Month: April 2015
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Day 3: This Desert Sure Ain’t Flat
When you hear the word desert, you probably imagine the places Snoopy’s cousin Spike trundled through: almost completely barren, except for the odd Saguaro cactus and a vulture flying overhead. Today we climbed
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Day 2: The Social Trail
So many people we’ve met already! This is a social trail, far more so than anything we’ve hiked before. 25–30 people start each day at the southern terminus, and the relative dearth of camping spots means you end up meeting practically all of them. There were well over
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Day 1: A Very First Day on the Trail
A 5:15 AM alarm at Girlscout’s house began our first day on the trail. After months and months of preparation (and literally years of thinking about it), it’s kind of crazy to suddenly have it be here like that. We dressed (in hiking clothes, of course), put our all-too-heavy packs into the back of his…
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And We’re Off!
Mile 0.0. Next stop, in a couple of days: Lake Morena!
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A Day at the Mall, and Truly Wonderful People
Where do you spend your last full day in civilization before starting a 2,650-mile hike? The obvious place: at the mall, of course! Better yet, a big, fancy suburban Southern California mall. And then go see Fast [and the Furious] Seven, to see lots of incredibly expensive cars get blown up.
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A Last Hurrah
The Louisiana countryside is pretty much a perfect place to relax do some final preparations for a couple of days before leaving. We’ve brought all the resupply boxes inside, laid them all out in neat rows, gone through our packs one last time, prepped them for the plane trip, done a last load of laundry…pretty…
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So Much Food!
Tonight, I offloaded a few photos I took over the last couple of months, documenting all the food I packed into resupply boxes. The scale is insane. [alpine-phototile-for-flickr src=”set” uid=”44265343@N00″ sid=”72157651718867796″ imgl=”flickr” style=”gallery” row=”5″ grwidth=”800″ grheight=”600″ size=”500″ num=”30″ shadow=”1″ border=”1″ align=”center” max=”100″]
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As We Set Out
We’re currently in Austin, TX, visiting some close friends (who are about to have their first child!) on our way to Clare’s parents’ place in Louisiana. Our car is loaded with our packs and 23 resupply boxes, which we’ll leave with her parents to be shipped to us as the summer progresses. We fly from…
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Fun Facts Discovered When Buying Food For Six Months
You can buy Nutella in tiny individual foil-top containers, perfect for the trail. They come in boxes of 120. The boxes weigh a ton. Freeze-dried ground beef is extremely calorie-rich and great for making backcountry dinners. Staring at an entire two-pound can of it is kind of disgusting. Staring at five two-pound cans of it is even…
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I’d Like 240 Granola Bars, Please…
(The photo above of the table full of food is maybe one-fifth of the total food we’re bringing on this trip.) There are three big projects to tackle before a hike of this magnitude. In order of importance, you will need information, gear, and food. The first two are complex, and the Internet is full of…
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Aren’t You Afraid Of Bears?
Besides “you’re doing what?”, I’ve been asked quite a few interesting questions over the past couple of months as I talked about my plans to people. How far do you hike each day? About 21 miles, on average. This is the pace you have to keep in order to do the whole trail in a season,…
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About the Pacific Crest Trail
The Pacific Crest Trail stretches from the Mexican border in southern California all the way to the Canadian border in northern Washington. En route, it covers more than 2,650 miles, from low deserts to the highest mountains. The trail begins just outside Campo, California, on the Mexican border (yes, you can touch the border wall). Nearly…