(“Planning
the Hike and Hiking the Plan” – A Survival Guide for the Type “A”
Hiker”)
So,
how did we begin the long process of preparing for this adventure?
Since
Georgia and I are both detail-oriented people and rarely run headlong into any
endeavor without doing our homework, we of course subscribed to a number of
magazines and periodicals. Of all the magazines we receive and read, Backpacker
Magazine is the one that we most highly recommend to any backpacker; be they
novice or veteran. There is a wealth of reliable and valuable information
contained within its pages each month, though they do tend to glamorize life on
the trail at times. If you were to carry all the things you would need to
prepare the gourmet meals that they often describe, you would not be able to
carry anything else. Somehow, carrying bottles of vintage white Zinfandel to
have with a dinner of Brie and shrimp cocktail just doesn’t make sense or
represent the true experience of trail life. We also joined the Appalachian
Trail Conservancy, the ATC and the Potomac Appalachian Trail Conference. Through
their newsletters and magazines we were able to keep up to date on trail
conditions, hiking tips, trail work opportunities and other day hikes in our
area and they tend to contain a wealth of information regarding both local and
national trail topics. Having digested and analyzed all this information, it was
time to go get gear.
Purchasing
the correct gear was a daunting task, at best. There are so many choices and,
for us, going to a trail outfitters invoked the same kind of excitement and
potential for impulse buying as going to Home Depot or the local music or
bookstore. Keep in mind, that the first equipment you buy will not be the gear
you ultimately end up using on the AT; unless, of course you are one of those
people who make the last minute decision to do a thru-hike and purchase gear a
week before they hit the trail. These tend to be the same folks who shed most of
this equipment at the Walasi-Yi Outdoor Center, shortly after starting their
hike and buy the gear they would have purchased in the first place had they done
some research. With technology changing so fast and with newer, lighter and
tougher materials coming out virtually every month, we knew going in that we
probably would not have our final gear until just months before our thru-hike.
If you visit the link for “GEAR
LIST”, on the “ABOUT”,
page you can see what we are currently using. Hopefully this list will help you
in deciding what you want to use. That way you will not have to take out a home
equity loan in order to run through all the available options before finally
settling on the equipment best suited for you.
Our
initial experience was similar to most, I am sure, in that our first packs did
nothing more than point out what we should look for in our next packs. Having a
long torso, short legs and a marginally bad back, it was impossible for me to
find a frameless pack that actually fit me and felt comfortable when filled with
trail representative weight. A quick note, never buy a backpack from a
store that is not
I
actually started with a throwback to my Boy Scout days; an external aluminum
frame pack. It felt good, had all kinds of cool places to hang stuff on the
frame and had lots of pockets that made things more accessible than most of the
internal frame packs I looked at. I hate having to unpack half my pack to get to
that one elusive item that I need, so pockets and places to hang stuff on the
outside was the way to go. Only problem: after 2-3 hikes the frame developed
loud, annoying squeaks at all the flexible joints, which, I am sure is why there
was never any wildlife within 2 miles of where we were hiking. It also really
wasn’t large enough for more than 3-4 days worth of supplies without having to
hang half my gear on the outside of the pack and frame. Georgia, on the other
hand, chose an internal frame pack that, though it handled everything she would
need for a week, weighed more empty than mine did fully packed. Obviously, both
of our next packs would eliminate these problems; or so we thought. I actually
am only on my second pack in three years; a ULA P-1 pack that will hold 35 lbs.
of gear and weighs only 2 lbs. empty. Georgia decided to try one more large
internal frame pack before getting herself a pack like mine; though hers is the
updated P-2. As of November of 2005, we have ordered two new ULA Catalyst packs
which replaces both the P-1 and P-2 designs. After having done a number of
shorter 3-4 day hikes with these P-Series packs, our backs felt great and we
never even came close to running out of food or other supplies. We highly
recommend these packs to everyone. We also finally came to the realization that
we didn’t need such large packs because we could simply leave the trail more
often to restock our packs and save our backs. I think every novice
backpacker’s fear is that they will starve to death if they don’t pack a
week’s worth of food and other supplies. Except for some extreme wilderness
sections of the AT in Vermont and Maine, 4 days-worth of supplies has always
gotten us to a place where we could restock.
