bigdumbadventure-blog

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Still counting

The absolute terror hit me last night, which is about fitting now that I have just under two weeks until I go live in a tent and try to walk a ridiculous distance for five straight months in a year with exceptional snow levels.  Nothing to be done but occasionally make weird expressions in response to the butterflies in my gut and enjoy the feeling of walking on the knife's edge.

The Knife's Edge isn't until Washington in the Goat Rocks Wilderness, I know.  Looking forward to it, though--photos of that section look incredible.

I went wild at Costco and the local grocery store loading up for resupply boxes this week.  There were several weird looks at the register.  They're deserved when you're dropping big cash on granola bars, chips and nuts in that scale of bulk.  Trying to organize resupply boxes has been fun, but I won't be done 'til we get to the States where I'll throw my wallet at tuna pouches, jerky and dried fruit and stir up a garbage bag worth of trail mix.

I'm only packing boxes for Warner Springs (mile 110), the Saufley's (454), Kennedy Meadows (702) and Sierra City (1298) at the moment along with the food I'll need starting out from Campo, and then will make some requests to my fantastic sister when it comes to sending out the boxes for anywhere else in California (possibly might send one to Belden) and four spots in Oregon. I'll hopefully be able to zero with her in Portland for a day or two to prep for the Washington drops.  That's so far away at this point that I'm not going to make much in the way of plans--everything is so nebulous in terms of the gigantic scope of the PCT and the crazy snow this year that I have to be very flexible.  This is great since I like to research things with obsessive thoroughness, but am not so much the planning type.  I'll just be buying food as I pass through towns for everything else.

I wish I could claim that I had a detailed nutritional outline in mind packing up resupplies, but mostly I just piled up tasty things I can't eat in normal life for the crazy calories.  I tried to keep an eye on protein but...carbs.  Gimme.  I'm going to hate oatmeal, granola and instant mashed potatoes in short order but I am confident that trail mix never gets old.

I still have a list of odds and ends to get while I'm in Portland, but the huge bulk of it is done.  Had a spree at MEC last week (thank you to my former employers for the gift card!) and have been chipping away at the rest of it here in Canmore.  All that's left is the sleeping bag liner and the ice axe, which I won't likely need until Kennedy Meadows, though I'm keeping a close eye on reports from Fuller Ridge and Mount Baden-Powell.  Also gotta get trash compactor bags for pack-lining and some more Wet Wipes, and I need to cut some polycryo I picked up at the hardware store to make a cheap and light groundsheet.

Baseweight looks like it will be settling a little under seventeen pounds, which isn't the fifteen I was hoping for but still falls within the realm of kind of reasonable.  So much tiny stuff balloons into a lot of extra ounces--when you lay all the gear out it is incredible how many objects live inside your pack.

Watching other hikers update from the trail has been exciting but is making me antsy.  As nervous as I am, all I want to do is get out there and give this dumb thing my best shot.  I'm cherishing the opportunity to be as cartoonishly dirty, exhausted, and happy as people on the trail seem.

Spending time with my parents has been fantastic so far. They've been wonderfully supportive both in terms of accepting the hike and in helping me get organized, and it is just a treat to get to hang out.  Living so far across the country and my previous travelling has meant I don't get to see them as much as I'd like--from Halifax it is quicker to get to Iceland than the Calgary airport.  I'm looking forward to the roadtrip to Portland and the six days the whole family will be together.

Otherwise I am just killing time on the internet while I can.  Won't be mindlessly browsing Reddit so often in the near future.

[bigdumbadventure-blog]

Three weeks!

It is happening.

I got into Canmore yesterday after a long series of flights across Canada.  My lovely parents picked me up and we’ve been hanging out, catching up, and trying to get my life together.  A more sensible, organized person would probably be having an easier time of it, but would perhaps not be going on this trip.

I am too fat for my hiking pants, so today I bought some new ones.  The smaller ones will head to Portland where they can be mailed to me when I wither a bit.  I stress ate due to work and then celebrated too hard about being done work.  Oops.

Got my Darn Toughs today, am breaking on my resupply shoes a bit, and got a pair of lightweight rainpants second hand.  They are rainpants for a large child, so they are perfect for me.

Still trying to figure out my groundsheet situation: might ask around some local construction sites for Tyvek scraps or grab some polycryo window insulation plastic from a hardware store.  Thrilling stuff, I know.

Really cool to see people posting from on-trail.  Three weeks.  Oh golly.

