1 Day- Controlled Backpacking Chaos

We've been living in a state of controlled backpacking chaos for a solid week now.  All those last minute projects turned out to be more numerous and time consuming than I figured.   Some of them were so small they aren’t noticeable—tiny adjustments to clothing, to the itinerary, to food rations, and formatting SD cards.  Then there were some larger projects like spending nearly three days making a hip belt pocket for my pack, packing the bounce box, and mailing off t

A sample of the chaos

wo resupplies.

I loaded up my pack for an official weigh in at 17.5—that was with a generous five days of food (I packed a few extra snacks for the travel day) and two liters of water.  I ended up with a base weight just over 8 pounds—close enough to my weight goal to be satisfied.  After the weigh in I took out everything I didn’t want to go through checked luggage (money, ID, camera, phone, charger…), added a couple of things from Portrait’s pack that couldn’t be carried on (tent stakes and his water bottles to give his pack a more slender profile), and then to top it off I strapped on my trekking poles.  I had no interest in weighing the pack in its new heavy form.  I closed up the pack and was satisfied that I wouldn’t have to get into it again until I arrived in New Mexico.  I think I opened it back up minutes later.

I feel a little worn down, a little nervous, and I’d be happy to not see a sewing machine again for much longer than 6 months.  I keep thinking, once I get out there I’ll be able to catch up on sleep—no more late nights.  And I laugh a little.  Walking twenty something miles a day isn’t exactly restful, even if I go to bed just after sunset.  I’m looking forward to no more list, no more double checking, no more readjusting gear, and second guessing choices.  That’s the tiring part, not the late nights, and besides, once I get used to the desert I’ll be waking up at 4:30 a.m. like last year.

Leaving makes things a little sweeter and I’m more aware of them.  It’s hard not to notice something like our last “civilized meal,” the last shower for a week, the last time I’ll use my pillow, get my hair cut, or paint my toe nails for six months.  And every time I think it’ll be six months until I do a certain act again there is this little voice that whispers “I hope.”   It’s a voice of worries, anxiety dreams, and past injuries.  Even with the worry there is still no back-up plans and we tell people we’ll see them in six months.

Three planes and a bus should bring us to New Mexico tonight and then the CDT tomorrow.   

7 Days-21 Mail Drops

Loot from one trip to the discount food store

Over the winter I've been squirreling away food.  There's something oddly comforting about having five months of hiker food stashed away--that's nearly a year's worth of food for a nonhiker.  I have more king-sized Milk Way bars in a bin in the attic than I've eaten in my life thanks to a sale at Walmart.  My goals when picking food for a hike are:  a high calorie to weight ratio, variety, and never paying full price for anything.

The itinerary we've made up has me scheduled for 21 mail drops (including what I will have in my pack leaving from Crazy Cook) and 8 places where I will be buying food in town.  When I buy food in town it will be for the shorter carries:  mostly 3 day resupplies which makes sending a box uneconomical.  On the PCT I had 18 drops (counting what I left the monument with) and only bought food once and that was in South Lake Tahoe.  Buying food that one time was such a treat.  I walked out of the store with bags overflowing with food.  I still had a lot of it left when I reached Sierra City five days later and mailed some food and other things ahead and didn't reclaim them until Seiad Valley--a mere 464 miles later.

I dehydrated my dinners again for the CDT.  I'll be eating mostly all the same meals on the CDT that I ate (and loved) on the PCT.  I did add a new sweet potato recipe that I'm looking forward too.  For those meals, I bought all the food I needed on sale.  It was mildly tedious being at the mercy of sale prices.  It seemed like the stores had limited quantities of the foods I needed.  When I had what I needed food wise I used the biggest soup pot we had and filled it up.  I found out it could hold an entire five pound bag of potatoes, two bags of green beans, and four cans of beans.  One pot of food completely filled my five drying trays--but that was the goal, of course.

