2011 Thru Planning

[Railroad]

Hey all, for starters I just want to say its been a pleasure reading all of your insightful comments over the last two months as I started seriously considering a 2011 thru hike. I saw Walking Thunderbird recently posted about the feasibility of a 3.5 mo thru hike (given his experience level and fitness level), and was looking for some input on my own plans as a less experienced long distance backpacker. I'm 21, have some experience with multi-day hikes and consider myself a 5 / 10 on a fitness scale (but improving through training and weight loss!)

I have a 95 day window this summer and it will be my last opportunity for a long distance hike before I start work January 2012. At this point I've settled on starting from Campo on May 18th and finishing about August 20th. That will be my end date, regardless of where I make it on the trail. I'll consider my hike a success the minute I depart Campo, and everything after that will just be icing on the cake. I'd love to make it to Canada, and that is my dream, so I want to prepare as though I'm going the whole way even if I have to adjust later.

My question boils down to this:

~30 mpd brings me to Canada. How do I train up to that over the next 4 months?

20 mpd brings me to Oregon. How do you suggest staying flexible with my plan on the trail so I can adjust goals if my daily pace falls closer to this range?

Thanks in advance!

[leaftye]

~30 mpd brings me to Canada. How do I train up to that over the next 4 months?

You hike.

Walk as much as possible.

When you can't walk, work out at home.

Do whatever you can to toughen up your feet. You want tough foot skin of course, but you also want tough feet. Do all sorts of different calf raises, which helps your feet, but also your calf and achilles. There's a guy that had hopes of the long hike ever, but may be forced off the trail due to a strained achilles. This should also fatten up your feet to help you find out what your proper shoe size is. Don't use boots, especially during training. You want to make your ankles stronger.

Do squats and lunges. Do aerobic exercises to lose weight and get in better shape. Losing weight will help you hike faster and be less prone to injury, especially in early stages of your hike.

Training is not just physical. It's also mental. I'm going to assume your gear is already ultralight. Now get super familiar with your gear. To do big miles, you want to minimize down time. That means breaking camp in less than 10 minutes. Spend as little time on meals as possible. Figure out how to gain efficiency now, especially if it means changing your gear. Going cookless can further reduce downtime and pack weight. Put together daily mail plans and actually try it now to see if it'll work in the huge quantities that you'll need on the trail.

I don't think hiking big meals needs much in the way of muscles and aerobic fitness. If you have mental toughness, don't waste time and you don't get injured, I think you can do 30 mpd or at least come close. I'm also assuming you planned well in regards to resupplying and water.

[Malto]

I think it will be tough to answer without knowing what kind of physical shape you're in. But if you are in decent shape to start I would do the following.
1) I would do a variety of cardio workouts mixed with some high rep weights working up to about an hour a day. This will start getting you in good base condition. Some of my favorite treadmill workouts are 60 minutes at speeds between 4.5-5.5mph at inclines of 3, 6 and 9 degrees. Another is 4.5 mph increasing the incline to 10deg and walking for 60 minutes. AND DON"T HOLD ON. This will teach your body to pick up the pace.
2) I would target doing one long hike a week. This would be with full expected gear because you will need to shakedown your gear. Also, you can start getting your clothing nailed down and more importantly shoes and socks. As far as length, I push yourself as much as possible but I wouldn't increase the mileage too dramatically each week. For perspective, I started last year at 30mpd and worked my way up to a 48 mile day in June. Also, make sure that there is elevation gain on your trailing hikes. An average 30 mile day on the PCT will have about a mile of elevation gain.
3) As your daily mileage increases to say 35mpd attempt a back to back 30mpd. You will start to learn what it takes to wake up the next morning and do it again. These trips also allow you to get more efficient in camp setup and tear down. You want to minimize the hours and minutes doing routine activities.
4) With a May 18 departure I would target a final exam of say 40-50 miles near the 1st of May. If you are very goal oriented then this will help you get focused. Target May 1st to allow your body to recover prior to your hike.

These long hikes will get you mentally prepared for the long mileage days that will be required to complete in 95 days. Having done several 40+ days I know that on any given day I could do a 40+ day if needed.

Also, there are significant barriers other than just physical or mental toughness. You may find nutrition, chaffing, electrolyte imbalance, blisters all become barriers. Each of these have occurred as my daily mileage increased.

