New Valley Hills

14th November was the first permit release day. The PCTA issue 50 permits for every date in March – May for anyone walking over 804km (500 miles) of the PCT. A total of only 3100 permits for one of the worlds best long distance hikes! I don’t know what the odds are, but there are thriving internet chatrooms on the alternative permit mechanism – walk the PCT on a series of local permits for each state park or wilderness zone the route passes through. The PCTA permit is the golden ticket that allows one to sale through the entire Mexico to Canada route without having to report to rangers offices, often off-trail, to gain a local permit, repeatedly.
Yesterday 35 of the 50 per day were released.
A month or so ago I’d registered to be eligible to apply for a permit. I was allocated a randon time slot, down to the second, that I could logon to their permit portal and click apply for my chosen date. Allowing for timezones I was hunched over a laptop at 2230 GMT.
Unluckily for me my slot was towards the end of the schedule thus 90% of permits had been applied for by people earlier than me, and my preferred date was not available. As I watched the available permits left were flicking out of existence. My heart was in my mouth.
I quickly found a date ~three weeks later. Better than nothing I thought. I fumbled over the keystrokes filling in my details and clicked apply.
Promptly this email popped into my inbox. Result!

I understand the processing is a formality, so effectively I have a PCTA permit! I went to bed elated but worried – this felt like a momentous occasion, but was I doing the right thing? would I be able to change my start date? if not how could I adjust my permit to make it work for you (it has a set date and location start point). I slept fitfully, not joyously.

I do want to start on my original preferred date for all sorts of sensible reasons, so when the second permit release day happens in January I’ll be hoping for a much earlier randomly allocated time slot so I can change my start date.
If that is unsuccessful I can look daily for returned/unused permits and hope to grab one of those.
If that doesnt work I can ask for my permit to start at a different location, effectively three weeks up the route, and do the local permit thang for the first 450km (280 miles) or whatever distance I reckon I’ll do in ~three weeks.

Anyways, it’s official – the permit hurdle is crossed! This was one of the big hurdles that seemed an insurmountable one when I started seriously researching the PCT at the start of 2023.
My permit start date is 24th May 2024.

Next big hurdle, and potentially the biggest one overall is getting a US visa for 6 months. It’s a yes or no decision, and I have no control on the levers. You submit a detailed application form, pay a processing fee, then wait for 4 months for an interview at the embassy in London. It’ll probably be fine, but as I can’t control the outcome it is a cause of anxiety. My interview is late February 2024, so plenty of time to fret about it until then.