To organize five months' worth of food I used the same process I used for the PCT.  After grouping the maps into section to correspond to each drop I wrote the name of the town, the number of the box, and how many days of food needed on a scrap paper that I paper-clipped to that section of maps.  I laid the maps out, taking over the bed and a corner of the room, in numerical order.  With shopping bags of food hanging off my arm, starting with breakfast, I divvied out the loot.  17 different bars, five different types of candy bars, three cans of frosting, two bags of dried fruit, a dozen bags of s'mores trail mix, eight packs of sunflower seeds, seven beef summer sausages, five boxes of cheese and crackers...and then some.

Besides buying food for dehydrating at the regular old grocery store I haven't done much shopping at a traditional grocery store.  The prices just aren't as good as you can find elsewhere if you know where to look.  And I do.  Just down the street is a little store called Deals & Steals that's chalked full of supermarket cast-offs.  It's where each one of my protein bars came from--most of them cost 50 cents each and only three different types cost me a dollar.  They had one pound bags of pretzels from Whole Foods buy one get 2 free, so that ended up costing me $1.33 a bag.  They had Mars Bars with a whopping 280 calories per 63 grams marked down to 50 cents.  They had a s'mores trail mix that was so good I returned the next day and bought the remaining 12 packages. I think for awhile they knew me there as that women that buys all the protein bars.  I go there almost every other day just in case they have something new for cheap that I must have for the hike.

My hiker pantry

When I'm not at the discount food store I like to haunt Big Lots and buy their ridiculous cheap Goldfish.  I'm almost sure that 16 bags of Goldfish are not enough. I also did one trip to Costco in search of a few favorites:  Kellogg's Fruit Gummy Snacks, 5 pound bags of chocolate chips, peanuts, and bacon bits.  I was also on the hunt for hot chocolate, but after doing a few laps around the store I finally asked.  Apparently it wasn't hot chocolate season any more.  I'm still trying to get my hands on 100 pouches of hot chocolate.

Sadly hot chocolate is one of a handful of food items I'm still missing.  I only have about half the number of summer sausages and tuna packets that I need. I only have one bag of peach rings and zero orange slices (I probably ate a couple dozed packages of those two candies on the PCT) and I still need some sesame sticks, and pumpkin seeds, and...

So far, I've spent $430.00 on food.  I've kept a rather meticulous record this time.  I didn't keep records for the AT or the PCT so I don't have a comparison available.  My guess is, thanks to the discount food store, I've spent significantly less money on food this time around.

We packed up our first two boxes today:  six days of food to Doc Campbell's and five days of food to Pie Town.  It was a tight squeeze fitting six days' worth of food for two into one USPS Game board flat-rate box.    But it did all fit, and there is still a little room for extras (like hot chocolate and gummy candy).  Both boxes weighed in a 15 pounds.  We'll be taking those to the post office soon.

12 Days- No Back-Up Plan

Summit of Monadnock

Since being in Massachusetts Portrait and I have been on a handful of small hikes—like a couple miles round trip.  We did one overnight—a six mile hike along the crest of the Mount Holyoke Range. We spent a rather cold damp night on top of Mount Holyoke under the summit’s house porch.  Last weekend I went for an icy hike up Mount Monadnock with my brother.  Monadnock is one of the most climbed peaks in New England, but it was a first ascent for me and my brother and we had the summit and the snow flurries to ourselves.

Aside from the short overnight, I haven’t carried any weight on my back since finishing the PCT.  And I have not heard a peep from my Achilles tendons on any of these quick hikes.  There has been no Ibuprofen, tenderness, or swelling.  There hasn’t been that feeling of the tendons pulling tighter with each mile until my legs are taut from heels to knees.  There hasn’t been any discomfort at all.

Portrait on Mount Holyoke Range

Despite the pain-free hiking of late I do wonder how my tendons really are.  When I load up my new pack and go for a hike?  When I leave from Crazy Cook and hike a full day with a pack on?  When I’m hiking day after day?  Will six months of rest, a lighter base weight, lighter footwear, and a heightened attention to food and water weight be enough to prevent problems?  All questions I’ll be answering for myself over the next few days and weeks.

The tendons are not a sure thing, and knowing this, I have no back-up plan if my tendons do start to hurt. The goal has always been, through the planning and food prepping, to thru-hike the CDT.  There’s been no if’s or but’s.  I didn’t buy nearly 200 protein bars only to look at them and think about how long it will take to eat them all if I don’t finish the trail.  The plan is to hike the CDT.  That’s it.

