The test run

My first 100+ mile backpack is this year! Pinch me, it’s really happening. Time to start up my first blog! We’ll see how this goes, I haven’t really written much online since myspace.

This summer I am going to section hike the WA Pacific Crest Trail. It’s always been a dream of mine and I never thought that I would actually have the opportunity to go. Magically I have 5 weeks to do it, so I’ll have plenty of time to cover the miles. And smell the flowers, take pictures, jump in every lake, meet all of the other hiker trash. The permit came and now it’s time to make the rest happen.

I’m aiming high on food and I ordered a dehydrator to make some of my own food. Hopefully this will help me stick to a healthier diet. The dehydrator came right on time and I headed out of town with a few recipe books to go off of. So far so good! I found a few good recipes to try out on training backpacks this spring. I also took another trip to REI with a friend a week ahead to load up on all of the green trails maps. I love a good old topo map. Tomorrow is the first round in the dehydrator and I’ll have a chance to start marking up my maps while it runs.

The fun part of this week was trying out the new tent! I’ve been carrying an REI halfdome 2+ on backpacks for years. Usually it’s just for me and my pack, but it’s plenty of room to share on shorter trips. I will gladly admit that I carried that thing for the entirety of section J and it was glorious to have something that sturdy and that waterproof. That tent is just too heavy this time. So, after much careful deliberation and research, I picked up my Big Agnes Flycreek HV UL 2 on Saturday! The weather could not have been better to test the limits of the tent. On Sunday at 5 am I woke up to what ended up being a proper avalanche (which, of course, means roughly an inch of snow) sliding off of the top of my tent. The walls bowed, but the tent held up just fine. Sunday night was 26 degrees and a perfect test of the tent and new insulated sleeping pad. I didn’t freeze to death, so I’m off to a great start!