ultralight

Yeah I think that converts out to 11 or 12ish Liters.

Hiking Death Valley was awesome, I was happy to be doing it late season when things are generally much cooler. We got a tiny bit of rain near furnace creek while hanging out with my friend which felt really lucky. I got approached by a tiny kit fox (I think, based on NPS' list of carnivores in the park, it looked more like a cat to me, but not a bobcat) who I think was mostly checking out my headlamp, which was very cute and smol. I hit Pannamint Springs on thanksgiving, and they had a free thanksgiving buffet so and I went full hiker trash gorging myself on that and it was awesome. All the abandoned mine stuff in the Inyos and around Death Valley is super cool. The ways up into the Inyos and up and down telescope ridge are tough, but didn't seem like anything that would've been totally out of place on the CDT.

I wish I could give a concise answer for that, his route was kindof esoteric. It was predicated on walking thru all the states and he had already done coast to coast twice and had just finished the triple crown sobo on the CDT, and was heading to Alaska haha. I'm not sure he put anything up on the internet about it outside of facebook, but his trail name is Mammoth if you wanna try and find more.

My PCT went great! I started late sobo (August 11th) with a friend intending to do it in less than 100 days, which we failed at, my friend dropped out about 2 weeks in to change direction in life, and I think he felt like he was slowing me down.

My PCT social experience was much more closely aligned to how the CDT is portrayed, (and vice versa too) I didn't see a single person on trail between donner pass where I saw a trail runner and a late night dog walker, and crabtree meadows where I saw a ranger who was just hanging out "till the snow kicked them out." and I did get to hike with a guy for most of Oregon who was finishing a flip flop at crater lake. But overall it was mostly solo, I started getting (new) snow in Oregon but it didn't stick around super well until Whitney, so my progress got pretty slow at times. I got told that the big snow storm that hit whitney when I was starting H2L dumped like 16ft, so I bailed and road walked to walker pass to keep on.

I hitched to LA from Big Bear and flew home for the winter holidays and kinda got stuck back home longer than intended. but I road tripped back out with my then freshly retired and cancer free dad, and he slack packed me the rest of the way over a couple weeks. South of Mojave is kind of a blur for me as it went pretty smooth, and I was mile hounding pretty hard to make my flight (which I originally planned to be from san diego at the end, prior to doing H2L, or even the high sierra at all) and then the slack packing I was a little more focused on the getting to spend time with my dad between sections slackpacks.