I will be doing a trip almost identical to what you are proposing. My PCT start date is May 22nd from Campo and I am targeting a finish in 100 days. I have been in pretty serious training for over a year and I'm taking the next few weeks off because I peaked too early. Come February, I will begin the long day and multiday hikes to peak out at the beginning of May and hopefully arrive at the trail in top shape. Hope to see you on the trail.

[frisbeefreek]

One of the things you can do to speed your progress is invest some time in planning your resupply strategy.

Spending $10 to mail a food drop to an "on-trail" location vs. going into town and burning a 1/2 day can make a big difference.

You don't need to mail everything before you leave. For instance, a lot of people mail from Agua Dulce or Mojave to Kennedy Meadows, Reds Meadow, or Tuolumne. Yogi's book can give you some good pointers. This will also allow you to carry less food and move faster & lighter.

[Railroad]

gg-man I look forward to seeing you out there. You have a lot of good insight into the physical training aspects, and rightly point out the mental portion as well. My biggest issue right now is not to overdo it and ramp up too quickly in my excitement to start training...

Leaftye you definitely are right on avoiding downtime. I know all too well how easy it is to linger in the morning. I plan on only cooking in the evenings for the comfort of a warm meal and drink. I'm leaning towards the esbit tablets, but might go for an alcohol stove as another lightweight alternative.

In terms of weight, I'm 6'6 so I'm naturally a bit larger than many people out there. I'm down to 225 from 250 this summer, and I'm targeting 200 as my starting trail weight (it'll be nice to be back to HS weight and fitness level ). By the time I hit the trail I'll have dropped more weight than a fully loaded pack!

In terms of mailing resupplies, I'm looking at the USPS flat-rate boxes due to my distance from the trail. Has anyone used these, and how well do they fit your needs for packing all your supplies into them?

I'll be picking up the guidebooks in the next week or so, and then the real fun starts with planning my specific itinerary!

[leaftye]

Flat rate boxes worked great for me, but I pretty much only had food in it and a few consumables...there was plenty of room left over.

If you're trying to break in easy, you might want to send a box to the Mt Laguna PO, then another to Paradise Cafe. Maybe another to Warner Springs in the middle. This will keep your food weight to a minimum, which should be nice because you'll almost certainly overpack, so the extra food drops could offset that. I bet after San Jacinto you'll be feeling great and doing more miles with ease....I did, and that's even with accidentally carrying 5 extra days of food in that section because I wasn't paying attention when I packed my food bag.

[Railroad]

Just received my data book and Brian Johnson's (Ancient Brit) PCT guidebook. Waiting on Yogi's guidebook to be available at the end of the month. Haven't made up my mind on maps, but that will be one of the next items on my list after I get through the guidebooks.

On a first impression basis, this book looks pretty nice and has lots of great color photos (which are a mixed blessing because they only increase my anxiety to get out on the trail... 114 days!). The maps don't include contours, but they do have elevations marked fairly regularly, along with 5 mile markers. Unlikely to get you through the whole way.

I'll be making my first read straight through over the next few days and I'll let you know my thoughts.

[sbhikes]

I found that I got myself onto a bad rhythm with the post office for a while. Every time I ended up in town it was on a Friday or Saturday afternoon so I would have to wait up to 3 days for it to open. With more post offices ending their Saturday delivery, I'd strongly advise to reduce the use of the post office as much as you can if you are trying to maximize your forward progress.

I have observed that some people try to go fast out of Campo and end up nursing bad shin splints by about Agua Dulce. If you really want to do 30 miles a day from the get-go, you should be able to do them consistently without much effort before you get to Campo. That's going to require a lot of walking right now. Don't give yourself shin splints just working out!

As a person in pretty decent shape with lots of hiking experience I was able to do about 1200 miles in just under 90 days. I was not rushing. I'm also much shorter than you. I take two steps for your every one. But I was faster than a lot of people that year.

The following year I did about 1800 miles in 90 days. Both years I took a lot of zeros, but I took even more zeros the year I did 1800 miles in 90 days. I was in better shape, I guess, or had already passed the mental hurdles that kept me from doing more miles each day.

It's weird but when you cross one of these barriers you realize that it's really a mental thing how far you think you can go in a day. Crossing the 30 mile barrier was a big one for me. But once I knew I could go 30 miles a day, I found I would start falling apart if I did too many 30 mile days in a row. You'll have to find your sweet spot.

[leaftye]

I found that I got myself onto a bad rhythm with the post office for a while.

This is why I think a dependable electronic communication device is very important when using mail drops. On Sunday or early Monday a call can be made to send the next box out, or to delay a box if it looks like town will be passed through on a weekend.

