HOW OFTEN WILL WE RESUPPLY AND HOW MUCH FOOD WILL BE CARRYING?

Since the AT is one of the most populated of the long trails, resupplying our food and other consumable essentials won’t be that hard.  I’ve read that most people will resupply every 4-7 days depending on the state and section of trail they happen to be on.  The longest section without resupplying, that I know of right now, will probably be the 100-mile wilderness in Maine, right before the last section in Baxter State Park.

When we resupply, we will probably be planning on 1½-2 pounds of food per day.  Depending on the section of trail we’re on, we will probably be carrying anywhere from 6-14 pounds of food after we resupply.  This will make our packs significantly heavier on our way out of town.  Although, our packs won’t be the only thing heavier when we leave town.  We’ll have gained a few pounds of burgers and shakes and all the other food we can’t have on the trail.   A full pack and belly makes for a tough climb out of town, especially in those hot, wet Appalachian summers…

Another question that I received, from my good friend Pavs, pertains to resupplying as well, but is more dog specific.  Pavs asks, “So, do you have to pack in dog food?”  The plain and simple answer is yes, we will.  Hopefully the dogs will be carrying their own food on the trail, in their dog packs, or at least enough food for a few days to help take some of the load off of our shoulders.  They will also be carrying some of their own supplies such as dog towels and food and water bowls.

P.S.  Case, I dare you to send me as many Snickers as possible; I’ll take all the Snickers you can send! And, hey, thanks, you too.

P.P.S.  Mr. Gratch, have you hiked the AT?  If so, what was your experience like and is there any advice you think I should hear?

 
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Here we are with a few new items we received in the mail this week. A hammock, backpacks and shoes.
Thank you to those folks who posted comments.  I’m glad you were able to help me focus my latest post.  I have so much information running through my head it’s hard to know what to write about first. So here goes…

WHAT WILL WE EAT?

When I’ve done backpacking trips in the past I can guarantee that my diet was not that great.  There has been lots of ramen and instant mashed potatoes for dinner.  For lunches and snacks, I typically would eat summer sausage, granola bars and cheese (let’s not forget the candy for that quick sugar pick-me-up).  Then, of course, there is the instant oatmeal and coffee with dried fruit for breakfast.

You’ll notice that there hasn’t been much variation in my hiking diet.  This diet works for a short trip (and it can work for the AT), but I’m lucky that I have a girlfriend who likes food as much as I do, and she said she wouldn’t stand for that.  So…we’ve been looking at ways to make mealtime more interesting.  Missy also wanted to make our meals as healthy as possible, which is a good thing, since we’ll constantly be running at a deficit as far as our calorie intake goes.  From what I’ve read, the average thru-hiker uses between 5,500-6,500 calories.  There is no way to carry that many calories worth of food if you want to stand in, let alone hike through, the mountains.  This is where Missy has been really helpful in the planning stage.  She thinks about a lot of the things that I can overlook.  She just bought us a backpacking cookbook that we’re going to be trying recipes from so we can better plan for food on the trail.

One thing that I’ve never taken on a trail before is quinoa.  It’s a full protein and tastes good with just about anything (its also a good light weight food).  When Missy and I get the cookbook, I’ll post some of our favorite recipes so you, the reader, can get a better idea of what we may be eating on the trail.  Listed below are several websites that have discussed camping food and that I have used in planning our own meals on the trail.  Instead of regurgitating what they’ve already written, I present them to you for your perusal (http://blackwoodspress.com/blog/5521/10-ultralight-backpacking-foods/, http://www.trailquest.net/thruhike.html#Food%20Suggestions, http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/content.php?57).


You’ll notice that the above sites list good lightweight foods that are high in calories, but again there is not much variation in trail foods.  That’s why trail towns are so nice.  You can eat all the burgers, pizza, and milkshakes that you crave before heading back out on the trail.  The only problem is that your craving for certain foods may make it hard to get back on the trail J.

HOW LONG WILL THE TRAIL TAKE?

