Agreed --- every year has its challenges. Fires more this year, and I presume water was an issue in SoCal with so very many people, and certainly some of those wouldn't understand or care about cache etiquette. Just the average temperatures are an issue. SoCal and sometimes other parts of California can be quite hot, a particular challenge for folks who lack experience at high temperatures in a relatively dry landscape. This year is tougher than average in that way.

To put the fire issue in perspective, fires on the PCT are an issue I think almost EVERY year for thru-hikers. Section hikers can just pick a different section. Thru-hikers do walk-arounds, sometimes break the rules to walk through (hopefully that's rare ...), sometimes they "flip" --- meaning hitchhike around the fire then come back to hike what they missed later. I took the latter approach on my trip for a couple of fires in NorCal.

The extra pressure of so many people is something the PCT is having to adjust to. When I hiked 7 years ago there was already debate and discussion of the "herd" effect. It's typically a somewhat narrow window of time when folks start, limited by snow in the Sierras and concern about snow falling at the end in northern WA. Certainly the window would have been a lot wider this year, and the new permit system helped to force the herd to spread out earlier. Still, not everything scales up well to bigger hiker numbers.

All things being equal, I'm not sure I'd say that this year is particularly "easy", just "differently hard". Certainly an experienced hiker who is willing to night hike in SoCal could reap the benefit of low snow in the Sierras, however by starting ahead of the this-year herd.