory. In Glacier National Park, you will be in grizzly bear territory. For bears, you will need to carry bear spray from Glacier National Park through Northport. Most westbound hikers drop their bear spray by Republic.
Most hikers use Ursacks from Glacier National Park until Olympic National Park. Olympic National Park requires you to have bear canisters on the coast, and in the Seven Lakes Basin if you’re camping there. In Glacier National Park, you’ll need to hang your Ursack from wires that are tethered between poles, if there is not room in the steel bear boxes, or you’re camping at a site without bear boxes. I also strongly recommend the use of the 20″ OpSaks. From my personal experience, they work very well — the only time rodents or other things have come near my food since using some sort of plastic barrier is when I used a LokSak instead of an OpSak for food storage.
| Location | Bear Safety Recommendations |
| Glacier NP to Northport | Bear Spray (buy in East Glacier, ~$40), Ursack, OpSak, Dyneema Bear Rope |
| Northport NP to Port Angeles | OpSak (Sent everything home but my OpSak) |
| Port Angeles to Finish | Bear Canister (I also kept my OpSak) |
You can rent a Bear Canister in Forks from the Forks Outfitters, or from the Wilderness Information Center (WIC) in Port Angeles. I had my bare boxer shipped to me in Coupeville (Happy House) to cover me for the entire park.
Getting To/From Trail
East Glacier
To get to Glacier National Park, you should either fly into Kalispell or take the Amtrak to East Glacier. For flying, there are numerous flights that land in Kalispell daily, which may give you some flexibility in timing to acquire permits for Glacier. On the other hand, Amtrak gets into East Glacier only once a day. Wyatt of Backpacker’s ferry offers a hiker shuttle service — for $300 he’ll pick you up from Kalispell, take you to the Glacier NP permit office, and then shuttle you up to the Canadian Border.
If you don’t want to pay a ton for shuttling from the airport, you can definitely hitchhike to East Glacier:
- Make friends with folks on your flight into Kalispell. They will be able to take you to Whitefish, West Glacier, or perhaps East Glacier
- If you get a ride to Whitefish, you can spend the night and take Amtrak in the morning to East Glacier
- If you get a ride to West Glacier, you can hitchhike to East Glacier from the gas station, or stealth camp at the Amtrak station and grab the Amtrak in the morning.
From East Glacier, you’ll need to get a ride to Two Medicines to get permits (there’s some folks that will shuttle you). And you’ll need to get a ride up to the border. You can hitchhike to the border, but most folks pay Wyatt to shuttle them to the border (~$50),
Most thru-hikers stay at Luna’s place in East Glacier (Looking Glass Basecamp). It’s a hiker mecca.
Cape Alava: Hitching from Ozette
There are a lot of day hikers on the weekend that do a 10-mile triangle loop. You can likely hitch a ride to Forks or another trail town with them from Ozette. On weekdays, there are likely to be backpackers leaving. It is a very busy parking lot, so I would not be too concerned about getting a ride in to folks of Clallam Bay. Note: Cllalam Bay and Forks do not have bus service out on Sundays. You can also arrange for a shuttle service for $150 per 2 people. I think hitching is a pretty great option! From Forks, you can get to Port Angeles, and then to Seattle entirely on public transport (~$20 total)
Shi-Shi Beach: Neah Bay Bus
As an alternative to finishing/starting at Cape Alava, you can finish at Shi-Shi Beach. Doing this will add around 20 miles of hiking, but means you can rely entirely on Public Transportation and you won’t need to hitch. It’s a 7 mile road walk from Neah Bay to the Shi-Shi Trailhead. You will go from Neah Bay to Forks, and then to Port Angeles, and then to Seattle. This will be ~$20 via Public Transport. You likely won’t have a problem hitching from Shi-Shi beach trailhead to Neah Bay, but it’s only a 7 mile road walk if you can’t/don’t want to hitch. Shi-Shi Beach can be hard hiking, and you’ll need to time low tides effectively. Note: there are no buses leaving Neah Bay on Sunday.
Planning Resupplies
For planning this trail, look at the Farout map and various resupplies, and make a rough itinerary for what you are comfortable doing in terms of miles per day and zeroes. There are a few possible resupplies/towns that I did not go to that others will stop in. For instance, the town of Yaak is a relatively easy hitch, and a lot of people like it. It’s not a resupply, but is a restaurant. I also didn’t go into Forks, opting to go from Port Angeles to La Push — this worked well for me.
