Month: May 2016

Goodbye beds, goodbye pre-hydrated food.

We arrived in Long Beach, a nice small airport with pleasant wooden outdoor walkways and bright purple flowing trees.

It was a two hour drive to our hotel in Alpine. Alpine is about a half hour drive from the Southern Terminus monument, the start of the PCT, so we can’t get started too early, but it’s nice to be in a decent-sized town for my last night in civilization. Walmart and Dunkin Donuts are easily-available luxuries, for example.

I managed to get just about everything sorted out before leaving. My permit to enter Canada came together in the last few minutes, thanks to the Canadian border patrol answering emails within minutes.  The only thing I missed was getting a haircut – maybe I can manage that tonight.

BREAKING NEWS: Haircut accomplished.

Just some quick pictures of my gear. Base pack weight is, I think, 18.5 pounds, or 21.6 skin out. These aren’t good weights, but I’m testing duplicates of some gear, and I’m expecting to switch out some of my heavier gear, and send home some of my sillier gear.

For reference, “Base pack weight” is the weight of all your equipment, not counting water, food, or fuel, because those depend on how long you will be out, and not counting things you wear, since they’re not in your pack. A good BPW is about 12 pounds, so I’m way over, sadly.

“Skin out” includes everything you’re wearing, including shoes hat, etc.

Forgot to include my water bottle (1L disposable soda bottle), my fuel bottle (8oz Nalgene with sprayer tip), and the penny (same one I used on JMT!)