[sbhikes]

I sent all my own boxes, so there was nobody to call.

[Hayduke_AZ]

...Haven't made up my mind on maps...

Print Halfmile's maps. I have Yogi's books. I'll cut up the little one and toss pieces in my resupply boxes. I'm considering taking cut-up sections of the Wilderness Press guidebooks because I like reading the descriptions, but I probably won't take them. I have an old set of the first editions I won't cut up, so I would have to buy another set just to cut them up. I don't think I want to do that, or carry the weight.

I will have the databook, but I downloaded the pdf version from postholer.com. You can then use Adobe's option to print 4 pages per sheet and do double sided. Entire guidebook is 8 pages that way!

So for me, it will be halfmile's maps printed double sided on color laser, cut up sections of Yogi's handbook, and the data book in miniature.

I will also have my iPhone as a GPS with maps. Probably use Topo Maps, but still evaluating software.

See ya on the trail!

[BrianLe]

"I will also have my iPhone as a GPS with maps."

I've read good things about Gaia GPS (but have no personal experience).

[leaftye]

I have to wonder if you could get people to bring your resupply kit to you on the trail. Like maybe Grayson of the Big Bear Hostel might be willing to leave your stuff in one of his coolers, for a fee. I figure that would save you at least half a day. If not this, there's a guy that gives people rides to the trail. He might be up for charging you about the same to bring your package out to you...actually, I think I'll do this next time because I wasted way too much time and money in Big Bear.

Also, Yogi posted on PCT-L that there are new variable rate priority mail regional boxes that will almost certainly be less expensive. For example, I would send a box to Idyllwild. Using the new box, it only cost me $5.81 instead of $14.95 for the flat rate box. The big catch is that you have to print your label at home because there's no option to utilize this option at the post office.

[Railroad]

Thanks for the advice Piper! I'm definitely trying to build up the miles now, and I'll be taking an 8 day shakeout trip in late March to A. field test all my gear and B. to understand how my body reacts to back-to-back-to-back days of hiking big miles.

I'm looking at Halfmile's maps, but the printing will get a bit expensive. I wonder, how valuable is it to have them in color as opposed to black and white? Is there really anything you would miss from the color versions?

Leaftye, that is quite an interesting idea. I've heard of people who will pack supplies into the wilderness in some areas for people, but never considered just asking them to come to the edge of the wilderness. It would definitely save time, but on the flip-side you do miss the big meal in town and some of the other creature comforts.

On these variable rate priority mail boxes, could I send one big box to Idyllwild from Illinois, including a bunch of pre-printed labels, and then repack that into these new boxes for all of my drops throughout the summer? That would definitely help cut down the cost of postage for the trip.

[Hayduke_AZ]

I've read good things about Gaia GPS (but have no personal experience).

I worked with a dev for this app last night. I found a couple bugs/issues with it, but it looks very promising. I will be doing more testing today, but as of last night, he thinks I should be able to upload any gpx file up to 10MB. That means ALL of Halfmile's way points could be uploaded as a single file! I'm super excited to see this work. The guy I was working with last night was a co-founder, and he seemed committed to making this work.

One other FYI about Gaia GPS. When you upload a file, the email that comes back says it will be available for 30 days. He said this is in case they run into space requirements. I asked if it would be possible to have mine left there until October. He said they aren't getting deleted anytime soon and I can be sure they will be there until 2012.

I have to wonder if you could get people to bring your resupply kit to you on the trail. Like maybe Grayson of the Big Bear Hostel might be willing to leave your stuff in one of his coolers, for a fee. I figure that would save you at least half a day. If not this, there's a guy that gives people rides to the trail. He might be up for charging you about the same to bring your package out to you...actually, I think I'll do this next time because I wasted way too much time and money in Big Bear.

Also, Yogi posted on PCT-L that there are new variable rate priority mail regional boxes that will almost certainly be less expensive. For example, I would send a box to Idyllwild. Using the new box, it only cost me $5.81 instead of $14.95 for the flat rate box. The big catch is that you have to print your label at home because there's no option to utilize this option at the post office.

I am having some of my resupplies brought to me on the trail. Big Bear might even be one of the places. I am from socal, so I have lots of friends and family in the area. There is some interest from them to come meet me along the way, Big Bear is one specific spot that was discussed.

