Saturday, February 5, 2011

Planning hikes out of Katahdin and into Damascus

I was so happy today was a day off.  My JD-contributed cold has hit full force.  Sore throat is gone but my head has been infested with pernicious snot.  I slept in, then I was slack.  Then I ate and was slack again.  It's a rough life.

I'm sneezing so much that I have boxes of tissues scattered around the house.  That way I have one within reach any time a sneeze hits.  I'm going to have to empty trash tomorrow because the little trash cans are overflowing with used tissues.  Gross.

I received my 2011 A.T. Guide yesterday.  Now I'm attempting to plan my two longish hikes this year.  The mileage doesn't work out neatly for either one.  The first hike of 6 days (plus two more in town) won't have a resupply in it.  The second hike of 21 days has no good resupply options.  I'll have to mail myself resupply.  Maybe more than one.  I might have to have somebody bring me a maildrop into the 100 mile wilderness.  I don't have a good feeling for how fast I'll be going, but even averaging 10 miles a day that'd be 10 days of food.  That's a lot of food to carry!

In theory White House Landing has resupply, but I looked on their website and it looks kind of skimpy.  When more time has passed, I'm sure of my start date, etc, I'll probably call to arrange a drop somewhere.  Oy.  It's so much easier when there are towns and groceries.

Along those lines, I went crazy and ordered a "7 Day Gourmet Meal Kit" from Amazon.  It's 25 freeze dried or easily packaged meals.  I have a fair amount of hiking planned this year so I hope they'll all get used.  Maybe not all at once - I can carry in a bit of fresh food for the start of a trip and use the freeze dried stuff for later, maybe.  I figure it will help reduce some of the headache of planning a trip when I can just reach into the bag and pull out three dinners ready to go.

Certainly my little overnight trips could be almost entirely unplanned if I had a stock of those freeze dried suckers on hand.  I could leave my pack almost ready to go!  All I'd need to do is add water and a few snacks available at most gas stations, and I'd be done.

Does this sound like a recipe for disaster to you, or is it just me? 

At least there should be good stories to tell.

1 comment:

  1. Contact boarstone (she is on whiteblaze). She does food drops in the 100 mile wilderness. I think it was around Jo Mary Lake road. She might be in the guidebooks as well. I don't have mine handy to check.

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