Supporting this resource

This content was last updated on 2026 August 9th

Share this content by linking to it

The best way you can support this site is to share it BY LINKING TO IT

The purpose of this site is to be shared.

The goal of this site is to be a central resource with fast access to basic information about the PCT in Washington state.

The vision of this site, and it's sister groups, is continuous improvement based on feedback from members.

So if you share this web site or any of its pages BY LINKING TO IT then you are helping achieve the purpose, goal, and vision. And that helps everyone.

Since 2020 the online hiking community has been using this content collaboratively BY LINKING TO IT instead of copying it and posting it as their own. Various social media groups have happily leveraged PCTWashington.com to help cover just 500 miles of the trail so they could focus more on the remaining 2,155 miles. There's a lot of trail to cover.

Linking ensures hikers are aware of the resource and can follow continuous updates. Linking allows readers to contribute to its continuous improvement.

Comments on a linked post anywhere are used to improve the accuracy and completeness of the content - crowdsourced over many years from people who hiked the PCT over many decades. Together we've made huge progress across many social media pages reducing the "churn" of all the same questions being asked over and over, year after year, and incomplete or inaccurate answers spread widely. This gave hikers a huge head-start preparing for their journeys and spared them redundant searches for information. It allowed the social media groups to focus on discussing new issues.

Using this content without linking to its source robs the reader of knowledge and participation.

Linking is all we ask

We don't ask for donations to support the hundreds of hours spent keeping this website current and accurate, coding it to be a mobile on-trail resource, researching and writing content, and gathering feedback. We are happy to do that and also pay for it to be hosted ad-free.

All we ask is that you link to the content and help discourage abuse of this content in social media.

What if linking is blocked?

YOUR POST IS PENDING APPROVAL

When a Facebook group administrator blocks links in posts or comments it significantly hampers member participation. Imagine not being able to link to an official fire page, national forest alert page, or website such as the PCTA or WatchDuty. Proactive blocks are just a lazy disservice to the group in my opinion. Our approach is to simply delete any inappropriate posts afterwards. Then we can react to just that one member without putting "handcuffs" on the entire group. It only takes seconds. It just requires admins to be checking on their group at least daily. Facebook 'moderation alerts' make this especially easy for admins. These Facebook blocks are NOT default settings in Facebook. If your post or comment in a Facebook group is either auto-declined, or put into post-approval purgatory, it is because the group administrator set up a rule to do that.

  1. They may have post approval/decline turned on for all posts from everyone.
  2. They may have post approval/decline turned on for all posts from you.
  3. They may have post approval/decline turned on for all posts with any link in it.
  4. They may have post approval/decline turned on for all posts with a specific link in it. Note, there are separate settings for posts and for comments.

If your post or comment is auto-declined or put in approval purgatory. Then post this instead:

"I tried posting a link to [PCTA_org] that has valuable information about [trail closures] but the admins of this group have blocked posts with that link. Group admins, please unblock link sharing so the members of this group can be aware of this resource and discuss it. Thank you. PS: This setting is under Group Settings -> Admin Assist ->"

If that post (without a link) goes into Pending Approval, then you know they are not just blocking links, they are blocking you, either individually or as a group member. Then you may want to just delete that second post.

Background on this site and the groups

My experience planning another PCT hike in 2019 was difficulty finding the information online; some needed information was missing, a lot of information was old and no longer relevant to the current season, the same questions and answers were repeated over and over in different groups with varying degrees of accuracy. And whether section hiking or thru hiking, getting information about just the state and section I was currently focused on was near impossible. Anyone seeking information about just Oregon or Washington had to wade thru an enormous amount of discussion about California.

When the previous owners of the PCT Washington and PCT Washington Trail Angels Facebook groups encouraged me to revive them in the early spring of 2020, I did so with a set of clear goals intended to spare other hikers the same difficulty:

1). Separate content about the trail itself from content about individual hikers needing assistance, hence two Facebook groups. This helps members get what they need faster.

2). Proactively answer the questions we see over and over every year so the group can focus on new topics. Do this using high-quality answers built together over time as a group. Help users easily discover this information on their own.

3). Create a way for people who have specific questions in mind to find the answers to those questions themselves. This would be a sister website that is continuously updated using information brought in by the group and any group linking content. Feedback on linked content would continuously improve the accuracy and completeness of that content.

4). Be an information hub, not more content “mud in the water”; Identify authoritative sources of information and lead users to them. Do not reproduce redundant content. If you say rain is coming, then link to the forecast - don't pretend to be a weather service. If you say there's water there, then link to the FarOut comment. If you say there's a fire there, link to forest service alert or the IRWIN report - don't pretend to be a fire authority. And so on. Respect the members. Do not spoon-feed information to the group. That is called gate-keeping and it’s a disservice. Instead, teach the group where to find authoritative information and how to get that information for themselves.

5). Seeking likes & followers, gate keeping, and attention-needy egos caused the problems we sought to solve. Creating yet more redundant content was the problem and we would not do that in these groups. The groups would not be about individual personalities; they would be a hiking community coordinated by a group of admins who were as anonymous as possible and acted behind the scenes. It's about the reader, not the poster, author, or admin.

Bad actors

Unlike the previous five years, 2026 has been an UN-collaborative year on Facebook. PCT groups, especially the Class Of 2026, have allowed cut-pasting of this content without links to the source and has blocked attempts to share the source to that content. They seem to love the "churn" that we sought to eliminate "recreating the wheel" and slogging thru scattered bad or partial answers to questions asked over and over every year. The 2026 posts make it seem as if no one had hiked the PCT prior to a year or two ago. Previously the online PCT community had embraced empowering hikers with information collaboratively built up over years, but clearly it only takes one new Facebook group to quickly put an end to that. The 2026 goal seems to be who can get the most likes and followers by copying content, blocking sources, gate-keeping information, and spoon feeding it to members. Based on their reactions, 2026 hikers seem to prefer the chaos of starting new in an information vacuum with new "influencers" over collaborating on a crowdsourced hub of information built over years.

My desire would be to just ignore people who want to start new without collaboration, and just keep on maintaining the hikers resource we'd built. But this behavior degrades the vision of content crowdsourced by a collaborative hiking community so much, and reduces the benefits to the hiking community so much, that it makes the effort quite pointless and will lead to us just giving up on this project.