Yogi's info about those new postage rates was very welcome news! Between that, and hearing Billy Goat's opinion on mail drops, I'm going to shipping nearly all my food. I want to get in and get out. I don't want to deal with shopping except for fresh produce and treats.

Thanks for the advice Piper! I'm definitely trying to build up the miles now, and I'll be taking an 8 day shakeout trip in late March to A. field test all my gear and B. to understand how my body reacts to back-to-back-to-back days of hiking big miles.

I'm looking at Halfmile's maps, but the printing will get a bit expensive. I wonder, how valuable is it to have them in color as opposed to black and white? Is there really anything you would miss from the color versions?

Leaftye, that is quite an interesting idea. I've heard of people who will pack supplies into the wilderness in some areas for people, but never considered just asking them to come to the edge of the wilderness. It would definitely save time, but on the flip-side you do miss the big meal in town and some of the other creature comforts.

On these variable rate priority mail boxes, could I send one big box to Idyllwild from Illinois, including a bunch of pre-printed labels, and then repack that into these new boxes for all of my drops throughout the summer? That would definitely help cut down the cost of postage for the trip.

You definitely want color. Halfmile has a link to a company in Oregon that will print the entire set for $75. That's a good price. You may not realize just how many pages of color printing we're talking about. I've printed CA and OR (waiting for him to complete his WA updates) and the stack is about an inch thick! Even with a map in the GPS, iPhone in my case, I want paper maps.

I think your idea about shipping is a good way to save some shipping costs. Ship a large box several weeks early and use parcel post to make it as cheap as possible. That box can be enough to spread out over several more resupplies, so you just break it up along the trail and send it forward. I would recommend priority for those smaller packages though. Parcel post can be slooooooooooooooooooooooowwwww. One other thing you might want to think about. If you're splitting up your big box in, for example, Idylwild, you might not want to be shipping your food to Big Bear from there. If you get to Big Bear in 6 days, you might beat your package. I'm not sure how fast priority mail is, but I am assuming a week at least for everything. I'll explain what I mean with an example...

If I were in your situation, here is what I would do.
Before leaving, ship a large box to Campo (you could carry this with you depending no how you travel) and Aqua Dulce. These boxes would have several weeks of food each. I would also ship a small box to Mt Laguna if you plan to resupply there. When I got to Campo, I would split that box up and ship my drops to all my spots between there and Aqua Dulce, except for My Laguna. I think you would beat a box from Campo to Mt Laguna. From Campo, I would also ship a box to my resupply passed Aqua Dulce. See the pattern? You split up the big box and ship to all spots up to the next big box, plus one past it. You could use this pattern the whole way and it will probably cut down on postage.

I was working on a spreadsheet that compared shipping form home vs the concept I'm proposing, but with the new rates, I lost my motivation to finish it. AZ isn't too far, so my shipping isn't huge. Also, my wife is my support person, and really wants to be involved. She wants to just ship every box from home the entire way. This is fine by me as I can probably even avoid a bounce box this way, plus it let's me add things to boxes at the last minute, like more TP, a fleece, extra zip locks etc.

Anyway, good luck on your planning. I'm sure you're just as busy as I am trying to get everything ready to go. See you on the trail!

[BrianLe]

"I'm going to shipping nearly all my food. I want to get in and get out. I don't want to deal with shopping except for fresh produce and treats."

Of course there are differing opinions on this point (as with most points ...), but my sense is that there's a pretty consistent shift in opinion from those that have hiked the trail (myself included) to not send a bunch of boxes. I had over 30 resupply boxes, and it happened to work out not all that bad --- I was lucky in that I never got sick of much of what I had sent. But I still left a good bit of food in hiker boxes along the way (got the amounts wrong), and still had to wait a couple of times and accelerate my pace a couple of times due to post office hours, and post offices over time are if anything tending towards more restricted hours I believe.

For towns that have any sort of decent food store, I suspect you'll find that the total process of buying the food that you actually want at the time won't be that difficult. I would personally far rather go to a supermarket than hope that my box had arrived, that the post office would be open, and that the mix of foods sent were close to what I actually wanted and could use.

Obviously these comments don't apply if you have food alergies or are a strict vegan or have other specific food requirements along that line.

