In reply to sheffieldchris:
> good blog will spend time looking through it.
Thanks man.
> my questions just to you are did you get a permit to start from the Mexican border, closest I can get one for any dates in April are paradise cafe at mile 151.
I got a permit to start from the border. I went through the permit lottery in November and by the time I'd got to the front of the queue April was full up and that was the start date I preferred to starting in late May. Starting early I got a few comments about weather and such but in the end I was prepared and it all went well. I think I preferred starting early as it was less busy on trail and the desert was still pretty cool, in both senses, plus there was plenty of water about.
If you want to start in April then one option is to start at Paradise cafe and hike south to the border then hitch/ bus it back up to paradise and head north from there. That's a totally legitimate way of doing things when the border start permits fill up.
> I see only around 12 people out of the 50 permitted started on your start date, so lots of extra space in your slot.
Yeah, not many people started on their permit date due to the high snow. I don't know if they started later, I did meet one guy in San Diego who had a March start date but was delaying his start till April, it's not really how the permits work as the PCTA tries to spread out the amount of people starting to prevent overuse of town services and to preserve trail conditions.
> When was the first time your permit was asked for/checked. I know it will get checked at any park or wilderness area where a day hiker would need a permit.
The first, and only, time I was asked for my permit was in Washington state, 5 months into my hike. I heard of and talked to other people who were asked on the first day, some in the first week and some in the first mile of the trail. I hiked the second half of the Sierra with a guy who had a permit but didn't have a physical copy of it, prior to us hiking together he'd been 4 days into the middle of nowhere and was asked for his permit. Because it wasn't a physical copy he was turned back and had to hike a day back down the trail to the nearest exit point to get a printout. Some people are lucky, some people aren't.
> I am really not sure I want to do the hike if I can not go border to border.
I was adamant I wanted to hike border to border and I thankfully was able to in the end but I met loads of people who were skipping up and down the trail to miss the areas of heavy snow and they were still having a great experience. A lad I hiked the Sierra with got sick of the trail in North Cali and headed off for a few weeks then skipped Oregon and went north through Washington to the border, he also had his heart set on a "true thru" but in the end he still had a great adventure.
Before I went I was all into planning everything out, looking at daily mileage and rest days and had some spreadsheets set out with it all in. By the second week all that was out the window and I was seeing what came and dealing with it day by day. I found reading blogs very helpful and to some extent watching youtube videos.