Leap Day

Leap Day means an extra day for training!

FAQs

Now that everyone at work knows what I'm doing, I've been getting a lot of questions about the trail. Here are the questions that have been coming up the most:

Where will you sleep?
I am carrying my tent and sleeping bag with me and I'll stop to sleep when I'm tired of walking or the weather gets bad. Hopefully a flat spot, with coverage from the wind, and not an area for water to pool.

How do you get food?
I will carry around 4-6 days worth of food with me and cook dinner using my BRS stove with a fuel canister attached. I will only carry a bear canister in the Sierra's where it's mandatory and everywhere else I have a bear bag hanging kit. When we get to a town (which which mainly involves hitch hiking), I will either have a prepacked box I'll have my mom shipped or go to the largest grocery store and fill up for the next section. I have chosen towns to send boxes to based on previous years' hikers.

Are you carrying a gun?
No

How cold will it get?
At night it can get as low as 20F.

How will you get water?
There is an app called Guthook that documents all the water sources along the trail. People can comment on the app with the most up to date information. The longest stretch between water sources will be about 30 miles, in which we'll have to "camel up." A water source can be anything from a stream to a water cache someone donated.

Showers?
I'll shower when I can! I guess on average that will be once a week. I know, gross.

Quitting Work

I handed in my letter of resignation and there is no turning back now! 32 days to go!

Here is a photo of my training hike at Ohiopyle yesterday.

Female Hygiene Post

I talked with my gynecologist last year about my period and I've been working up to having no period while on the trail. She changed my birth control prescription so I would have enough pills to skip the placebo week. I've had issues with spotting after about a couple months so I may have to plan to have it halfway through, but it's still not as bad as every 4 weeks.

This year I talked with her about my stomach pains and she said it was normal to get what pregnant women call "morning sickness" from sensitivity to the pill. To combat the nausea, I've been experimenting with the timing of taking my pill; if I take the pill around 3:00pm, I would be asleep for any nausea. I've been on this schedule for 3 weeks now and so far it has proved very successful!

Birthday Hike!

I stayed home from work today because my pink eye is still contagious, but I can still hang out in the woods! I filled my pack up with 20 lbs of old gear and 6 cans of cream soda to get ready for long days on the trail.

My neighbors must think I'm nuts

My sleeping bag came in! I tried it out this past Friday because it was the coldest it's been all winter. Here I am in the backyard in 14F temperature with mild winds. I was very warm and I even had to delayer! I am very relieved to sleep comfortable on the trail even if it means an extra pound on my back.

Sleeping Bag

Even though I was sure I wanted the Western Mountaineering Lynx MF -10F sleeping bag, it was much harder to spend a months rent on a piece of gear than I thought. I'm looking forward to getting to test it out in a few days! Other purchases I made today were the Waymark fanny pack, which I hope is a better shape than the LiteAF fanny pack, and tent patches and dry bags from Zpacks.

Extreme Bar Hopping

I just realized we are basically just hiking from bar to bar. Calling it extreme bar hopping.

February

I'm so excited to say we start hiking NEXT MONTH! I am sick this weekend so mom and I spent the day drinking tea and watching Mari Johnson's PCT videos!