Getting in Touch

Leaving tomorrow! And finally I have a rough schedule for you. The dates will certainly change and I will try to update them here. I believe at most stops I will have either cell service or wifi, so I will have some ability to read/respond to email, text, and Facebook communication.

Estimated excitement levels at receiving your letter

We also welcome physical correspondence! Post cards, letters, or parcels. Please let me know if you send something so I can tell the post office how many items I’m expecting. A text or email early enough that I can get it at the stop before would be ideal. Use USPS, not UPS or FedEx. It can take longer for mail to reach some of these little towns so something sent 1 week ahead of our ETA may not reach us (more for some classes of mail). Post offices only hold mail for 30 days so something sent 5 weeks ahead of our ETA could be sent back. I think 2 to 4 weeks ahead of our ETA is the safe zone.

Date	Location	Mile	Address
4/28	Campo	0
4/30	Mount Laguna	42.3
5/4	Warner Springs	109.6	Morgan Marks PCT Hiker, ETA: 5/4/17 General Delivery Warner Springs, CA 92086
5/8	Idyllwild	178.6
5/15	Big Bear City	274.1
5/20	Wrightwood	363.6
5/27	Agua Dulce	454.4
6/3	Tehachapi	566.6	Louise and Morgan Marks PCT Hikers, ETA 6/3/17 General Delivery Tehachapi, CA 93581
6/11	Kennedy Meadows	702.8
6/18	Independence	790	Louise and Morgan Marks PCT Hikers, ETA 6/18/17 General Delivery Independence, CA 93526
6/25	Red’s Meadow/       Mammoth Lakes	906.6
7/1	Sonora Pass	1018.3
7/5	South Lake Tahoe	1094.5
7/11	Sierra City	1197.6	Louise and Morgan Marks PCT Hikers, ETA 7/11/17 General Delivery Sierra City, CA 96125
7/15	Belden	1289.2
7/21	Burney Falls State Park	1423.6	Morgan and Louise Marks PCT Hikers, ETA 7/21/17 c/o Burney Park Camp Store McArthur Burney Falls State Park 24900 State Highway 89 Burney, CA 96013
7/28	Etna	1606.3
7/30	Seiad Valley	1662.1
8/2	Ashland (Callahan’s lodge)	1726.6
8/10	Crater Lake National Park (Mazama)	1830.4	Louise and Morgan Marks c/o Mazama Village Camper Store Mazama Village Crater Lake, OR 97604
8/14	Elk Lake Resort	1958.3
8/16	Big Lake Youth Camp	2000.9	Louise and Morgan Marks c/o Big Lake Youth Camp 13100 Highway 20 Sisters, OR 97759
8/20	Timberline Lodge	2107.3
8/22	Cascade Locks	2155.1
8/28	White Pass	2302.8
9/3	Snoqualmie Pass	2401.8	Morgan Marks PCT Hiker, ETA 9/7/17 General Delivery c/o Chevron Station Snoqualmie Pass, WA 98068
9/7	Stevens Pass	2476.3
9/11	Stehekin	2574.1	Morgan Marks PCT Hiker, ETA 9/11/17 c/o General Delivery Post Office Stehekin, WA 98852
9/15	Manning Park Resort	2663.5

 

Family Time and a Request

Less than 3 days before I take off! I am back in Seattle after spending 4 lovely days in Charleston, a precursor vacation to my vacation. I got to see lots of family, nearly everyone I planned to (Sorry I missed you Aunt Kay!) Besides just visiting and enjoying the weather, I used the trip to undertake some non-critical but nonetheless important preparations.

My mom and I did some shopping to round out my resupply boxes with ‘morale’ items. Aunt Barbara and I pampered our feet and I decided that sparkly toes will move faster. I am certainly more prepared to face a bear after discussions with Aunt Anne, Uncle Sam, Sam, and Virginia. My dad helped me cope with the notion of weeks in an arid environment with a day surrounded by water, spectating the regatta and boating about the waterways. Hanging with Richie and Alex made me feel hip enough to make trail friends, and Nana, Papa, and Uncle Tommy imbued me with wisdom and good sense. To everyone, I enjoyed seeing you so much, your support means a lot!

But I am not writing just to ramble my many gratitudes, I have a purpose! I have been thinking about how I will have A LOT of time this summer with only my own thoughts, especially before Louise joins. I expect to spend a good amount of time oohing and aahing over all the nature, but I think boredom is inevitable walking 10 hrs a day through many miles of identical landscape. Music and audiobooks will help as long as my phone battery lasts, but I did come up with a more fun idea.

