Welcome!

Welcome to our new weblog!  You may be wondering what "Throughhikers" means.  A throughhiker (or thru-hiker) is a long-distance backpacker who has hiked one or more long trails from end to end.  OK, so what is a long trail?  Generally, this means one of the Big 3:  the Appalachian Trail (AT), the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), or the Continental Divide Trail (CDT).  These are all 2000+ miles long and take many months to complete.  There are plenty of "shorter" long-distance trails (Arizona Trail = 700 miles, John Muir Trail = 240 miles) and you would have thru-hiked that trail if you walked it from end to end in one push.  Of course, there are as many opinions of what constitutes a throughhiker or long-distance backpacker as there are hikers.  MY opinion is that a long-distance hike is one of 500+ miles that takes a month or more to walk and a throughhiker is one who walks a long trail from end to end in one push.  Of course, most long trails begin and end at random poiltical boundaries (i.e. the Mexican border or stateline) rather than at logical topographic features so don't get to caught up in the syntax.

Now that we have some definitions out of the way, you're probably still wondering why we called this blog "Throughhikers."  Well, as you can probably guess, Lori and I are both throughhikers.  We have both hiked the Pacific Crest Trail (1996), the Arizona Trail (2001), the John Muir Trail (2002), and significant portions of the Continental Divide Trail (New Mexico in 1998, Colorado in 2003).  Together we have over 12,000 long-distance trail miles under our hipbelts!  And this summer we will be adding even more.  On May 3, we will be re-hiking the California section of the PCT.  In the upcoming weeks, we will attempt to keep you updated on our planning, packing and the general craziness of preparing for a hike of this magnitude.  Once we are on the trail, we will keep you posted as to our progress.  Hope you have enjoyed reading and check back often for updates.  Happy Trails!