Food and Other Stuff

Hello, my dear, poor, neglected blog. As I drown under mountains of finals, I find myself thinking more and more about that other, un-crappy type of mountains where I'll be hiking in EXACTLY ONE MONTH.

Whaaaat?

This is both fantastic and terrifying. Mostly just fantastic. Since my last check-in, there have been a considerable number of developments in my planning. First of all…

Igotmypermitahhhwhoooyippeee!

Secondly, we have a start date! Because I’m OCD (not being insensitive, I literally [also not misusing the word literally] have OCD), I’ve decided that it’s important for me to begin my hike at the Canadian border. Hence, I’ll be starting a week before the goon squad on June 14^th, to be joined by the cavalry on June 21^st. The North Cascades have been getting pretty much slammed with snow, so we’re planning for winter conditions for the first few weeks of our hike. This means ice axes, snowshoes, and crampons, maybe a warmer sleeping bag, and the heaviest pack in the world. This is okay because we’ll be going really slowly anyway, and I’ll appreciate it that much more when I cast of the shackles of heavy iron footspikes.

Not that you care, but it’s looking like I may get my base weight under 14 pounds (not including clothing worn/trekking poles) which is exciting, considering the luxuries I’ll be bringing. I found a killer deal on the MontBell Plasma 1000fp jacket, which will save me a whole pound(!!!) over my original jacket. Yes, I’m a dork. Yes, I have a gear problem. Moving on…

The other big aspect of PCT preparation that we’ve been working on is food. We’ve decided to cook and dehydrate our dinners in advance, so we all pitched in for a dehydrator and we’ve been making obscene amounts of chili, stir fry, pasta sauce, and vaguely Mexican food. So much food. I’m 108 meals in so far, almost there…

Future Burritos

In other news, lentils are delicious. I should eat them more.

We’ve also been working on finalizing a list of resupply locations. We have 31 over the course of the trail, with about 3 days between the closest and one section that will probably take about 10. In case other SOBOs are interested in resupplying with boxes, I’ll attach the list somewhere.

It’s finals week so I have to go be a student now. Ok bye.