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Camp on descent from Forester Pass (Section 30)

The PCT is very varied. You will hike through deserts, forests, over snow-covered passes and along alpine ridges. The trail starts in the arid hills and mountains of Southern California, and cuts across a corner of the Mojave Desert before heading into the Sierra Nevada, with its majestic mountains in a lake-studded landscape. The granite of the Sierra Nevada gives way to the volcanic rocks of the Cascade Mountains, with a succession of volcanoes that tower above the forests of Northern California, Oregon and Washington.

A Geologist’s delight

The PCT is a delight for the geologist. Continental drift and plate tectonics are the driving forces behind the geology of the Pacific West Coast. The cause is deep down in the Earth, where radioactive decay produces the heat that keeps the planet’s core molten. Convection currents in that molten core cause relative motion between the Pacific and North American plates. That motion between tectonic plates creates stress along the fault lines. Stored elastic energy can be released catastrophically, producing large earthquakes such as that which destroyed San Francisco on April 18, 1906.