Originally Posted by
colorado_rob
We all have our Modus Operandi.... mine is fairly well planned out with, of course, great flexibility built in.
I'm a spreadsheet person, used them (as a big part of my job) ever since Lotus 1-2-3 came out in what, the early 80's?
So, I basically have the whole AT in a fairly simple spreadsheet, all camp spots, shelters, road crossings, resupply places, PO's, etc. These are all over the place online, mine is now a few years old so the mileages and other things are a bit out of date.
The key to this spreadsheet is very simple: there are a couple of cells that when changed, update the whole sheet. One is miles per day going forward, the other is the actual date of where you are at at any point on your hike. What this does is to give you instant access to the best estimate for where you will be and when.
So, for example, your original plan was to arrive at Fontana Dam on March 15th, which is in the sheet. You get there on the 17th, voila, you change one cell and now it shows the 17th and all future time/places get updated by the 2-day shift. For near-term, this is very accurate. For longer term, not so much, but when you make future updates, the longer term snaps into place.
simple stuff, easy-peasy. I use a simple Google-sheets phone app to access this spreadsheet on the trail.
I did this mainly because my wife joined me to hike along the way in 3 separate places (smokies, whites and 100-mile in Maine), and it was important to be able to schedule those, er, "rendezvous" times, if you follow. All worked perfectly.
But it also greatly helped in mailing resupplies (which my wife did for me, of course).
Just my own way; I've done it now for the AT, PCT, CT, LT and BMT.