Pacific Crest Trail

Snowpack — not the calendar — sets the Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike start window. Northbound hikers pull a PCTA long-distance permit (capped at 50 starters per day at the Campo southern terminus, free, drawn via a January and March release on the PCTA website) and time the desert section so the Sierra Nevada is melted out by mid-June. The trail itself was congressionally designated in 1968 alongside the Appalachian Trail under the same National Trails System Act, but unlike the AT it's administered by the US Forest Service (Pacific Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and Intermountain regions cooperatively), with the Pacific Crest Trail Association serving as the federally-recognized managing partner.

Lake Morena County Park (San Diego County, 35-ft rig cap with electric and water hookups), six miles north of the Mexican border, is the rig-friendly staging campground for the kickoff days — the trail's first 20 miles are dry desert and most hikers cache water at Lake Morena before walking out. Three days in, the trail crosses I-8 at Mt. Laguna where the Burnt Rancheria Campground in Cleveland National Forest (40-ft cap, dry) is the next rig-accessible stop. The Sierra section is rig-unfriendly almost everywhere — Mt. Whitney Portal (the eastern Sierra trailhead used for both PCT alternates and the Whitney summit hike) caps day-use parking at the upper lot's 40 spaces with no overnight rig allowance, though the Whitney Portal Campground a quarter-mile below holds 35-ft rigs in 43 dry sites.

Section-hikers continue leapfrogging through Sonora Pass on Highway 108 (Pacific Valley Campground, USFS, 30-ft cap, dry), Echo Lake Resort on Highway 50 near South Lake Tahoe (full-hookup commercial RV park, the PCT crosses Echo Summit a half-mile north), Crater Lake's Mazama Village Campground (NPS-concession, 50-ft cap with full hookups, the PCT skirts the western rim 2 miles east), Olallie Lake in Oregon's Mt. Hood NF (USFS rustic, 22-ft cap), Snoqualmie Pass at I-90 (the trail crosses the Pacific Crest Trail Trailhead lot at Hyak with 50-ft pull-throughs, and the Lake Easton State Park 14 miles east holds the overflow rig fleet), and Stevens Pass on Highway 2 (the trail crosses the ski-area parking lot which accepts oversize day-use vehicles; Wallace Falls State Park 30 miles west is the rig basecamp). The Washington north terminus at Manning Park is technically in British Columbia, so the canonical US-side endpoint for rig retrieval is Hart's Pass at the end of Forest Road 5400 — a one-lane gravel switchback that the USFS Mt Baker-Snoqualmie ranger district explicitly caps at 25-foot rigs with no trailers allowed past Mazama. Most thru-hikers arrange a finishing shuttle from Mazama or Winthrop rather than bringing their own rig up the road.