The trail is 1,200 miles, and there is a limited subset of resupplies to use. Here’s where you’re likely to be resupplying, along with my notes about the resupply location:
| Resupply | Miles on Trail | Notes |
| Pole Bridge | 53 | On trail unless you take an alt |
| Eureka | 135 | on trail. You’ll also go through Rexford 6 miles later where you can grab a meal at the pub |
| Bonner’s Ferry | 249 | You can hitch in from hwy 95. There’s also a trail angel that can pick you up. Bonner’s Ferry is very spread out, so book a room at the Kootenai Valley Lodge from mile 232 when you have cell service. Rooms fill up quickly. At mile 232 you can eat at a restaurant (Feist Creek), and can also call a trail angel to pick you up. |
| Metaline Falls | 354 | on trail |
| North Port | 400 | on trail. Jamie and Josh are amazing trail angels |
| Republic | 474, 504, and 528 | You’ll go around this thing three times. If you’re looking to shave miles but keep a continuous footpath, you might consider walking Highway 20 into and out of town, rather than looping. They have a large list of trail angels (see info later) that can grab you from the highway. It’s relatively easy to hitch highway 20 (mi 474 and 528), but hard to hitch highway 21. |
| Oroville | 591 | On trail, but spread out town. If you can’t rock shoes to Mazama, probably send new shoes here. Coordinate with Camary motel for resupply boxes. |
| Mazama | 747 | Awesome trail town, worth hitting. Hitch in. If you hitch from Highway 20 (Ross Lake or Rainy Pass). Mary (Lion from lion’s den) can give you a ride back up. If you’re doing an alt and hitching out from Harts Pass, Mary can’t give rides up to Harts Pass anymore (her car won’t handle the road) |
| Marblemount or Concrete | 799, 816 | If North Cascades is still closed, you’ll walk through these. Otherwise it’s a ~12 mi walk/hitch into town. Marblemount has a gas station and restaurant. Concrete has a grocery store(s) and convenience store. The town is a little spread out. Cascade Mountain Lodge has awesome Indian food. |
| Lyman | 892 | 2.8 mile walk into town. Trail angels here are solid! You’re resupplying out of a gas station that has more than your average gas station |
| Alger/Edison | 930, 948 | Edison is on trail. Restaurant Food, unless you send something to Edison Station, or take a bus to Bellingham. I resupplied for an extra day in Lyman consisting entirely of snacks, and then just used restaurants for food through the harbor towns to port Townsend |
| Anacortes | 970 | On trail. Full service town! You kinda get to choose your own road walking adventure through here to hit what you want! |
| Oak Harbor/Coupeville | 995 | On Trail. Full service town! Choose your own adventure through here to hit what you want |
| Port Townsend | 1020 | On trail. Full service town! I resupplied out of Safeway |
| Port Angeles | 1079 | Bus into town. Full service town. I strongly encourage taking an alternative route, and resupplying in Port Angeles off of Hurricane Ridge. There’s a bus into and out of town. |
| Forks | 1185 | Bus/Hitch into town. Grocery store. I pushed to La Push from Port Angeles rather than using Forks. |
| La Push | 1226 | Basically on trail. Decent gas station-equivalent that has some hot food. |
What About Sending Resupply Boxes?
I only sent one resupply box — that was a bear canister over to Coupeville for the Olympic Coast. I am vegetarian, so am able to comfortably resupply out of gas stations. If you have specific dietary restrictions, then you should send resupply boxes. Polebridge, Northport, Mazama, and Lyman are the resupplies where you only have gas station offerings. All other resupply towns have grocery stores that are pretty well stocked. Polebridge and Mazama were the only towns that I thought were less-than-great for their gas station offerings. I packed out some baked goods from their excellent bakeries to supplement my gas station resupply.
For gear mail drops: I would send shoes to Oroville, unless you feel okay rocking shoes for >750 miles, and then I’d send them to Mazama. If you’re shipping, rather than renting, a bear can, you should ship this to Port Angeles. Kindabird is a trail angel in Port Angeles (check the farout comments for contact details). I encourage taking an alternate route that will bring you to Hurricane Ridge, which will allow you to take the $1 bus directly into Port Angeles (although it is also an easy hitch).
Water Carries
I had 3.1L of water carrying capacity for this trail. I think I would have been fine with 2.5L. For most of the trail, I carried around 1 L of water each time I stopped to fill and was fine. I had a very wet year, however, so in a hot year I may need to carry more than 1L of water between water spots. The only place where I needed more than 1.5L of water carrying capacity was when doing the Northwest Peak Alternate.
Permits
You only need permits for the three National Parks: Glacier, North Cascades, and Olympic. Of the three parks, Olympic is now the easiest to do permits for.