I was remembering how I had to memorize the Saint Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V in 8th grade. It’s such a rousing and fun passage, I would like to know it again. Then it occurred to me that there are plenty of things that would be cool to have memorized. Poems, speeches, monologues, lyrics, ghost stories, fables, myths. This could be a great way to spend hours alone on the trail. And perhaps make friends? (Here is the request) I asked a couple people and got good suggestions. But would love more! If I can get my act together, I will print them out real small and make a little booklet. If you think of something in the next couple days, send it my way, either by email or text or Facebook or the contact section of this blog. A link to a webpage, a pdf attachment, copy pasted text, anything will work. I can’t guarantee that I will memorize everything but it will all make good reading material. I’m not yet sure if I will want to carry the weight and bulk of a real paper book.

 

Boxes and Jitters

With 9 days before I leave, the reality of it all is setting in. All of the sudden, this plan I’ve made feels gigantic and ridiculous.  I’ve spent so much time and effort ‘getting ready.’ Ready to walk from Mexico to Canada, across desert, through forests, and over mountains. Hah! Now I can see that there’s no such thing.

My job ended last week to give me time to finish preparations and see family in Charleston. The ‘finishing preparations’ bit boils down to putting things in boxes and thinking about all the ways that things could go wrong. I don’t think the latter is productive at this point, so I’ll tell you more about my boxes and resupplying in general.

There are two ways to get supplies on the trail. Send them to yourself or buy them along the way. By sending them to yourself I mean sending them to a place that will hold them for you, often a post office. Some businesses also hold packages for a fee. At some resupply points, there is no place to mail a box or there is a place that charges a lot to hold it for you (up to $75!), and at others, there is no place to buy food or the selection is limited and expensive. This means that most people do both. Each has drawbacks, though the more time I’ve spent working on my resupply boxes the more I feel like buying food along the way must be easier.

If you send boxes, you can get foods you wouldn’t find along the way, online or from specialty stores. You can also save money by buying in bulk and waiting for certain foods to go on sale at your local grocery store. There are many drawbacks though. With the cost of shipping, I’m not sure that mailing boxes is cheaper in the long run.  Also, common advice for new thru hikers is not to send too much because you don’t know what food you will want in 4 months. Almost every thru hiker has a food item they they can longer eat by the end of their hike. Post office hours are also a consideration. Most of the time its not a problem, but arrive in a town Saturday afternoon and you will have to wait until Monday morning to get your box. The sending strategy also requires that someone sends it. You cannot do it all ahead of time because post offices only hold things so long. (This is a good place to mention how grateful I am to have a housemate as wonderful as Cameron!)

With hopes of having a somewhat well-rounded, if not completely healthy, diet, I chose to mail many of my stops. In one of the books I read about someone’s hike, they described trying to resupply in a convenient store with many shelves cleaned out and walking away with very overpriced nuts, candy bars, chips and pop tarts. I would like to avoid that situation if possible. I read that hiker hunger will come to overpower all food preferences, but even if I reach a point where I want nothing but junk food, I know that pop tarts are not adequate fuel for the long and demanding days of walking.

Inventory

Me planning boxes. I started buying food early, so as not to shock my bank account. Over the course of three months I accrued a wide assortment. Bulk foods, every day snacks, cheap ‘instant’ foods from the grocery store, and some backpacking specific freeze-dried meals. My bags and boxes of food began to spill out of my closet and take over my room. It seemed like a lot, but I had no idea if it would be adequate nutrition. Are there enough calories for all the days? Is there way too much sodium? Not enough protein? Will it be too heavy?

My spreadsheet was born to answer those questions. I am both embarrassed and proud of it and felt sheepish about posting a link to it on the right as I did. So much time, so many columns and rows and calculations. It encapsulates every part of my resupply planning and has been invaluable, someone else should see it. Yet without an explanation, it seems crazy over-the-top. Probably is regardless but here I will explain myself.

I first started the spreadsheet to decide which stops to choose. There are more than 50 places one could stop, but you only need to stop 20 to 25 times. Choosing which places is so hard. You need to think about how to get to a stop from the trail, whether it will have an adequate grocery store, a post office or other place to mail a box, canister fuel, lodging. And the stops need to be spread kind of evenly. We wouldn’t want to stop to resupply for just 2 days, and we must resupply at least every 7 days. But I’m looking at miles, not days, between towns so I need to decide roughly what our pace will be and calculate days. Additionally I know that some stops are especially popular and if we’ve made friends we will want to stop with them at the cool spots. Even with information about town amenities readily available and Craig’s PCT Planner, choosing stops was too much for me to think about.  I made the spreadsheet to make all the information that I could not hold in my head visible in one view. No wading through multiple tabs and looking back at Yogi’s book. It was immensely helpful.