The trail can take an average of four to six months, although the record (broken just this past summer) is 46 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes.  When I was planning the independent study, I worked it out so that we could start the trail within a day or two of April 15th.  Of course, we all know how plans can easily change, and I just found out this past Wednesday, that I am needed at work until April 15th.  This means that we will be on the trail within a day or two of April 20th (Missy’s birthday!!).  With this delayed start date, we will have a little less than four and a half months to hike the trail.  Don’t tell my professors but if I have to miss the first few days of school to finish the trail, I’m going to.  I don’t want to get all the way to the border of Maine and stop, only to have to go back another time to hike the last 286 miles. This hike is something I’ve wanted to do since I was a little kid, and if I’ve made it that far, I don’t think I could stop. 

WILL OUR BACKPACKS ONLY WEIGH 12 POUNDS?  HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

I hope our pack weight, before adding food and water (which weigh a lot) will be 12 pounds.  I’ve been obsessively weighing every item we plan on taking as soon as we get it and adding it to a spreadsheet I have set up.  Once finalized, I will post the gear list and we’ll see how close it is to twelve pounds. 

When I first started planning our hike, I would compare every item I looked at for weight and cost, with the weight sometimes taking precedence over cost.  And when I say compare, I mean I read every article and watched every video there was on the item I was researching.  It became a full time job; I couldn’t even look around me without seeing something that reminded me of an item on my gear list.  It was an addiction, I felt that I couldn’t stop and I had to get it perfect. 

An example of what I’m doing to make sure our pack weight is low is as simple as getting a new backpack.  The backpack that I’ve used since sophomore year of high school weighs about four and a half pounds.  That’s already a third of the weight that I set as our goal.  The backpacks that we just got weigh a little less than two pounds.  By getting a lighter weight pack, I have already cut our weight significantly. 

Some other items that you can change in order to cut weight are your sleep and cooking system.  After countless hours of researching tents and hammocks, I decided to go with a hammock as a sleep system, as they weigh less, even though we will be using two of them.  As for cooking, I decided to go with a wood stove.  It weighs three and a half ounces, and requires us to carry no fuel.  All we need is a pile of sticks about as big as your index finger, and we’re good to go!  Considering the nickname for the AT is the “long, green tunnel,” I don’t think we will have any problems finding trees to tie up our hammocks and tinder for our stove.  The only problem with the woodstove that we may run into is possible fire restrictions along the way.  The forest service may consider the use of our woodstove an open fire, and we then wouldn’t be able to use it.  If this becomes a hassle, we will probably start using our woodstove as an alcohol stove.  The following is a link to the stove we will be using.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhIy7xzjaPw&feature=related).


Once you take care of some of the obvious items (pack, sleeping, cooking) then you can begin to nitpick about the rest of your gear.  One of the interesting things I learned while researching gear is that a pound on your feet is like three pounds on your back, meaning that if you have boots that weigh about two pounds a piece, you are essentially carrying twelve pounds on your back.  That’s why Missy and I are going with tennis shoes, specifically the New Balance 101’s.  Using my pair as an example, if I switch from my old boots to the new tennis shoes, I save nine pounds.  Since the new shoes weigh 15.5 ounces combined, I am now carrying about three pounds instead of twelve, following the hiking rule, “a pound on the foot is three on the back.”

Thank you for the questions, keep them coming! I enjoyed posting this week much more because I knew what someone wanted to read about.  Please feel free to post comments about anything that comes to mind when you read this.

 
Slowly but surely we’re getting all the gear we need for the trail.  I’m trying something different this time around, lightweight backpacking.  I’m used to having way more weight on my back than I need to carry, but through discussing it with many people, was introduced to the brilliant idea of lightweight backpacking.

When I first started planning this hike, I was pretty overwhelmed.  There was so much information and so much I felt I needed to know.  I didn’t really know where to start.  Right at this overwhelming point, I happened to get into a conversation with a neighbor in Tennessee and he pointed me in the direction of a few websites (backpackinglight.com, hikelight.com, and whiteblaze.net).  I was obsessed.  I didn’t stop reading all of these websites for a week.  I couldn’t talk about anything except for backpacking gear or the trail.  I could feel people started getting bored with me in our conversations; I had a one-track mind.  Little by little, a plan to hike the trail and a gear list came together. 