Glacier National Park Permits
You should get your permit in person from the Backcountry office — either in West Glacier (if you’re getting a shuttle from the Airport), or in Two Medicine (if you’re going into East Glacier without a stop in the park beforehand). Figure out a handful of different Camp Sites you’d be okay with, and talk with the Glacier rangers at the permit office. You’ll likely be able to get something that will work for the following day. They are decent at accommodating schedules. You can also request that they leave a note letting other PNT hikers know that they are welcome at your site/on your permit too, if they show up later.
Additionally, there may be other PNT hikers in town at East Glacier. You can see if you can hike with them to use their permit if they have one already/coordinate with them for hiking and permit options.
North Cascades Permits
This is the most annoying permit to get, as you’ll need to time it from Oroville. The Wilderness Information Center allows PNT hikers to book permits by phone: (360) 854-7245. Because you’re entering the Pasayten Wilderness shortly after Oroville, you’re going to lose cellular service, so may need to figure out permits from Oroville if you intend to go through Ross Lake. If you take an alternative route or go into Mazama, you can likely arrange for permits from Mazama, although you’ll likely need to take a zero or two to make those permits work out.
You can also avoid permits for North Cascades either by hiking through the entire park in a day, or taking an alternative route that won’t be within the park boundary (e.g. walking highway 20). I avoided permits here by taking a southern alternative along the Pacific Crest Trail, where I exited the park through Cascade Pass. To avoid permits, I had to hike a 36 mile day with a lot of ascent.
Olympic National Park Permits
This is the easiest permit to get. You can book the permit through Recreation.gov — they now offer “PNT Thru Permits“. For these, you select zones you are likely to be in for each day you want a permit for. You can then camp at any No Quota camp site within that zone. You should check their wilderness trip planning map to get a better handle on the campsites that are outside of a quota. I encourage making this reservation a day before you get to Port Townsend. Layover days should only be specified for the days you are not going to be camping in Olympic National Park (e.g. taking a zero in Port Angeles or Forks), and should not be used as buffer days. Specify additional days in a particular zone to use that zone as a buffer day. The park rangers seem pretty chill about flexibility around the zones as long as you’re in no quota campsites.
Recommended Alternative Route Options
Alternates with an asterisk by them are the alternates that I took and strongly recommend.
Glacier National Park Options
It’s GNP! There’s so much good hiking around here. I encourage spending more time in Glacier if you can, and skipping other sections of the trail if you’re short on time (i.e. hitch some road sections)
Adding the CDT from Two Medicines
Yeah, honestly. You should do this if you have time!! You should figure out your permits, and start at two medicine going up to Goat Haunt. This is some of the nicest section of Glacier National Park, and better than most of the hiking on the PNT.
Kintla Lakes Alt
I didn’t take this alt, but I wish I had. I’ve heard amazing things about it from everyone that took it, as well as locals. The default trail through Glacier is definitely mediocre, so take this alt if you can!
North Cascades National Park Options
For several years now, there has been an 8ish-mile trail closure in North Cascades National Park. There are no other trails that allow you to get around the closure in the north part of the park (North of highway 20). This closure occurs just after Ross Lake. This trail may open in the future. If it does not, however, I would strongly encourage taking a Southern route option through North Cascade National Park. You can exit the park through Cascade Pass
Panther Creek Trail
From Ross Lake and Highway 20, you can take Panther Creek Trail south to Thunder Creek Trail, and eventually the trail will take you south to Upper Stehekin Valley Trail. From here, you can take the trail West over Cascade Pass. Once over Cascade Pass (lots of people), you will be walking a forest road (Cascade River Road, paved) to get to Marblemount and Highway 20. You’ll walk Highway 20 to Concrete, and then can connect up to the PNT around mile 848. If you don’t care about maintaining a continuous foot path, it will be very easy to hitch from Cascade Pass parking lot to Concrete or Mt Baker.
Southern PCT Alternative *
From Holman Pass, continue south along the PCT until you hit Upper Stehekin Valley Road. At this point, you will divert from the PCT, and take Stehekin Valley Road west over Cascade Pass. This is a great option, with beautiful hiking and epic ridge views along the entire PCT. You’ll be able to hitch out of Rainy Pass or Harts Pass to Mazama, and shouldn’t have that hard of a time getting a ride back up.
Technical Mountaineering Option
If you have the skills and a buddy, and feel comfortable with the potential need for ropes, crampons, and an ice ax, then I encourage looking into this! You can basically take the PNT to Ross Lake, and then start along the Panther Creek Trail south (see above). From McAlister camp, you can get up to the Borealis Glacier. There are traverses along the glacier fields to Eldorado glacier. You can take a primitive trail from Eldorado Peak Area back to the Cascade River Road. I did not do this alt, but did some reviewing of specific rock climbing trip reports — so it will absolutely be viable if you have the skills, but you’ll need to do additional research about the route to piece it together.