20 Days- The To-Do List

Perhaps I’ve planned for enough thru-hikes that I’ve gotten really good at it or maybe my to-do list is deceptively short.  It has a measly nine items that are not checked off.  All but one of those items, making a sleeping bag stuff sack, has been started—most of them are nearly done.

I’m still waiting on making my sleeping bag stuff sack because I’m still waiting for my new pack.  I don’t want to make a stuff sack that won’t fit into the pack.  If you plan on buying from a cottage industry remember that mid-winter through spring is their busy time.  Don’t procrastinate.

New home made cuben fiber food bag with food

I have a few food purchases to make still.  I want to wait for sales, but I’m running out of time for that.  My list of missing food is thankfully short:  summer sausage, salami, tuna fish, salty snacks, pumpkin seeds, sesame sticks, gummy candies, and hot chocolate.  For the first hike ever Snicker bars were not on my shopping list—I had nearly a case left over from last year and will be flushing out my candy bar selection with other choices.  I have all the food I have organized and it will be a quick task to complete sorting my food once I have it.

Maps are organized.  It took Portrait and me a couple days to print off the maps.  We went through and highlighted the town and wrote on the map how to get there—the maps were surprisingly not user friendly compared to the PCT maps.  I still need to get a decent GPS program on my phone.  As I write my phone is offloading a year’s worth of photos to Dropbox to make room for CDT photos.

It’s a little disconcerting not having my days revolve around hike prep.  I think about what I need to do daily, but I don’t work on the prep daily.  Nevertheless things seem to be coming together. I don’t feel stressed or overwhelmed.  There came a point during my PCT planning that everything seemed to come together and I was able to focus on other things (although I was dehydrating food the day before I left), but that came much later in my planning stage than it has for this hike. 

High Priority Tasks Resupply schedule Resupply boxes Buy food Setup phone with GPS app and maps Make Food bag Make Sleeping bag stuff sack Make Mom List High Priority Purchases Order plane tickets Pack Warm hat Warm jacket Medium Priority Tasks Make stove Find fuel bottle Pack bounce box Plan route Figure out shoes Water bottles Wear out socks

31 Days- New and Old Gear

For the CDT this year I will only have three items in my pack that have been with me all the way from Maine in 2009:  my cook pot, my long handle spoon, a stuff sack, and the head lamp that joined me in Pennsylvania.  Everything else is new since that hike, and a lot of my CDT gear is new since the PCT.

Most of the new purchases were made to replace gear that really didn't work for me.  My North Face pack was just too heavy to justify after wearing Portrait’s homemade cuben fiber pack and my GoLight Jam pack was simply uncomfortable.  They both gave me pack rash as well.  The original plan was to make a pack like Portrait’s, but that turned out to be a little too ambitious for my sewing skills…and my patience.  Last week I bought a ZPacks Arc Blast weighing in at 13.5 oz and costing $259.00.  I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet, but ZPacks assured me it will arrive in plenty of time.

My new sleeping bag

I replaced my tired North Face 15 degree sleeping bag with a Western Mountaineering UltraLite 20 degree bag for a weight savings of 15.21 ounces.  The new bag ended up costing me $246.05 which feels like a steal.  The bag retails in the mid $400’s.  I bought mine from MooseJaw on Black Friday for $435.00 and they gave me five times the normal MooseJaw points.  I used the points to buy a MontBell Men's U.L. Down Parka worth $188.95, and I didn’t even have to take out my credit card to make the purchase.  I have a measly 1,000 points left which will earn me just about nothing.

My little homemade tarp tent will be staying behind this year.  It is replaced by a new ZPacks Hexamid Twin Tent w/ Screen for a 7.7 ounce weight savings and hopefully less bugs in the tent.

Portrait sewing his food bag

There have been a number of small, less spendy changes.  There are new gloves, food bag, tent stakes, camp dress, sleeping bag stuff sack and sleeping pad.  I was hoping when I started making all these changes to have a less than 10 pound base weight.  As I was making the changes I changed my goal to an 8 pound base.  Right now my pack should weigh in at 8.5 pounds without food or water.  I’ll reduce it if I can, for the sake of my Achilles tendons, but the real task will be not letting the weight creep up on me.  

