Hands down my favourite raid ever.

It will be out of your control some times, yeah. But remember that your opponents are just as good/bad as your team. And since people don't know how to close out games, something like 5 deaths in botlane in 15 minutes doesn't really matter.

A good beginner strategy I used was to clear one quadrant of your jungle, look around for easy ganks for a few secs and then just keep clearing if there's nothing available. In bronze there will be something available really often.

If all your lanes suck you can always just play for yourself and attack the enemy jungler (who, in bronze, probably doesn't track you and will just concede half their camps to you without any counter jungling to even it out). Try to always throw an early ward at their raptors and you will be able to know where they are for the first 5ish minutes of the game even without any more advanced tracking knowledge.

I started the game with this mindset / strategy in January and it got me from Bronze to Emerald playing Briar, Khazix and Xin.

Check out "Sawyer Jungle" on YT, I think he has by far the best content to learn the role and plays a variety of champions. :)

Oh and I forgot: never, NEVER try to compensate for a losing lane. Play around your win condition. Very rarely does your whole team suck, there's usually at least one person who goes at least even in lane. Between yourself and that person you should be able to win in bronze/silver/gold. And for the love of everything that's holy: fully mute chat and pings. There's nothing useful that you can't communicate with pings and the pings of your bronze teammates are 99,9% either useless or plain wrong.

Winning in bronze = full clear your camps efficiently and take all the freebies that your opponents give you while your camps are respawning. Champion doesn't even matter much I'd say.

I'm also a complete snow-wuss and certified scaredycat, Whitney has some spooky steep drop-offs, but is 99.9% snow-free. :) Forester apparently still has a good amount, but if you exit via Cottonwood or Whitney Portal you basically won't encounter any snow travel at all by the time you're here.

Are the OR mosquitos also as bad on the coast or is it more of a mountain thing?

No need to be sorry!

Not sure about the permit situation, the PCT permit covered camping at Crabtree Meadows, from there it's a 17-ish mile hike to go up and come down Whitney. Not sure where exactly you would exit from there as a section hiker though. The options we had were either going back to Cottonwood Pass (2 days of fairly easy hiking) or over Forester and Kearsarge Pass (2 days of more adventurous hiking). There is also the Whitney Portal exit but we weren't sure whether that requires a separate permit or not, maybe look into that?

KMS to Whitney sure works and gives you some time to adjust to the altitude. We were doing 15-20 mile days in that area and reached Whitney "base camp" after 5 days of hiking. You can also get on the trail via Cottonwood Pass and then hike 1-2 days to Whitney.

In terms of people: there's tons of them around Crabtree Meadows, not sure how busy KMS is at the moment - for us it was fairly chill but a few days before we went there were apparently a hundred hikers camped there.

We only got to the base of Forester and then had to turn around due to altitude sickness issues. Looking to get back into the Sierras after Bishop where elevation is lower. Snow was basically nonexistent up to Forester, only a few minor patches in Whitney. Can't comment on the situation between Forester and Bishop pass unfortunately. :/

Duly noted! It's more of a timing thing - I don't want to just grind miles without taking in the scenery and enjoy the towns but in order to finish early October I'd definitely have to. Might just come back another year and finish up NorCal. :) What time of year would you recommend for the section to be most enjoyable?

Sounds great! A bit more seclusion and privacy in WA and OR doesn't sound bad at all to me. Wasn't really a fan of the big crowds in the desert and around some "choke points" in the Sierras.

Fire closures would also be a factor in the normal order of things as well, right? In my case that would be starting NorCal late July sometime.

Thank you for the reply! My main reason for wanting to skip NorCal is the heat. It really got to me in the Mojave and made the hike thoroughly unenjoyable for that section. Add to that more humidity than in the desert and I think I'll start hating the PCT too much to continue. The coast would allow (in my mind) a reprieve from 100°F weather and be a nice change of scenery compared to 1100 miles of mountains - like a mini-vacation from the PCT in order to return refreshed and ready for more mountains in WA.

Das würde ich jetzt nicht unbedingt "leben" nennen. Genieß lieber deine jüngeren Jahre, falls mit Ende fuffzich der Arschkrebs anklopft bringt dir das gesparte auch nix.

Honestly - I like my stool / calf massage / feet elevation device. Might carry the damn thing to Canada.

I second the inserts comment. Had foot pain for 700 miles, bought some 25$ inserts in KMS and now my trail legs (or feet rather) appear to be unlocked.

Pretty exposed overall, but you can find shade fairly regularly around the side of the canyon. The area takes quite the toll on your hiking speed though - it took us 13 hours to go 13 miles due to all the washouts and rough terrain.

You also get to pick the perfect season for each of your half-PCTs, which alleviates some amount of stressing around for water in the desert or bad weather/snow in the north. :)

You mean Ramen?

Morning or lunch time = you probably are well rested

12-3am = you probably are exhausted from a long day

DESERT POWER!

I think starting in big bear might be a good call, the trail is quite gentle from there to cajon pass and will give your body a good introduction to the daily "exercise" needed. :)

I'm currently in Wrightwood and there's a good amount of hikers out and about - many of these will probably be somewhere around Acton on the weekend. :)

Merci beaucoup!

My room at that age looked like Asmongold's attic and never did anyone even loosely identifying as female get within the same zip code as it.

Pants are the way. No scratches, no sunscreen needed, don't have to care about poisonous plants.

How exactly do you do the permethrine thing? Never heard of it, sorry for my ignorance!

That's fair. I also get hot pretty easily but I feel that it's worse when the sun hits my skin directly. But I also just really (!) hate the feel of lotions like sunscreen on my skin so I guess the comfort of not having to use it outweighs the lack of wind around my thighs. :D