Olympic National Park Options
Deer Ridge Trail to Deer Park *
This is some seriously nice ridge walking. I think this is the best hiking I had all trail, with the exception of the PCT sections, and the Olympic Coast. ‘m really glad I got to hike this section of trail. However, to get to the Deer Park Trail, you’re going to take Salmon Creek Road off of Highway 101 and connect to Dungeness Fork Camp. The road walking from Highway 101 to the Deer Park Trailhead is some of the most unpleasant hiking on trail. The locals seem to treat the National Forest like a landfill, and dump trash everywhere. This is still likely a better hiking option than hiking the default trail along Highway 101. Taking the Deer Ridge Trail through Hurricane Ridge means you’ll easily be able to resupply in Port Angeles. The bus to Port Angeles leaves from Hurricane Ridge every hour, 9AM to 4PM and then again at 5:30 PM. It’s $1 and will drop you in the center of Port Angeles. There is a lovely trail angel (kinda bird) that you can stay with in town.
Grand Pass Alternate
I did not hike this, as I did the Deer Ridge Trail through Deer Park. When chatting with another hiker that did take this alt, they really liked it. If you are not taking deer ridge, you should absolutely do this high route alternate up to Hurricane Ridge. If you intend to take this route, I would encourage taking the “Gray Wolf Alt” (on Farout) up to Forest Road 2880, and then cutting from that back to the default route off of Gold Creek Trail. You’d then take the default route up to Dose Meadows before taking Lost Pass Trail to connect up to Obstruction Point and Hurricane Ridge
Hurricane Ridge *
There’s good views, and it’s a cruisey gravel road. The main reason to be on Hurricane Ridge is because you went through Deer Park or the Grand Pass alternate, and are looking to resupply in Port Angeles. The hiking is nice and the views are lovely, but it’s not single track, which is a downside. You could hitch some chunks of this road walk if you felt compelled.
Hoh Lake Trail Alternate through Hoh Rainforest
I strongly encourage taking this alternative. The default trail through the Bogachiel Rainforest is fine, but isn’t anything that interesting, and has a lot of road walking at the end anyway. This trail will take you closer to Mt Olympus, and will be a better maintained trail for hiking through the rain forest. It will also shave many miles of road walking. What to do: From the Bogachiel Peak junction (mile 1147 on Farout), take the the Hoh Lake Trail down to the Hoh River Trail. Take the Hoh River Trail west to the Upper Hoh Road. Connect the Upper Hoh Road to Highway 101, and walk south down Highway 101 to connect to Oil City Road. Road walk Oil City Road to meet back up with the default trail around mile 1203 (Farout miles). This will cut a bunch of not-fun road walking, and provide an absolutely amazing Olympic NP experience. The ridge line west of the Bogachiel Peak junction ends up being obscured by trees, so isn’t the best hiking anyway.
Other Alt Suggestions
There are a handful of common options to route around some of the bushwhacking that takes place in other parts of the trail that is outside the national parks. It will increase the amount of forest road walking you do, but it will likely go quickly, and is probably worth doing!
Northwest Peak Alternate* (Montana)
Definitely do the Northwest Peak Alternate if you enjoy ridge walks and decent views. This was one of the highlights of the trail, outside of Olympic National Park.
Sullivan Creek Alternate* (Idaho, near Upper Priest Lake)
At the time of this writing, farout shows a northern route after upper priest lake, and an alternative route near Jackson Creek. The “alternative” shown on farout is now considered the “true PNT” trail at this point. Due to some fires and trail maintenance issues, neither the old PNT, nor the new reroute through Jackson Creek are in great shape. You can instead do some forest road walking that is very, very pleasant toward Sullivan Creek. I would encourage this if you want a more enjoyable thru-hike.
Take Upper Priest River Road (NF 1013) to Nordman Metaline Road (NF 302). Take Nordman Metaline Road through Totem Gulch to Sullivan Creek Road. Take Sullivan Creek Road west to the Mill Pond Campground to reconnect with the default PNT. Here is my rough GPX track.
My Trip and Writings
Overall, my trip of the PNT was really quite good! Before starting, I hadn’t realized just HOW MUCH road walking there was. This definitely influenced my view of the trail. Between Bonner’s Ferry and Olympic National Park, I was definitely feeling a lot of animosity toward the trail. This was in no small part due to how wet it was for me. Once I got to the Olympic Coast, I actually started loving the trail. I would never want to thru-hike this trail in its entirety again, but I think Glacier National Park, the Pasaytan Wilderness and North Cascade, and Olympic National Park through the Olympic Coats are tremendous hiking. If you do not feel compelled to maintain a continuous footpath, then hitch-hiking the long stretches of road walking would make this trail truly phenomenal.