43 Days-First Stop: El Paso

About a week ago Portrait and I sat down and started the search for plane tickets.  We had no real date in mind—just a vague notion that we should start sometime in April.  Not too early and not too late.

We consulted calendars, checked the phase of the moon, checked when other hikers were starting out, we checked with Trail Angel Sam Hughes.  I started the PCT on April 22 which gave me five and a half days to make it to the first town and hitch back for Kick Off, but the CDT has no kick off party.  Hikers will be starting in ones, twos, and threes all spring and Portrait and I will be among them.

Our fly out days came down to picking the best flight:  cheapest, limited amount of stops, reasonable departed and arrival times.  A flight into El Paso, Texas on April 9^th had what we were looking for.  That afternoon from El Paso we will take Greyhound to Deming, NM where we will be picked up by Sam Hughes.  Sam will let us tent in his backyard for a night and then the next day he will drive us down to Crazy Cook on the Mexico Border.

From there it will be onward to Canada.  

After the End

Breakfast at Manning Park

It's been three weeks since I made it to Canada with Portrait right behind me.  That night we camped at the PCT Camp roughly four miles north of the border. The next day we hiked to Manning Park and then caught the bus to Vancouver. We didn't see much of the city beyond our hostel window. Portrait might have been up for sight seeing, but I know I wasn't. I had a hard enough time moving from the kitchen upstairs to our room on the main floor.

My tendons have been healing. By the time we caught our flight back to the east coast more than a week had passed since we had finished and I wasn't hobbling around anymore.  While still hiking we had talked about how we would be a couple of slugs on the sofa at Portrait's uncle's house. I took that daydream to heart and read a book cover to cover on that couch with a blanket, snacks, and hot drinks.

Hiking in New Hampshire

Since being back in Vermont I have gone on two very short day hikes--both only a couple of miles. It was nice not to worry about miles, to be packless, and not hiking through pain. I was much more interested in the PCT party my parents threw for me and Portrait. There was another Castle cake and sugar cookies decorated as boot prints, mountains, and the PCT symbol. There were friends and family members that I hadn't seen for months--many well before the start of the hike.

PCT sugar cookies

A few days after my party I finally got around to weighing my pack. I had started with a 17 pound base weight. I had sent home my first round of stuff after hiking 110 miles. In Washington, with my tendons hurting more every day, I sent stuff home or left stuff behind at every town stop, Steven's Pass and Stehkin being the most dramatic weight drops. I have updated my gear list to show what I was left with by the time I made it to Canada. At the border I had an 8 pound base weight plus food and water and that was still more weight than my tendons wanted to carry.

While hiking Portrait and I spent many hours planning how I could have a lighter pack next time. We are already planning on hiking the Continental Divide Trail next year. Hopefully we will be hiking northbound from Mexico to Canada, but that depends on the snow this winter. We'll have plenty to keep us busy over the winter: making super ultralight packs, a new sleeping bag for me, a new tent, different rain gear, dehydrating my food, route planning, applying for permits. There will be no end to the tasks. 

Neither Portrait or I plan on keeping a daily blog on the CDT. At the beginning of the hike I enjoyed writing my blog and I still enjoyed it later on in the hike when I was waking up at 5 a.m. to write for an hour because I no longer had the energy or the time to write in the evening. Blogging started to eat into my hiking time and I could hardly afford to loose hiking time and on the CDT, with a more rugged and longer trail, I doubt I can keep up with a blog.

Blogging also ate into my town time. I wasn't good at staying up to date. At each town stop I needed to write a few entries and ended up spending hours on the computer typing away. In town blogging was a chore that I came to dread. My favorite town stops were the ones where I wasn't on the computer: Independence, Sierra City, Burney, Siead Valley. I am glad to have a record of my hike, and I do feel a sense of disappointment that I won't have such a record for the CDT.

We are planning on keeping some kind of record of our hike. We talked about it often while hiking and have some ideas. Our goal is to do something fun and easy. Stay tuned.