We
can not stress strongly enough the need to prepare for thru-hiking the A.T.
Considering that the vast majority of people who start out on this adventure and
do not finish for a myriad of reasons, it has always amazed me how many people
set out to conquer the A.T. with little or no training or understanding of what
they are getting into. We actually went to a seminar at a local trail store to
listen to one of its employees talk about his experience at completing the A.T.
We thought, “Wow, we should get some great insight from this guy on what to
expect.” What we heard was that he did little, if any, training, did no real
planning and made more mistakes than you could shake a stick at. His only saving
grace was that he was relatively young and had no deadline to meet in completing
the trail. He actually sounded proud of the fact that he had such a difficult
time but still pulled it off.
Well,
Georgia and I don’t have a “whatever” gene in our bodies, so going off on
a whim like he did is just not our style. We spent innumerable hours researching
as many aspects of the hike as we could and making our plans accordingly while
still leaving some flexibility for those things we knew we just would not be
able to plan for. We may be considered anally retentive, or OCD, but we like to
know things like there may be snow in Georgia in March, where the shelters are,
where the mail drops are, where we can get off the trail to re-stock and take a
shower and the fact that when we hit New England, our mileage each day would be
markedly less than on the rest of the hike. For the truly adventurous, knowing
We
also began our “training” 5 years before our actual A.T. hike start date. To
some, that will probably sound ridiculous. But with the demands on our time from
our jobs, involvement at church and our other personal interests, we knew our
free weekends to hike and camp would be very limited. So we figured that if we
started getting ready far enough in advance, we would have enough experience
under our belts to give us the level of confidence we needed to tackle the A.T.
If your weekends find you always looking for something to do, you probably
don’t have to start getting ready as early as we did. But if not, don’t wait
until a couple of months before you leave for Springer, GA to get ready. We are
glad we did so much preliminary backpacking because we learned a lot about our
gear, our own physical and psychological strengths and weaknesses and gained an
overall sense of peace about what we could and could not accomplish.
Now
we needed trail names; that unique way of communicating with other hikers
without telling them your real name. It’s a funny thing about this AT
tradition, in that you spend days on end possibly never seeing another human
being and when you finally drag yourself into camp, where a host of other hikers
are bedding down for the night, you share your tales of the day’s journey and
never use the persons’ real name. I think I should put together a phone book
that uses hikers’ trail names with their addresses and phone numbers so if you
ever want to communicate with them at some point in the future, you simply go to
say, “Moose Man”, Cleveland, Ohio to find his number.
Your
name should represent who you are, where you come from or that nickname that you
always wanted but that no one ever labeled you with. As Christians, and being
involved in our local church, we decided that our names should somehow reflect
that fact. So, we decided on “The Prophet” for my wife and “The
Preacher” for myself. You can actually find those names in earlier trail logs
on the AT in Maryland, southern parts of Pennsylvania and in Northern Virginia
to Harpers Ferry. But after a couple of years, I decided that since my preaching
skills were not at a level that would justify the name (I still can’t stretch
the God into a three-syllable word) that I should change my name. So now next to
“The Prophet” you will find the name “Spirit Walker” in the trail logs.
Since I later found out that there was already a “Spiritwalker”, as of
November of 2005, I have changed my trail name, yet again to “Windtalker”
and this is the one I am sticking with. I always thought, and still do, that a
truly unique trail name would be something like Bob Smith or Fred Jones but,
hey, that’s just me. Georgia also decided to change hers. Seems that “The
Prophet” invoked a level of soulful fear in those on the trail that thought
they would be subjected to some type of evangelical browbeating if they spent a
night in a shelter with us. So now she has acquired
So
now we were ready to start our real training; actual hikes along many of the
trails within a couple of hours of our home. To read about these early hikes, go
to the “Hike Gallery” and simply click on one of the trails listed for the
details of that hike and photos of the sites along that particular trail.
Have
fun!
“To
accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan,
but also believe.”
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