When I started to become overwhelmed by all the food I took the same approach. Make all the information visible in one place and it will stop cluttering my mind. I recorded the nutritional information of every item. I add the quantity and voila! It tells me the overall calories and average nutritional profile. This new tool first yielded the surprising revelation that I did not have nearly enough food. 45 days.  It looked like so much though! I needed closer to a hundred days for the boxes for Louise and myself. (I define a ‘day’ by a number of calories. At first I used 4000 but changed it to 3500. There will be a calorie deficit and thats ok) This is when the spreadsheet was most helpful. I could change the quantity of certain items to see what it would do to the overall numbers. It helped me decide where I was lacking and what I should buy more of. I also set up the ‘Chosen stops’ worksheet so I could change whether I’m mailing or buying at a stop and it would update the total number of days I need for boxes. It was pretty easy to consider different scenarios and ultimately feel like I had a reasonable amount of food. It may not be entirely up-to-date now.

Putting food in boxes

After all of that considering and re-figuring it was difficult for me to commit to my plans and put the things in boxes. What if I decided to change everything again? I had imagined I’d have a burst of motivation one day and do it all, but it has happened slowly. I’m pretty close now. In addition to food,  I need to include paper maps, toiletries, batteries, and contacts. Some stops I need to add new shoes or other gear like ice axes and bear canisters.

Some people have asked me how they might go about sending us a postcard. I will give more information about where and when later, but you’d send it to one of the places we are already picking up a box.

Progress

What I’m Taking

With less than three weeks until I leave, I am scrambling to complete my resupply boxes, consolidate a bunch of information about the trail, move all my stuff out of my room, and still get some quality time with friends and family. Thankfully, I have spent the past year and a half trying out gear and I settled on what I’m taking months ago, so there’s one thing that I’m not worrying about right now. I’ll give you a rundown of gear on the PCT and my choices. I will not weigh the pros and cons of coated nylon versus cuben fiber shelters, this is meant more as a introduction to the more basic decisions hikers make about what to take.

Some, not all, of my gear

Shelter

Everyone agrees you need a shelter. Tents are the most common. When most people think of a tent, they’re probably imagining a double-walled freestanding tent. It has the main compartment, with a waterproof bathtub floor and mesh ‘windows’, held up with collapsible tent poles, and can be zippered up to keep bugs out. And then the rainfly can be added, often providing one or two vestibules, space outside the tent thats still covered from the rain, good for boots. You probably stake this tent down to make it more stable in the wind, but it would stand without stakes and you could pick it up and move it.

The other option is a tarp, set up with trekking poles, or trees if they’re around, and stakes. This option can be very light, versatile, and pack easily. Its also more difficult to set up and without a floor, does not offer the same protection from bugs and dirt. When using a tarp, people often have a groundsheet or bivvy or both. A bivvy is basically just a bag that goes around your sleeping bag and pad.

My tarp strung between two trees

When the weather allows it, I prefer cowboy camping, or camping without a tent or tarp. Its requires almost no setup and you can look up at the stars. Some people don’t like it because of bugs and dew settling on your sleeping bag, but those can be solved with a bivvy and selecting the right campsite. Usually there are few nights of rain on the PCT, especially in California, so cowboy camping is common.

My cowboy camping setup

So what am I using? Everything. When I’m on my own I’ll have a tarp, groundsheet, and lightweight bivvy. This will be great for cowboy camping and I’ll use my very light and packable tarp if it rains. When Louise joins I will add a two-person tent. Weeze prefers a tent and she can have it to herself most of the time. If the weather is bad I can join her rather than fussing with my tarp. And we will both have shelters if we have to separate for some reason.

My tarp is a Hyperlite Mountain Gear 8 ft x 10 ft. With guy lines and stakes, it only weighs 1 lb. I have a very light bivvy made by Borah. With a bivvy I can completely enclose myself to protect from bugs (the part that goes in front of my face is bug mesh). It also helps keep dew off my bag and it keeps me from sliding off my sleeping pad. I’m using a Tyvek groundsheet. Tyvek is a durable, lightweight, and waterproof housing material, also great for protecting your sleeping pad from the ground. The tent is the MSR Hubba Hubba. At 3 lbs 13 oz, it is not the lightest two person tent on the market but it is pretty good. And it’s spacious and has two entrances and two vestibules.

