Preparation…begins

It is now January, which means Amy and I are ramping up our preparation for the March 22nd start date!  Over the past 6 months we had been dehydrating our brains out, as we took on the task of preparing about 145 dinners to send ourselves on the trail.  We came up with our favorite 8 backpacking meals and got down to business with gathering all of the ingredients we needed for them.  Our food dehydrator went into overdrive and we were fortunate enough to also get a loaner one from our very good friend Joanne.  After we finally got all of the dinners prepped we then had to figure out a variety of breakfasts and lunches we would need.  These will consist of about 4 different type of shakes.  The kitchen became an assembly line as our counters became covered with zip lock bags, powdered milk, protein powders, ground oats and various seeds to add all important calories and nutrients to our home made concoctions.  Boy we should have picked up some stock in zip lock bags prior to starting this process….hahahaha.

As we finished up the meals and shopping for last minute items like coffee and electrolyte drinks, we were also roughly planning out an itinerary so we would know where our re-supply boxes will be sent.  A re-supply box is a box that will be shipped to a specific location ahead of time that will included the food we will need for the next section of trail and necessary maps/info/gear.  Once we had a rough idea of where and when we would be somewhere, we found out that we will be having 32 re-supply boxes for our adventure.

Now came the tall task of organizing each box with the correct number of meals we would need.  This was tedious at times because we would go through each box multiple times making sure we had it perfect.  My mom has graciously agreed to be our re-supply contact, and will be shipping these boxes off to us about 3 weeks ahead of time from when we will need them.  We really wanted to make sure the boxes were correct so we didn’t need her to try and figure out any errors on our part.  Of course going into this I was thinking, “how hard will it be to just throw food into a box?”  Well I was wrong! It became a very large task that took several days to complete, as we tried to make sure we had a variety in each box.  What makes this even more of a challenge is also identifying the towns that we would be in that would have good options of adding food if needed. The towns that don’t have much of a re-supply selection are the ones we needed to make sure we had everything we would need since supplementing our food will be difficult.

 

Once we had the boxes organized, we started to look at our packs and what we would be taking.  Knowing you are going to be walking 17-20 miles a day for 2,658+ miles, you really start to question everything you put into your pack.  Extra weight means extra work every day for 6 months which may not sound like much when you are talking about one pound but it adds up very quickly and can make you miserable on the trail.  Once we were done selecting the gear I then went about weighing each piece of equipment and then dividing up shared equipment (ie tent, quilt, sleeping pad, cooking system) between our packs.  Amy looks to weigh in at 14.1 pounds while my pack weighed in at 18.9 pounds.  This is just gear, no water or food weight.  My pack is a little heavier but is due to the necessary electronics for GPS and camera, for safety and preserving our memories.

We are so excited to begin our adventure in March and think about the PCT everyday.  Thanks so much for following our journey and we are excited to keep you up to date on the trail once we get started.

Brian