[bigdumbadventure-blog]

Still counting

As of this morning, I have fifty-one days of work to go, fifty-four days left as a resident of Halifax, and seventy-six day until I’m ontrail.  Too far away for my very itchy feet.

I think anyone in this year’s PCT class can attest that permit day was a stressful one.  We crashed the PCTA website for a solid hour and gobbled up all the April permits within three hours of the page launching.  I kept getting to the application page, filling out my info, and then having it glitch out when it came to the form data for my province of residence.  That precipitated some hyperventilating, and then a refreshing of the page another dozen or so failed times before I went through the same flawed process again and again.  After a solid forty-five minutes of elevated heartrate in the grip of sheer panic, my application went through.  April 26, here I come (pending the approval of the PCTA, of course).

This weekend I plan on blowing last week’s paycheque on my flight from Portland to San Diego for April 25th along with a shopping spree to help me start to close up my gear gaps.  Going to have my sister snag some stuff from REI for me and spend some time being indecisive in MEC.  I want to get my headlamp, water filter and sleeping bag liner accounted for, as well as figure out my portable battery option...and buy a smartphone.  Ugh.  Also gonna figure out my map situation.

I signed myself up for a backcountry emergency first aid class in Calgary when I get back to Alberta at the start of April, have a few free MEC lectures I’m attending this month, and have managed to wheedle a day of ice axe self-arrest training with my wonderful ACMG-certified Uncle Peter in exchange for high-quality chocolate.  Also maybe just for the joy of pushing his irritating niece down a snowy slope with a sharp object.

This year’s snowfall in California is going to make things interesting.  I’m glad for the intro to mountaineering class I took in the fall but still a little spooked by all the trail gossip.  Been reading lots of blogs from the class of 2011 to cool me down a bit.  The best plan is to take each day at a time and assess the situation for myself.  I chose a later April start date after keeping an eye on the Sierras and having watched last year’s early starters flounder and unsuccessfully flip-flop (skip sections to backtrack them later) due to the conditions in a relatively normal year for snow.  Even starting on April 26th I suspect I’m going to be headed into Kennedy Meadows a week earlier than Ray Day (June 15th), which tends to be the standard date for starting out into the mountains.  As an international hiker my timeline is constrained not just by the threat of Washington snowfall but my visa timeline,so I can’t putter around taking a ton of zero days in SoCal. 

But maybe I will.  Planning is for suckers.  We’ll see what happens.

[bigdumbadventure-blog]

Countdowns

Life has turned into pretty intense series of countdowns now.  In about a month’s time, I’ll be applying for my thruhiking permit (still no exact news from the PCTA about permit day, which I am just champing at the bit for).  In eighty-three days, I’ll be done work.  In eighty-seven I’ll be leaving Halifax.  If everything comes together as I’m projecting, I’ll be standing in a desert wondering what the hell I was thinking in one hundred and seven days.  Can’t come soon enough. I’m currently sick with a cold, worn down by occupational stress, and sleeping on a couch--found a coworker to take over my lease, but she needed to move in early.  I figure that being a displaced vagabond is a good warmup to my transformation into hikertrash.  Going to have to start eating cold instant mashed potatoes and ramen rehydrated in a peanut butter jar next...might hold off on that for a bit longer, though. Still busting my butt at the gym as much as possible.  I try to lift heavy things around five times a week--it really should be six with the push/pull/legs split I’m doing, but I find it hard to balance it with making sure I’m getting enough cardio in.  I’m all about that stairmaster, though I try to mix it up and use the elliptical sometimes too. I have no idea how any of this will translate to the trail, but I’m pretty confident that I’m in the best condition of my life at this point.  I lost a lot of weight last year and have been waking up at stupid hours of the morning to get where I am--and where I am has about 2650 miles to go.  Good golly.

[bigdumbadventure-blog]

I'm on Christmas vacation with my grandparents at the moment.  They generously agreed to store some of my belongings for while I'm on my hike (the details of which they're a little vague on, which works for me since I don't want them to worry.  Grandma appears to believe that I'll be going to San Francisco?)

Packing up a suitcase of things to leave here was extremely liberating, as it really revealed how little I own that matters to me.  I basically loaded the case up with some books, clothes, and small mementos that aren't so much important because of nostalgia but because I think that they should be?  I'm not very good at attaching personal importance to objects (decorating my living space is always an obvious sign of this, I can live somewhere for years and look like I just moved in) and I feel bad about it, so I hang onto some things just in case.  The result is an underwhelming collection of stuff. 

