Been meaning to post something on this trip for awhile now. My nephew was hiking the PCT last year - the whole shebang. I thought I would meet him for a week while he was coming through Washington where I live. I had just taken the hammock on a Mt. Stuart climb and it served me well. I've done a few overnight backpacking trips with my setup, but never a longer hike. I thought I would give it a try.

My buddy and I met my nephew at Chinook Pass near Mt. Rainier and hiked maybe about 10 miles that first day. Found a spot high up on this ridge. Set up the ole hammock/tarp stuff between a couple of fir trees which was the only option up there. Learned something that night - fir trees bend. a lot. They have larger branches down lower where one might want to hang a hammock. I took it down, found a couple sturdier trees which didn't really matter. I was still about 6 inches off the ground, but ultimately, it was alright. I didn't get a great night's sleep, though, as we had seen quite a bit of bear scat and we couldn't find any place to hang our food, so, yeah...

Day 2, we hiked about 16 miles to this cabin that was open to hikers. It was raining quite a bit, so we decided to stay in there, only I didn't have a good way to go to ground. In hindsight, I should have set up my hammock outside of the cabin and slept there. great trees and options. As it were, I took out my thin foam pad from my backpack and tried to get a couple hours of sleep.

Night 3 - kind of a repeat of night 1 where I could only find fir trees with lots of underbrush. Took me a good while, but I finally found a spot and got some decent sleep that night.

Night 4 was great.

Everyone on the PCT used an app called guthooks to find water sources and camping sites. What I learned was that those were geared towards tent campers. Nobody had heard of anyone trying to hammock camp on the PCT. Where there's a good tent site, does not mean it will be a good hammock site.

All in all, I had a great time, but not really with the hammock. My buddy that did the week with me is now doing the whole PCT this year and I plan on meeting him for a couple of sections. I will not be bringing the hammock, though. I think you could certainly do it - at least based on my area of familiarity (WA state). It would be better if you hiked with other folks using a similar system. I saw many great hammock areas I passed as we continued on to a tent site that was horrible for a hammock.

Anyway, rambling... that's my report.