After countless hours researching (and talking non-stop about the trail), I made it my goal to work towards a base-weight (before food and water) of twelve pounds or less.  This is a big cut in weight for the type of backpacking I am accustomed to (and a cut to my wallet) but I’m excited to move towards a lighter and easier way to backpack.

To make this a little more interesting for everyone, I was hoping I could get people to post some questions about anything trail-related you would be interested in reading about.  Whether it is about gear, the trail, or anything else that comes to mind.  I’d like to make this blog a little more interactive for everyone.  When I know that the reader has an interest in what I am writing, it is much more appealing to me than simply making you read what I post.  Please feel free to post your own story of a long backpacking trip or a new piece of gear you’re exciting about.  I want to share this experience with as many people as possible.  I hope to inspire people to get out and plan their own dream backpacking trip.

 
This website and trail blog is a part of an independent study that I incorporated into my education at Northland College, a private, liberal arts school in Northern Wisconsin.  Another aspect of this website will be conducting interviews with other thru-hikers and trying to delve into their motivations for taking four to six months to hike a long distance trail.  I thought it only fair that if I’m going to ask people to share their stories with me, I share my story with others.  This first post will try to explain why I am hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Although this blog is about the Appalachian Trail (AT) I have to begin by saying a few words about the area of California where I am currently living.  I live in Mammoth Lakes, California; a small mountain town in Central California, which is part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  I love this section of the Eastern Sierras; it felt like coming home from a very long vacation when Missy and I got back to Mammoth Lakes.  (I lived here for about 4 years before spending the last year in Tennessee and Wisconsin).  These mountains hold a special place in my heart; they truly make me feel welcome. There are no words to describe the way these mountains look and feel.  I spent many of my childhood summers living in Appalachia, so when I first came to California, I missed the Appalachian Mountains. As I have now returned to California, after leaving for a year, I realize how good I feel in the Sierras, and how much they feel like home.  Living in the Eastern Sierras has also helped me realize why I want to hike the AT.

Since I was young, I have spent summers in the Appalachian Mountains.  The idea of hiking the AT came to me at a young age, when the view from my porch was the majestic scene of the Smoky Mountains.  I dreamt of hiking in those mountains, and hiking the entirety of the Appalachian Trail.  This has remained a dream of mine since I was young.  I never made time for it and always had something more immediate that I could do to take my mind off of it.  As the AT remained an unfulfilled dream, I moved to California and rediscovered my love and passion for being outdoors.

In California, I was able to work outdoors, play outdoors and generally just spend my life in the outdoors.  During this time, I realized that wherever I lived, I had to have access to outdoor activities, preferably lots of trails so I could be outside with my dogs.  While in California, I decided to end my hiatus from college and transfer to a school in Tennessee.  While exploring this area, I found that I lived twenty minutes from the Laurel Fork Gorge section of the AT.  While exploring and hiking these trails, I re-awakened my dream of thru-hiking the trail.

I look forward to meeting many people this summer and discovering why they have chosen to hike the AT.  I have my own reasons for hiking the AT.  I feel that it is now time to fulfill a lifelong dream of mine, as I have explained.  Another reason, among many others, is the escape that it gives me.  After a couple years spent in California, I got my hands on a backcountry trail map.  This map remained one of my most prized possessions during my time in the Eastern Sierras.  I spent any vacation day, as well as any of my spare time, just, hiking. The more time I spent out in the mountains the more time I wanted to spend away from town.  The more time I spent away from the day-to-day drudgery of work and bills the better I felt.  I loved the freedom that I felt from the seemingly trivial requirements of daily life.  This is why I want to spend my summer hiking 2,184.2 miles from Georgia to Maine.

            As I have packed up and moved from two houses in the past year, I have also looked forward to the simplicity of backpacking.  Things become much simpler when backpacking.  There are only two things that have to be taken care of everyday: what you’re going to eat and where you’re going to sleep.  Everything you need is in your backpack.  The only thing left is to pick up your feet, one at a time, and head up the trail…