Last time I went on an adventure (lived on an organic brewery/farm in the Scottish Highlands for just shy of five months, volunteered as a gardener at a Hare Krishna commune at a castle in the Ardennes region of Belgium for a month and a half, and was an unhappy hostel janitor in the Netherlands for another month and a half) I left a suitcase of belongings with my aunt.  I only arranged its recovery about two months ago, and had no idea what its contents were after nearly three years without it.  Inside of this personal time capsule?  Books, clothes, mementos that I thought I should attach more personal import to than I do.  Old patterns die hard, I guess.

I'll store another suitcase with my parents (you can guess what will be inside), and the rest is garbage and donations.  I loved the freedom of being abroad with only the contents of a 50 litre backpack for eight months and I'm thrilled by the approach of the oncoming purge of posessions--I plan to get started on the 30th when I get back to Halifax.  The logistics and effort involved in getting rid of stuff is much harder than the act letting it all go, at least for me. 

I worry more about my timeline when it comes to saying goodbyes.  Work is all-consuming right now and will only get worse, and I need to squeeze in unavoidable PCT obligations as well (at the gym seven times a week, dental appointments, travel and gear arrangements, cleaning up my apartment, finding someone to take over my lease ASAP, and moving in with a friend).  I'm an introvert to the nth degree and the social exhaustion that comes with being employed as a supervisor means that I have a very hard time being around people outside of work, which means that farewells fit into my schedule very poorly.  I left Ottawa without any big to-dos and I'm kind of hoping Halifax can be the same, but it's a bit of a dick move to not let people know I liked being around them while I was there.  I can't control the passing of time, especially when I'm murdering myself working seventy-hour weeks and we're still falling behind, so we'll see what happens.

Probably less than four months to go, now!   'Real' life is making me an exhausted bundle of frayed nerves but I just have to survive it.  I'm worrying pretty constantly about things out of my control and it is taking its mental toll.    April will be here soon enough, though.

[bigdumbadventure-blog]

Countdown

In less than four and a half months, I’m going to be hiking the PCT. That’s just enough time to still feel distant, but also starting to loom terrifyingly and wonderfully close. There’s still so much to do until then!  Permits to arrange, more gear to buy, flights to book, I need to get rid of all the belongings I’ve amassed in Halifax for two years, rent out my apartment, and keep my butt at the gym while balancing an extremely demanding work schedule.  It is a little overwhelming at times and I feel stretched pretty thin with how busy life has gotten. The reality of saying goodbye to a place you’ve considered home for a while is strange, though not something entirely unfamiliar to me.  Halifax has become a place full of excellent friends who I’ll miss a lot.  I’m excited to get out there, but the massive scope of the change this will make in my life becoming more and more concrete gets a bit spooky too.  I’m really not sure what I’m going to do after the big dumb adventure, and saying goodbyes can be a challenge. Gear-wise I’ve still got plenty more to spend (lightweight backpacking stuff comes with a premium pricetag), but the big things are coming together.  My tent was trapped in customs for a week but I’m hoping for its delivery soon.  I had it sent to my parents’ place in Canmore, since I’ll be visiting for about two weeks and doing some test hikes with my setup there before the trip south.  I’ll probably do a write-up of the equipment I’ve collected so far--it should help me to feel more organized to list it all and nerd over the specifics anyway. The plan is to wrap up work on March 31st and say goodbye to Halifax around April 4th.  Fly to Canmore for an indeterminate amount of days (depends on my permit’s start date), then fly to Portland, Oregon.  My sister and her husband live there, and they’ve been kind enough to offer to be my mail support.  I’ll spend about three days there figuring out mail drop stuff, then head to San Diego.  I’ll be getting in touch with Scout and Frodo (a legendary trail angel duo who very generously host hikers in their home and then shuttle them to the trailhead in Campo) and hopefully the result will be me, a heavy backpack and an entire nation’s worth of walking ahead, standing at the southern terminus at the Mexican/US border ready to get this whole thing rolling.   Typing that made me really happy. I’m gunning for a start date around April 25th, but willing to be flexible based on how crazy I expect permit application day to be.  much earlier will make prep time very hectic, and I don’t want to set out much later than May 1st unless the amount of snow in the Sierras is the determining factor. This was a great decision and the joy of it bubbles up at unexpected times--when I’m having a really tough day I still feel like I’ve got an ace hidden up my sleeve.  If you’ve never felt the warm, frightened and determined thrill of an oncoming adventure, I’d recommend it pretty highly.