Hubba Hubba on Mt Baker. Really hoping we don’t have too many nights on snow.

Sleeping

This one is pretty straightforward. Besides the few ultra-lighters who have a sleeping bag that integrates with or also functions as clothing, hikers sleep in a sleeping bag or a sleeping quilt. People choose a temperature rating based on their own sleeping temperature and the warmth of their entire sleep system. For example, if you use a sleeping bag liner, you could have a slightly warmer weather bag. Most people will have a bag rated for 10 to 30 degrees. Almost everyone chooses down because it is lighter and packs smaller than synthetic. I have always used a bag rather than a quilt. I don’t know much about quilts, but some people really like them.

I have the 20 degree Feathered Friends Egret UL. Louise has the Egret Nano 20, almost the same. There are other brands popular with long distance hikers that make great bags, but I choose Feathered Friends because they’re local (for me living in Seattle), very friendly, and they use ethically sourced down. The Egret UL is light (1 lb 12 oz), packs small (9 L), and has features common in women’s bags that appeal to me. Women’s bags differ from men’s in cut, temperature, and the side that the zipper is on. Since women sleep colder than men, a woman’s bag is roughly 10 degrees warmer for the same temperature rating. Men’s bags typically are widest at the top and taper to the feet. The Egret is widest at the hips which is nice for my anatomy and sleeping curled on my side.

Sleeping pads. Everyone sleeps on something. The two main categories are ones that inflate and ones that don’t. Inflatable ones take longer to set up and can be punctured (thus rendered useless), yet they pack smaller and many find them more comfortable. Sleeping pads contribute to the overall temperature of the sleep system, and they are not all the same. Every pad will have an R value that is an indicator of how well it insulates you from the cold ground. When sleeping on snow or frozen ground, you want to have a high R value (4 or higher). I have the Sea to Summit Comfort Lite Insulated (an inflatable one). I liked it most out of the few I tried in the store, and it has served me well on maybe 20 nights of use so far. Its reasonably warm (4.2 R value).

Cooking

The biggest decision people make about cooking is whether to do it at all. Many people do long distance hikes without a stove. It saves space and weight, of the stove, the pot, and the fuel. And some say they still do a cooking of sorts. They use some of the same dehydrated foods you would add boiling water to, instead adding any water and letting it sit for much, much longer. The fact that many people do this makes me think that it must not be so bad, but I can’t imagine going camping without a stove.

If you do take a stove, you decide between canister and alcohol. Alcohol stoves are smaller and lighter, but much less convenient and more dangerous in my opinion, though many people use them and like them. I tried one out on the Wonderland trail, and decided to stick with my heavier canister stove. I have an MSR Windburner, an integrated stove and pot very similar to a Jetboil. The pot locks onto the stove, making the system very efficient. Very little heat is lost in the transfer to the pot and it performs very well in wind. It can boil a liter of water in a few minutes, even on a cold night. This type of stove is ideal for boiling water, not so much for simmering or sauteeing.  I plan to have mostly meals that need only boiling water, like couscous, instant mashed potatoes, and oatmeal.

Preparing dinner over Robin Lakes. Sadly will not have the chair this summer.

Pack

Like with all other gear, a big concern with packs is their weight. Most of the big-name packs you’d find at REI weigh more than 3 lbs. Most through hikers are trying to go lighter than that. There are a handful of smaller outdoor brands that make lighter packs. I have a 60 L ZPacks Arc Blast. Very basic roll-top bag with a large mesh pocket on the back and weighing roughly 2 lbs. I love it. Besides being very light, it is the most comfortable pack I’ve worn.

Some might think that people would want packs with a large capacity for a trip as long as the PCT, but its kind of the opposite. When I’m doing just an overnight, I’ll bring all sorts of comforts, even a chair, and use the full capacity of my pack. I would never consider lugging that kind of stuff 2000 miles. Many people will have packs with a smaller capacity than mine.

My Arc Blast loaded for the Wonderland Trail

So there’s a few things. Do I think I have the right things that will suit me perfectly the whole way? Probably not. I have chosen some things have worked for me on short outings in the Cascades and make sense given the information I have, but its hard to be certain what will work for many weeks across very different landscapes. I know I might be wrong and want to switch out some gear and that happens a lot.

There’s other gear I haven’t gotten to, not to mention clothing, but this post is too long already. There’s a link to my complete gear list on the right. And look out for part 2!