Ready ...

Saturday morning I hop a train for the first leg of a trip that will get me to the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail on Monday morning. From there I'll start a 2184-mile hike along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains, to Mt Katahdin in northern Maine.  Along the way I'll pass thru 14 states, climb a total of 629899', make 865 summits, and bag five of the 50 states' highest peaks.

If history predicts anything, I'll be one of 1150-1700 attempting an AT thru hike this year. 28% of us will finish.

To improve my chances, I'll start slow - eight mile days with lots of breaks for the first week, and build up to an average of fourteen mile days. There'll be stretches where I bang out twenty mile days, and others where I'll be lucky to do ten.

I've spent the last year putting my pack together, often changing things to get the best performance at the lightest weight. Of course, nothing's lighter than leaving stuff behind, and I'm still working on that. As it stands, outfitted for the shoulder seasons, my pack weighs 21 lbs without food and water. That will drop to 18 when I swap gear in summer.  Food weight will vary between 6 and 14 lbs based on the number of days between resupply.  Water will vary between 2 and 4 lbs depending on water conditions.  I could be humping  as much as 40 lbs, but most of the time it'll be closer to 21-35.

I'll burn 4000-6000 calories a day and will be hard-pressed to consume anything close to that. I've chosen food with the highest calories/oz.  I'll be hiking on a diet high in carbohydrates and fat, with foods selected to assure I get complete proteins, and generally eating like a Hobbit. Most everything I eat will be rehydrated, cooked over a butane stove, and eaten out of a pot with a spork.  Yum.

I scored a sponsorship from Emergen-C and I'm packing their Joint Health Formula, which provides a mix of antioxidents, B vitamins, electrolytes and other nutrients, along with glucosamine and chondroitin.  I'll also be packing fish oil and Vitamin I (ibuprofen).

I'll generally resupply at grocery stores in towns along the way.  However, I have 10 boxes of food and supplies that Mary will mail to places along the trail.  Most of those boxes just have stuff that I'm unlikely to find along the way, plus Emergen-C, Clif Bars, meds, sections of the trail guide, batteries ... There are four that have a full food resupply that are being mailed to places where resupply is limited or non-existent.

I also have a box filled with summer-weight gear that Mary will mail to me when I get past Mount Rogers in Virginia, when the chance of snow and freezing temps is low. I'll mail the winter stuff home, and she'll mail that back when I'm heading into the White Mountains in the Fall.

There's a list of milestone dates over there in the right column. It's based on past thru-hikers average pace, and is not a schedule I feel compelled to keep. It's a yardstick by which I'll measure progress to make sure I meet my one hard schedule point - to get to Baxter State Park in Maine before they close for the season, around Oct 15. Else, I don't summit Mt Katahdin.

I'm packing a camera and a Droid, so I'll be able to post updates to this blog along the way.  Hope you follow along. If you want to be notified when I post something here, put your email addy in that "Follow by Email" block on the right-hand column.

Companion on the Droid

I renewed my membership with Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association, which among other things, gets me a copy of the Thru-Hiker's Companion in Adobe pdf format.  I have an unbound version of AWOL's AT Guide that, with it's clever integration of the trail's profile with milestones, will be my primary navigation tool. But the Companion has amplifying info that fills in where the AT Guide leaves off - History of the trail, and of the areas it passes through, park regulations, where to find AYCE buffets in town ...

Getting Pictures from the Camera to the Droid

I started investigating how I was going to upload imagery from my new camera to illustrate this blog, and to post to social media sites while hiking the Appalachian Trail. The weight of a laptop makes packing one out of the question. So I figured I'd just plug a an SD card reader into my Droid's USB port, transfer the files, tweak them with the Photoshop app, and then upload photos when I had a signal

I figured wrong.

A Backpacking Camera

No, this ain't it ...

You see, I've been a photographer most of my life.  I had a Brownie Hawkeye in grade school. In high school, I was the yearbook/ school newspaper geek, and spent all my spare time in the darkroom. I was an Art/Photo/Film major in college where I developed a street photographer's style and ethic. I dropped out to join the Navy and went to the Navy School of Photography. I served as a combat cameraman, and 23 years later retired from the Navy as a Photo Officer. So you might understand why I ain't inclined to hike the trail with just the camera in my Droid.

Now, to be fair, that's not a bad camera, I use it a lot, and it would be a rational choice not to add the weight of another camera on a long hike. But, to try and capture the essence of the trail and the people hiking it, I want a camera that allows more creative control, and that is capable of producing high quality imagery. Heck, I may try and get a coffee table book outta it ...

Posting Waypoints Along the Way

I thought it would be cool if I could put a map on here that showed my progress as I hiked the Appalachian Trail. I started looking to find a way to create a map that could be embedded in the blog, and update it by placing a waypoint at my current position each day, using my Android smart phone.

Keeping Electronics Alive When There's No AC

When considering how to maintain this blog while hiking the Appalachian Trail, I decided to get an Android-based, HTC Incredible 2.  Its a 3G, single core phone with a 4" screen, and that adds up to better 'n' average battery life.  Unfortunately, better 'n' average is relative.  With heavy use, I find it needs to be recharged daily.  With light use, it can go two days between charges.

An advantage of Droids is that you can carrying a spare battery for them.  This is a fine option for someone who leaves the phone turned off, and only makes a few calls.  For the usage I envision, I'd have to carry and recharge fistfuls of them!

Blogging Via Droid

Picked up my HTC Incredible 2 Android cell phone today. I'm using the Blogger app, with Flex T9 by Nuance Communications to do a speech to text input to this blog.




I welcome your comments, and invite you to follow our journey by plugging your email addy into the box at the right.

Electronics on the Appalachian Trail

In a February post, I outlined some requirements for which I hoped to find a system.  I want to have a cell phone, to be able update this blog on a regular basis, to take high quality pictures, to have reading and reference material via Kindle Books, and to use a GPS to navigate and find the occasional geocache.  All while hiking the Appalachian Trail - meaning, going 5-7 days between AC power and the potential for wifi, with spotty connectivity in between.

Internal Battle Over Electronics

My inner geek has been struggling with my inner curmudgeon over my desire to carry electronic devices during our Appalachian Trail thru-hike. I thought it would be nice to have some ability to take pictures, send email, update blogs, read ebooks, refer to scanned pdf files, upload pics, listen to music, find my way when lost, and find the occasional geocache ... Humping a separate camera, GPS, iPod, smartphone, and all the batteries and chargers seemed like a lot of weight, and a smartphone could do it all, if not as well as the stand-alone devices.

I'm a photographer, and I can not imagine settling for any camera in a smart phone. My Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5 is an excellent, if not eggsactly an ultra-lightweight camera, with a great wide-range lens. If I didn't already have it, I'd get their DMC-LX5 which is a few ozs lighter and allows RAW capture.