And they're off...

My sister and I dropped the boys off Saturday morning at the trail head near Campo California.  With the border fence as a back drop Andy and Brett set out on a great adventure.

There were several others that started out that morning, there was even a fellow there that had done it several years ago and just wanted to bid everyone fair well.  The boys had their first ~ 20 mile day ahead of them.  They hiked into the ADZPCTKO, Annual Day Zero Pacific Creat Trail Kickoff Party, where they got a water report, talked with others hiking the trail and past hikers, and their PCT thru hiker bandana. 

oce they crossed I-8 Andy called me to say hi and tell me they're having a great time and there are good vibes on the trail from all the other hikers.  They're are staying at the Mt. Laguna campgrounds tonight and have a couple more days till their first resupply. I'm excited for them, it would be an awesome thing to see all that nature and stop thinking about time, schedules, and computers and just be for a while. 

I'm going to miss him, the house is quiet without him.  Coty, or Jerk dog as some know him, took his spot in bed keeping it warm until Andy walks to the Canadian border and reclaims it. 

On the way

We should be starting very soon.  Well, from here on my super supportive, awesome girlfriend, Gretchen, will be making most of the updates to the blog.  Gretchen has supported my plan to do the PCT from the beginning even though it will be difficult for both of us.  Without her support, I doubt I would have had the courage to even attempt this.  Hopefully, she'll get the first news up here in the next week on how things have gone from the start. 

Looking forward to not shaving for nearly 5 months,

-Andy

Mmmm, Junk Food!

Brett and I will be consuming an insane amount of calories once our metabolism kicks into high gear.  It may take a a few weeks before this happens, but either way food resupply along the PCT is one of the front end items that requires at least some planning.  We would prefer to buy all of our food along the way from nearby towns.  Unfortunately, there are several locations where this becomes difficult without taking long hitchhikes.  While Brett and I will be hitchiking into some towns, we've generally tried to limit those to towns less than 20 miles from the trail.  For other locations, we've had to purchase food in advance.  Gretchen will be mailing us food for these locatons at various times.  Having to maildrop food means you have to guesstimate how much food you'll eat in advance, no perishable items, and we'll probably be eating a lot of the same stuff over and over again. 

Below is a photo of the food we had to buy in advance.  This is enough food for two people for about 50 days.

As you can tell, most of it is junk food.  We had to repack all of this into 10 separate boxes.  We're already not looking forward to eating this stuff.  But my hope is that being in the wilderness and very hungry, my perspective will change a little bit.

Before we even bought all this food, we had to come up with a typical daily menu, multiply it out for the number of days we needed, and make sure we were sticking to the typical recommended 2 lbs of food per person per day.  It seems like a lot of food to me now, but we will see.

-Andy

Pacific Crest Trail Info

With our quickly approaching PCT thru-hike, we've been asked many questions by our friends, relatives, and coworkers.  As you can imagine, people have been curious about the details and to a large extent with the basic things we tend to take for granted in our daily lives.  People have asked us about our food resupply strategy, what gear we will take with us, if we're taking bear mace or even guns, about the trail itself, and similar questions.  It's fun to answer these sorts of questions and makes me excited that people are curious about the details.  Without intending to sound like an elitist, it's also fun to often see a level of shock when people hear some of our responses.  We're not doing anything out of the ordinary for a thru-hiker or in many cases things I already do for short backpacking trips, but certainly we're doing things you wouldn't do in your normal life.  After all, we are planning to walk almost 2,700 miles in 4.5 - 5 months.  I don't think there's anything normal about that, but that's 100% the point.

Most commonly I've been asked about the trail itself; typical things like where does it start and stop, how long is it, what areas does it cross.  Realizing that we won't have a chance to answer all the questions or speak to all of our friends before we go, I thought it'd be nice to provide some links to information on the trail.  For those of you that are curious about the things we will see and what we will experience before we get there, you can check out the following links that provide a lot of good background information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_crest_trail

http://www.pcta.org/

A map can probably best provide a snapshot of our goal: to walk from Mexico to Canada through the wilderness in one continous line.  The image below shows the path we hope to follow.

In the coming days, we hope to post some additional information shedding some light on our resupply strategy and the gear we will be taking with us.

-Andy