One great thing you have going for you is living in a nearby state with your wife mailing you the boxes. I live in WA state and my wife mailed my boxes, and as you said, it was nice to be able to call and ask that the next box contain item X, though in fact I didn't do it all that often. Something you might consider is building a little "box ship date planner" for her. For me this was a spreadsheet that estimated when I would get to each location and then added a ship-time factor to tell her when to mail the next box. It included some intermediate locations as well. Each time I got to any location on the list, she would update the spreadsheet to show when I actually arrived there, autmatically updating the ship dates for all remaining boxes. She found this helpful, to include being able to plan in future for when she had to be around home (or to mail a given box early) due to her own summer plans (!).

[chiefdaddy]

I have Erik the Black's PCT Atlas and loved them along side Yogi's.

[Hayduke_AZ]

Of course there are differing opinions on this point (as with most points ...), but my sense is that there's a pretty consistent shift in opinion from those that have hiked the trail (myself included) to not send a bunch of boxes. I had over 30 resupply boxes, and it happened to work out not all that bad --- I was lucky in that I never got sick of much of what I had sent. But I still left a good bit of food in hiker boxes along the way (got the amounts wrong), and still had to wait a couple of times and accelerate my pace a couple of times due to post office hours, and post offices over time are if anything tending towards more restricted hours I believe.

For towns that have any sort of decent food store, I suspect you'll find that the total process of buying the food that you actually want at the time won't be that difficult. I would personally far rather go to a supermarket than hope that my box had arrived, that the post office would be open, and that the mix of foods sent were close to what I actually wanted and could use.

Obviously these comments don't apply if you have food alergies or are a strict vegan or have other specific food requirements along that line.

One great thing you have going for you is living in a nearby state with your wife mailing you the boxes. I live in WA state and my wife mailed my boxes, and as you said, it was nice to be able to call and ask that the next box contain item X, though in fact I didn't do it all that often. Something you might consider is building a little "box ship date planner" for her. For me this was a spreadsheet that estimated when I would get to each location and then added a ship-time factor to tell her when to mail the next box. It included some intermediate locations as well. Each time I got to any location on the list, she would update the spreadsheet to show when I actually arrived there, autmatically updating the ship dates for all remaining boxes. She found this helpful, to include being able to plan in future for when she had to be around home (or to mail a given box early) due to her own summer plans (!).

I realize I'm going against the trend. Isn't that what thru hikers do by nature anyway? LOL I hear what people say about having to adjust my hiking schedule to the PO hours, but I'll use other mail drops when I can. I don't have any dietary restrictions. I'm not picky and have an iron stomach, but I'm trying to manage my budget. Trying to buy along the way is too variable for me. My town money will be spent on important things like beer, food, showers, food, and beer.

I'm trying to avoid spending time in town anyway, so if I know I won't make a PO in time, I'll spend zero on the trail, not in town. I'm actually looking forward to those! I'm conducting a photography project on the trip, so I'll have my Nikon DSLR with me. I can spend the day taking pictures and napping. Sounds great to me!

I have a map that is 5'x3' of the trail we're putting on the wall in the home office. We're marking each resupply location. For each resupply I have a single sheet of paper with info about that supply, ie estimate arrival date and ship date, number of food days, etc. There is lots of room left on the sheets for my wife to make her own notes as well. We talked about using a file, but she said she preferred the visual aspect of a giant map on the wall. Whatever makes her happy

[leaftye]

I think your idea about shipping is a good way to save some shipping costs. Ship a large box several weeks early and use parcel post to make it as cheap as possible. That box can be enough to spread out over several more resupplies, so you just break it up along the trail and send it forward. I would recommend priority for those smaller packages though. Parcel post can be slooooooooooooooooooooooowwwww.

Parcel post may not be as cheap as you'd think. When I was shipping some of my stuff from Big Bear to San Diego, I actually found that using Priority Mail was less expensive than Parcel Post. With the new Priority Mail boxes, this is probably more true than ever, especially when you consider the cost of boxes.

[Colter]

I think it would be a good idea to work out for a few more weeks as time allows, with a pack on uneven ground, rain and shine, to get in better shape. Then try hiking 210 miles in one week on a backcountry trail. I suspect that it will be considerably harder than you think and will, as has been suggested, help you do a shake-down of your gear. There will be many lessons to be learned that you can only learn on the trail.

As a very good rule of thumb, averaging 30 mpd over the course of a summer is only reasonably doable by a very experienced hiker in unusually good physical condition, combined with some luck. There are exceptions, but not very many.

I think something like 37% of the people finish a PCT thru-hike, averaging about 150 days. Something to think about.

Averaging 20 mpd including trips to town and all time off is still a good pace, is dramatically more doable, and likely a heck of a lot more fun. But HYOH.