I have a bit of a rare perspective on this, as I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail myself… a few years after Cheryl Strayed did. Because of this, I was focused on a different character – the PCT itself. There’s a lot the movie gets right about the PCT – some of the scenery, the other hikers, and the challenges along the way. But there was just too much ‘wrong’, and that kept me distracted the whole way through. Right at the start, we see Cheryl trying to set up her tent near the start of the trail. But, she’s not at the start of the trail, she’s at Smith Rock State Park in Oregon – 2000 miles from the start of the trail. So, instead of watching Cheryl Strayed, I’m watching Reese Witherspoon… and wondering why they filmed this scene where they did. This kind of thing happened frequently through the movie, and kept pulling me away from the story (another example is a view of the landscape in Northern California, which is clearly Southern California – would it have been that hard to get a stock shot of Mt. Shasta?). I realize that when you shoot a movie, you have to make some practical compromises. But it would not have taken much effort to get some of these details right, and that might have made the movie amazing, instead of just decent.